Financial Fair Play - Are Middlesbrough In Danger?

With all the chaos going on it Villa after they've failed to win promotion - they will need to make up a £41 million deficit with wage reductions and player sales to meet Financial Fair Play restrictions - as well as losing 10 integral players from the squad (5 out of contract, 5 loan deals expiring). Could Boro be in a similar position in 12 months time?

Norwich are also seeing their last parachute payment this season and had to sell hard last season to stay afloat similar to what QPR have had to do. Sheffield Wednesday, Birmingham and Derby are all going to have to go through a similar cut after spending a large amount the last couple of seasons to mount a promotion push.

Do we think that this could effect us as severely if we fail to get promotion next season? Villa's average player wage is £30,000 a week, I can't see ours being close to that after we offloaded most of the highest earners from the Premier League season. Although a few of the players we bought in last summer could be on large contracts...

Gibson has definitely been more conservative with our net spend than Villa have, and more sensible with giving out massive contracts and loan deals, but even then once the parachute payments have stopped and the belt of FFP has tightened, are we still in a sustainable financial position?

There's still other ways we can generate cash, I assume most of Monk's signings will be moved on this window for a loss, but hopefully we could recoup at least half of what we spent. On top of this Traore and Gibson are assets that would command a hefty fee.

Knowing this should we be going all out for promotion next season, with the prospect of severe cuts and a rebuild for the few seasons afterward. Or should we do everything we can to make sure we're in a position to push for promotion season after season for the next few years?

It seems like Gibson has done a decent job keeping us in a stable enough financial position going forward but it's still a scary prospect trying to meet FFP restrictions once the parachute payments are ripped out from underneath you. It seems like every team that goes down and doesn't return promptly ends up in this same situation, maybe the total of the parachute payments should be spread over more years so that teams are less likely to risk everything for Premier League Football?

I think we are in a strong position regarding ffp. Our relegation under Southgate may have been a blessing in knowing not to make the same mistakes financially again. Given that we were in profit last year although that will probably change significantly this season with us out of the premier league. The good thing for us this time is we don't need to sell like we did with Huth and Tuncay. I think we can demand hefty fees for Gibson and Traore if we are to sell this summer.

Think there are a couple of members on here who will be able to do much better than speculate, I know they've pulled the financials out in conversations before and certainly understand them more than I ever could. If I was to speculate based on our transfer dealings though, we dropped out of the Prem and despite spending £50m, we didn't receive much less than that throughout the season on transfers alone. But that's just transfer fees, not sure how our budget is with wages.

Can’t see us getting in trouble with FFP. Sure we might not be able to spend 30 million next year but I expect us to be able to be a***st the top spenders and still not get into problems if we are not promoted. If we buy smart this season we will hopefully also have a few sellable assets.

I doubt you can compare us to Villa. They’ve had massive outlays in the last two years and some very high earners. Players like Agbonlahor I think has been on 40k. And they’ve stacked up with some very high earner for this league namely McCormack, Terry and Snodgrass while expensive players like Kodija, Adomah and Chester will likely be on big contracts too.

We on the other hand had relegation clauses for all our players (I think I read in the gazette) and won’t have many high earners like Villa. Players like Britt, Downing, Howson, Traore, Gibson are probably on decent wages but nothing out of the ordinary like Villas highest earners.

FFP covers the last three years, so next summer it will cover one PL season and two in the championship where we so far have broken even on fees.

Also parachute payments vastly inflate our income, can't see how we will be in danger yet.

Also parachute payments vastly inflate our income, can't see how we will be in danger yet.

We still only have parachute payments for the coming season though. After this one it’s back to championship income.

I think we will definitely be better off as we were built on a Championship base and most of our big earners were offloaded, whereas Villa came down having years of Premier League excess on their wage bill which they've only added to...

Could still be a shock once our parachute payment runs out and our turnover falls off a cliff, lets just hope Gibson is well prepared for that eventuality although all signs point towards that!

Swiss Ramble has been through the lot - if you have twitter then take a look

Basically because we have Steve Gibson we are going to be OK. Not minted but not if danger and still one of the best financed in the league.

Quote from Swiss Ramble.

#Boro have no issues with FFP, as they have a total allowable loss of £61m over the 3-year monitoring period (£35m for 1 Premier League season plus 2 Championship seasons at £13m). In any case, I estimate they will make a small profit in 17/18 thanks to hefty player sales.

I reckon we will make a moderate net spend of maybe 10-15m this year on transfers rather than the net profit we made last season. The main reason we were able to spend so much was the large amount we made from players sales, we can't expect that much this time around unless we cash in on Gibson and Traore other than that I reckon we might get 6m from Braithwaite and about 1m from Johnson?

The inflated prices we paid for players last season is ridiculous especially considering the pile of unbalanced **** we ended up with... can't help but think the relegated teams this season will be investing more wisely which will make it tough for us...

I reckon we will make a moderate net spend of maybe 10-15m this year on transfers rather than the net profit we made last season. The main reason we were able to spend so much was the large amount we made from players sales, we can't expect that much this time around unless we cash in on Gibson and Traore other than that I reckon we might get 6m from Braithwaite and about 1m from Johnson?

 

The inflated prices we paid for players last season is ridiculous especially considering the pile of unbalanced **** we ended up with... can't help but think the relegated teams this season will be investing more wisely which will make it tough for us...

If we get £1m for Johnson we'll be lucky!

I reckon we will make a moderate net spend of maybe 10-15m this year on transfers rather than the net profit we made last season. The main reason we were able to spend so much was the large amount we made from players sales, we can't expect that much this time around unless we cash in on Gibson and Traore other than that I reckon we might get 6m from Braithwaite and about 1m from Johnson?

 

The inflated prices we paid for players last season is ridiculous especially considering the pile of unbalanced **** we ended up with... can't help but think the relegated teams this season will be investing more wisely which will make it tough for us...

Given we expect Traore and Gibson to leave, I'd be surprised to see us having a positive net spend under Pulis. If either or both stay, then you'll probably be right.

Well we would be thinking of or hoping for 40-60m for the two? That's a fair bit of wonga to reinvest of it worked out that way.