quote:
Burnley is an extremely small club who will never amount to anything. It is what it is.

Actually it could help Sunderland with a major factor being the size of their stadium.

Now, with FFP, Sunderland "is it what it is" as well since there's no longer any chance a rich oligarch could buy them, spend a lot right away and take a precious CL away from a traditional power and "ruin football" like Man City and Chelsea. They can certainly build intelligently but without some massive transfer spending they are very unlikely to begin to tap into the all important CL positions since they are unlucky enough to play in the EPL and without that you're really not going to emerge as a powerful club.

To keep more Chelsea/Man City/PSG clubs from arising may well be a good thing ultimately but the benefits of FFP are clearly most acute for Manchester United, Real Madrid and Barcelona.
It's really tough to argue that point.

I say this as a fan of AS Roma who also probably stands to benefit since FFP has already been instrumental in dissuading the purchase of at least two Serie A clubs by oligarchs in the past couple of years. Roma is somewhat of a "sleeping giant" and currently has owners committed to growing the club through previously untapped revenue streams. Since Roma already benefits from the huge Serie A TV contracts (which are bigger than La Liga and much bigger than Bundesliga) and have been perpetual "underachievers" considering that it's the biggest club in a huge high profile city and a hotbed of local talent, it's the exact type of club that FFP should ultimately "help" as well.

However, even as a Roma fan, I can say tha FFP may prove to be good for the overall financial health of the leagues but I'm not going to argue that it really locks certain immense competitive advantages bigger clubs already have even more securely in place.

This post was edited on 9/10/14 at 10:23 am