Free Spending Over : How Fair Is Financial Fair Play?

The arrival of Juan Cuadrado at Chelsea saw the rather necessary exit of Andre Schurlle to Wolfsburg and the making of Ryan Bertrand’s Southampton move permanent. This trend of give and take seems to be increasingly prevalent with Chelsea spending less and less on transfers. This shrewd business tactic means Chelsea have so far just spent £11.4 million on new arrivals. It now looks like Mr Abramovich can keep his wallet closed all in the name of FFP.In as much as many have lauded this innovation as a tool to achieve equity on the playing field a rather disturbing irony has developed. There are teams in Europe that are lucky enough to have been financially successful or otherwise in the past and thus have a relatively strong financial background. These teams also have the largest fan bases and command significant profitable support structures which ultimately means they can spend at will without actually flouting the FFP regulations. In a bid to promote fairness, the axis of teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Bayern Munich has been made stronger by inhibiting rich upstarts like Manchester City, Chelsea and PSG.The minnows who were supposedly being protected will continue to be just that with the situation probably getting worse as even generous investment from Directors can not be used to challenge the big boys.Has FFP actually made things more fair?

Source: DSG