Is it time a Capping system is needed in English football?

How would it work - could it be based on a fair system much like
Australian Rules around draft players being eligible to to at a set level

We in the English league see top 6 going ever higher in wages & transfer cost
The next 14 are so far our of competing on purchase of much needed players

Can someone like Man City be held to a max spend & max numbers requirements

When does it stop Grealish get huge transfer fee but touted of a new club ?

Forever Palace Proud

It can obviously work. There's absolutely no question at all about that. The proof lies in the fact that a capping system exists and is extremely effective in plenty of other leagues/sports around the world. For one example look to North America, where major market teams with greater revenues and/or wealthier owners almost never dominate. Kansas City and Tampa Bay have won two of the last three Super Bowls, with New York teams nowhere in sight.

The problem isn't the ownership test; it's the pathetically weak administration of the game itself by the FA, FL, and/or PL who are simply in hock to the big-money men. Capping works (as in the example above) when you have a strong and independent league administration and owners are forced to abide by rules which ensure genuine competition. When the NFL commissioner makes a judgment, teams are forced to follow it without question regardless of their wealth. Indeed, the league can force an owner to sell his team if he acts against the best interests of the league. Put simply, in American sports the one thing you can't buy is success. In the UK, you can.

One day the PL will destroy itself because no league can prosper indefinitely without real competition and year after year, competition diminishes over here. What, if we're honest, is the point of Palace? Answer: to make up numbers, unless you think going for 8th place justifies your existence. The PL is little more than a s***show; 13 clubs exist in it mainly to allow the other 7 to generate revenues from additional home games.

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

The big sides didn’t always win back in the 80’s it was a much fairer game based on skill & strategies inbuilt with the club discipline regimes

Only example of that bucking the trend was 6 plus pints a night for Arsenal players until AW came along

I just think 25 years ago we all giggled when TFrancis got a. If wage & Nigel our keeper was 1st million pound keeper - we all said football has gone mad

But now it’s 100 times worse when you see Grealish or Ronaldo wages

Even now I moan at outer players lack of effort vs the money they are on
Even if you halved or quarter the wages they are still overpriced/ paid versus cost of living.

Yet how can CPFC compete at the money the top 6 & now bottom 5 are throwing around - we wait till 2 days till window to say who we got & we can’t afford a striker who strikes & a mid who is creative or a leader who commands - we ain’t got the money to compete

Forever Palace Proud

Whilst Liverpool did indeed dominate the 80s, go back a decade and you have Derby winning the league twice and Forest coming up from Division 2 and winning the league at the first time of asking. That simply couldn't happen today.

Reading the article, my conclusion is that football's pretense at policing itself is little more than a self-serving joke and not a funny one at that. Among other things:

1. Premier League profitability and sustainability rules allow for total losses of £105m over a three-year period.

This says it all. Losing £30 million a year is considered sound business practice and a sustainable approach to running a company. Of course, this gives carte blanche to billionaire owners who can effectively afford to underwrite those sorts of losses, while rendering uncompetitive those clubs who are "allowed" to lose that sum but can't actually finance the losses because they have no one to prop up their dismal business practices.

2. Under Uefa's current rules, clubs can spend up to 5m euros (£4.4m) more than they earn over a three-year period.

So your spending is based on earnings, not profit/loss. All you have to do is inflate your earnings even in the face of vast losses and you can keep spending, as long as you have a wealthy enough owner to underwrite the losses.

3. However, new Uefa rules introduced in June limit clubs' spending on wages, transfers and agents' fees to 70% of their revenue, though permitted losses over a three-year period have risen to 60m euros (£49.96m).

See point 2, above. The sky's the limit because nothing but gross revenue matters. If Chelsea's revenue is, say, £100 million and their losses are £200 million, they can spend £70 million because that's 70% of their revenue, even though they're a poorly run club losing money hand-over-fist (in this example, £100 million a year). Meanwhile, Palace's revenue is, say, £30 million but we have no losses. We're breaking even. But our spend is limited to £21 million (70% of 30 million). In short, football rewards you for being a badly run club that simply generates revenue and punishes you for being a well-run club in a smaller market.

And people wonder why the PL is no longer competitive and barely worth watching anymore?

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.

This is why the European Super League will be the watershed. Turkeys won't vote for Christmas, but if the other 13 clubs band together and stand their ground, there'll be an impasse that out of necessity will result in some sort of change, most likely (if they don't get their own way) the big clubs disappearing into their own (European Super) League. Clubs like ours should start growing a pair and showing some self-respect. If the big 7 don't want to play in a competitive domestic league then in my personal view, good riddance to them. They can go and chase dollars instead of historic, domestic trophies. I may be alone but I genuinely will not miss them.

Edited by sydtheeagle (17 Jan 2023 7.20pm)

Sydenham by birth. Selhurst by the Grace of God.