By David Owen
March 15 – The top two tiers of English football are in discussions aimed at establishing “proportionate linkage” between their respective sets of financial sustainability rules, Premier League boss Richard Scudamore has revealed.
Speaking to Insideworldfootball and the Press Association little more than a week after one club, Queens Park Rangers, announced a loss that exceeded its turnover for its relegation season of 2012-13, Scudamore said he thought the Football League were “taking a long, hard look at what they have done with their own rules”.
He went on: “We have some concerns. These are concerns we expressed at the time they introduced them. We thought the transition between leagues was going to be very difficult.
“I think there is a mood, certainly around our table, our clubs, and I think with Shaun Harvey [the Football League’s chief executive] and the board of the Football League, there is a mood to sit around in a room and see if we can actually come up with something that makes that transition a little bit more manageable.”
Asked if it would make sense to somehow integrate the two systems, intended to prevent clubs from running up big losses in pursuit of on-field success, Scudamore replied: “At least some proportionate linkage, because you have got our rules that allow X and their rules that only allow Y, and if you can’t bridge that delta then it’s difficult.
“But we are certainly in discussions with them.”
As things stand, from 2014-15 Championship clubs which lose more than £8 million could face a transfer embargo or a “Fair Play Tax”, in effect a fine.
QPR’s loss for its Premiership season ending May 2013 reached £65.4 million on turnover of just £60.6 million. This was more than losses run up by Premier League big boys such as Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool.
Scudamore maintained that the Premier League’s own controls were “having a positive effect”.
The Premier League chief executive said: “I think people are living within those wage caps that we set. It’s too early to say formally of course because we don’t get the first reporting period until the end of this season…
“We are in the first year of three in terms of the aggregate acceptable loss, but again you can see the way the clubs are trying to bring their losses down. So I think we are in good shape in terms of that.”
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