₦airaland Forum

Wolves can't catch us, Sheffield Utd can but are unlikely to overturn the goal difference.

This significantly improves our chances as Leicester and Manure have to face each other from our last two competitors. I have belief in Leicester dropping points even before getting to that final game against Manure.

Yessssss!!!

Burnley have done the Lord's work.

Wolves can't catch us again

Penalty to Burnley although it doesn't look like it

Please VAR don't overturn this

Thunder fire Chris Wood for missing that open goal

FFS, we needed Burnley to take Wolves out the running today.

If as expected we lose to Liverpool, Wolves will be within 2 points of us going into our final match against them.

Wolves suddenly look a bigger threat than Leicester

nitrogen:
There is never a standard MSA, so yes, you could easily play games and the regulator can do nothing. During a 6-month stint with a UAE-based PE firm, I structured a transaction where there was an arrangement for a holding company to charge fees based on the level of cashflows from the subsidiaries. Essentially, if you as a subsidiary generate more cashflows, you pay a higher tax deductible management fees. Well there could be pushbacks from the tax authorities sha. That one, you will resolve later. time value of money is key.

But then, I thought auditors try to define and check for reasonableness of some of these arrangements/contracts?

I have been audited dozens of times by EY and in any given year, I have apportioned one group of workers by Management fee as % of Revenue, another group by FTE count, another group by percentage of floorspace as a proportion of group floorspace, and another group by Management estimation on how their workload is split. All are legitimate allocation methods.

I guarantee that auditors can never advise a change in such methodologies. Let's say a City Directors salary is split 30% to City and the other 70% across the other subs and City accountants advise it's according to their judgement of Workload. What gives an auditor the credibility or knowledge to question how that Directors time is spent across the entities? They don't even audit to named employee level sef.

nitrogen:
I agree. Most regulators are focused on the balance sheet. Maybe another 'FFP' is needed. Something like cash from operations (CFO) must be between 50 and 70 percent of accounting profit. That way, a club wont over or under-estimate fair values of their players in their balance sheets.

Cash flow from Operating Activities won't cut it. All top flight clubs will have positive cashflows from operating activities which materially in a football context will be commercial plus TV Revenue plus Gate revenue less Salaries and other minor OPEX. What UEFA is targeting is Cash flow from Investing Activities which for football clubs is mostly the buying and selling of players. You can't really stop a company buying an asset amore than you can stop a company buying commercial real estate as long as their Accounting profit meet your benchmarks.

biomustry:
I knew Guardiola was probably benching deBruyne I didn't captain him

Today wey I play bench boost, I've got DeBruyne, Sterling and Doherty benched with Greenwood yellow flagged. I even had to take a further 4 point hit last night when it emerged Lascelles was injured. Chai.

nitrogen:
Well, it depends. I know that central banks have guidelines for banks (re: Capital adequacy and risk management issues). Even though, accounting standards exist, regulators within sectors like banking, insurance, etc. still come up with guidelines which somehow shape financial reporting, and they typically fine sector players for going against the guidelines. Don't forget that the regulators also audit companies, with fines ditched out if there are issues.

Your example is quite interesting. City Football Group, I believe is more like a Private Equity firm, with a holding company structure. Most of the employees' costs should be incurred at the holding company level.

True that holding companies tend to get their subsidiaries or portfolio companies pay salaries of their employees......the flexibility from arrangements like this is huge. However, we've also seen arrangements where they just charge management fees to these subsidiaries and/or companies, which essentially cover their costs. In fact, that is exactly what happens these days, I believe.

Yes, they can set capitalisation benchmarks or in FFP case, profitability benchmarks but the accounts on which those benchmarks are aggregated are only subject to IFRS. Whereas it's easier for CBN to tie a bank to capitalisation metrics as those are usually focussed on current assets (usually Cash and <365 Receivables), profit is a more difficult metric to pin down especially in an industry like football whose profit figures are materially affected by disposal gains or losses and who have little short-term correlation between cashflow and profit. A football club could have £100m reduction in Cash and Receivables and still declare £200m profit in the same year. How do you pin that down?

Yes, they may charge a management fee within a Group Structure, or may apportion salaries across the different subs. Infact the management fee structure may allow them to sink overhead losses more safely in UAE than spread it around. How can UEFA regulate that?

Beyond overheads, you would be surprised to find they also put what you would consider traditional OPEX to parent and apportion later. I know of OPEX items for services my company provides to City that gets billed to Parent. It would be interesting to follow those OPEX down the line and see how they are apportioned between parent and subs.

nitrogen:
Interesting, I hope IFRS releases a standard for sports accounting. Stuffs around impairment of an asset (a player) or trying to figure out fair values of the players need to be addressed ASAP.

Meanwhile, I know precedent transactions also should help, especially in situations where clubs revalue their assets in order to declare unrealised profits. I believe the transfer market is very liquid, they just need to reduce the period, and ensure almost similar characteristics (such as age, current ranking, output from the player) vs reference assets and or transactions.

The sports industry is really massive, special accounting standards are needed. Of course, I know IFRS prefers general standards that are applicable to all industries, but then........

I don't think there is any valuation methodology that will work, much less one that will not contravene IFRS guidelines.

Intangible assets can only be revalued with reference to an active market and players contracts are likely too unique to benchmark against an active market. That's why we will carry someone like Drinkwater at his asset value (should be around £16m now ignoring salary element) rather than write him off and declare a £16m loss this year. We'll just let amortisation naturally impair him slowly until the end of his contract.

Skimpledawg:
Make una help me find Swissh and Eruditor na.


My 36k

El-Ru-Debtor strikes again!


.

nitrogen:
EPL and/or UEFA just need to commission an independent assessment of City deals, just like when you tell one of the big 4 firms (not auditing City) to do an independent review. They can easily nail Man City.

Shebi UEFA is like a regulator to football clubs in Europe?

They are a regulator but cannot supercede IFRS standards, neither can they pressure an auditor if an auditor concludes that a transaction complies with IFRS. You cannot have one set of accounts for submission to Government and a different set of accounts for submission to UEFA. Your accounts for Government just need to pass FFP guidelines on the amount of losses you can declare over a period of years. How you make that target is not UEFAs call to dispute so long as auditors and Govt have accepted your accounts. If UEFA suspect fraud, they are welcome to alert Govt but Govt threshold is based in accounting rules of market value, not UEFAs view that Pjanic may have been overpriced for example. This is UEFAs problem - acting outside their jurisdiction with no real legal say over Revenue or Costs recognition in accounts.

I'll give you another example - City Football Group which encompasses various clubs around the globe from Man City to clubs in New York, Australia, Belgium, Uruguay and India. I can almost 100% guarantee that City Directors and managerial level salaries and other overheads will be split across all these clubs even though 95% of those workers time or other overheads will relate to Manchester City. What you then have is that Man City may only carry say 30% of the salary of a CFG Director who spends 95% of his time on Man City and apportion the rest to the other clubs in the group. This would just be another way of stripping out cost from Manchester City books to make them FFP compliant and putting those costs in other clubs where FFP is not an issue. Nothing UEFA will be able to do about that because that all complies with accounting rules.

nitrogen:
And auditors are fine with these arrangements?

Are there acceptable valuation methodologies for the assets (players)? I am assuming that external auditors determine fair value (or arm's length value) of the swap transactions, which means they could ask management to make adjustments in their books to reflect the true state of the deals. Also, auditors can still rely on management's estimates, they just need to verify/be comfortable with the valuation model.

Each asset (a player's contract) is unique and therefore buying or selling prices are determined by what a buyer is willing to pay first and foremost, and is easily justifiable. Footballers are intangible assets and their value is determined by their age, contract length, buyout clause, desperation of the buying club etc, not to mention popularity of the player like social media following etc.

Juve can easily justify a fading 30 year Pjanic valuation of £60m by pointing at 29 year old Koulibalys valuation of £75m, or Kepas price of £72m. That's an easy one to justify sef. £60m may have even been the value of his buyout clause.

I cannot see any reason why any top-flight footballer will be sold for under £100m and anyone can advise them to restate the value. Auditors are accountants not football scouts and will lose credibility themselves trying to advise on what is not their area of expertise.

macjireh:
oboi if EPL take its toe on city by striping dem of top4 and making them to end in 5th position,, dats d end of their UCL dream next season... EPL can deduct 20points just to accommodate nanU should in case they don't qualify

EPL can't strip them of anything. UEFA and co have got into the problem of trying to play auditors where they have no jurisdiction. Accountants will always meet any FFP target you set, and Football bodies have no jurisdiction to claim those accounts are falsified when they are not the legal auditor of those accounts, nor are they Government who collect tax based on the output of those accounts. They are just paper tiger making noise. You can't change something Auditors and Govt have already accepted. Or do you expect Man City to go back to UK Government and say we lied in our accounts, which carries criminal consequences?

Accountants are always finding ways to inflate short term profit to meet FFP Target, and there's nothing UEFA can do about it.

Take Melo and Pjanic. Barca and Juventus agree the difference between those players is £12m. Melos price should more like £40m and Pjanic more like £28m but they were sold for £72m and £60m respectively.

In accounting, when you sell an asset for more than it's carrying value, you declare profit on disposal.

Ignoring salaries, the carrying value of Melos asset was about £20m based on his initial £30m transfer fee from Gremio and the fact he's run down 2 years of his 6 year contract. If Barca need to meet FFP target, they will just sell Melo for £72m, booking a £52m profit toward meeting FFP, meanwhile their expenditure for this year for Pjanic ignoring salary is only £12m assuming he signed 5 year contract (£60m divided by 5 years).

In simply swapping out Melo for Pjanic, Barca have recorded a net increase in profit of £40m just on that arrangement (£52m profit on disposal for Melo less £12m amortised yearly cost of Pjanics transfer fee) and UEFA can go to hell with their FFP cos the target has been met, and it's legal and follows all accounting standards.

Same thing City did with Danilo and Joao Cancelo in order to meet FFP. How can Cancelo be worth £67m and Danilo be worth £40m. Na just clever accounting to meet FFP.

popizaino:
Hope you will not change mouth when pep guardiola get back to winning ways ?

Why won't he get back to winning ways with licence to spend a billion dollars

donjazet:
I will be pedagogic with you on this. Read the below and be duly informed on jorginho's exact role. You are being biased when you say jorginho makes only back passes, clearly you were blind not to see the precise long passes he made when switching the game to both sides.

Being a Regista doesn't mean you should be useless at all other aspects of DM play. Thank God they mentioned Veratti, so we can know our own Regista is shortchanging us.

And if you mention Pirlo, Alonso etc, you will see that our own is Aba made version.

Other players who even have escort tendencies like Busquets and Rodri at least have strength and cannot be bullied off the ball, they can all travel with the ball on the half-turn for a few metres to push the team up and are also very useful aerially to stop teams going long to beat the midfield.

Our own regista cannot hustle like Veratti, cannot ping through passes like Pirlo and Alonso, cannot hold opponents off physically like Busquets and Rodri and cannot compete in the air like them either.

When our own regista is not escorting, players are running through his back and shading him off the ball to run directly at our defence. Oya, satisfy us with some long through passes like Pirlo, he no gree.

If we wanted a Regista with the pace and physical weakness of a 12 year old boy, we would have just kept Josh McEachran than waste our time.

People like to throw names of Pirlo and co around, but there have been many less successful registas in football. That's like associating every DM with Makelele or every right-back with Cafu. The name Regista does not automatically imply excellence. Many Spanish and Italian teams have been relegated with Registas playing in their middle. Borja Valero relegated West Brom playing there. Those are the registas we should be associating Jorginho with, not Pirlo.

See Man City's Village people.

So Ed Woodward and Marina done turn to Tekashi 69?

Say no to snitching.

Tammy problem is not weight or lankiness. Tammy weighs 87kg while Drogba weighed only 84kg. There are many lanky players who know how to use their body. Tammy does not know how to use his body, balance his weight on his back foot when ball is coming in, press his nyash into the opponent, lean down on opponents shoulder, put his arm out to control the opponents body movement and balance etc.

As an Ijaw man, his father should take him home this summer to learn egelege which will teach him how to control his opponents centres of gravity and keep them off balance. One summer of egelege will turn him into a Drogba.

donjazet:
of course, jorginho, your favorite scapegoat. Meanwhile I don't hear you complain about the impotent midfielders ahead of him who were constantly losing the ball and lacked good decision making but yes go on and pick out the few moments he lost the ball seeing as he is now your new scapegoat.

We won't blame the other players who don't know how to press the opponent very well or those who looked inept in front of goal but of course your scapegoat is there to take all the blame for the teams inadequacies. Mtchew.

Don't get too emotional about Jorginho my guy. He is on his way out. I'm sure you saw several other people criticising him during the game, so just free me.

If Jorginho start against Manure, the 4-0 will be repeated

Emaprince:
something drogba does effortlessly. This is one of the problems I have with him.

Even if he is short. As a striker, he should know how to hold back his marker with his back resting on the defender. But the tree in our attack is too light nd inexperienced

It's really disappointing to reach his age and not be able to do this. Nobody taught him at youth level cos Chelsea youth dominated with slick passing style and never hit high balls.

Well at least let's count the three points in the bank

Nobody taught Abraham how to pin his man back with body when high ball comes in. How can you be in pro football till this age and not know it's not everytime you jump for high ball. Most times you just pin the man

We can't even watch Norwich with relaxed mind again

2 strikers coming on for Norwich. That means Zouma and Rudiger will be facing 1 on 1. Usually a DM will become the spare man in that situation unless you have a DM that can't keep up.

3 times already this half, Jorginhos physical inadequacy he led to promising situations for Norwich

G Rude!

Why Zouma no fit ever head ball straight?

All that height and never able to score from corners

Giroud right foot na waste of time

We are not entering their box jor.

Jorg out, Kova to DM and Mount or Barkley to get into the box

How are Wigan (who are in administration) leading Hull 7-0 at half-time?

It's like all their players are looking for buyers to come and rescue them from not having salaries paid.

Money answereth all things.

Glad to see Tomori on bench. His pace will be needed against Manure

Skimpledawg:
Line up;


I don't subscribe to Ruben starting ahead of Mount tho.

Ruben has more goals in him, provided he has regained some sharpness. With Jorginho in midfield, Kova is is his best partner as they understand each other more. That leaves you needing goals or assists from the third midfielder which is what gives Ruben the edge over Mount

donjazet:
Again, you surprise me with your unintellectual perspective on jorginho, Barcelona and mancity are two teams that use registas in Sergio busquet and rodri. These two players are neither known for goals and assists, they are simply there to recycle possession.

I'm not here for intellect. I'm here for solid midfield.

Rodri is a low-key escort and a downgrade on Fernandinho which is one of the reasons Pep recorded his highest no of losses in a season this year. Fernandinho was a blessing in disguise for Pep to do well in EPL, even though he is not obvious Pep signing.

Busquets is another escort woefully exposed since Xavi stopped keeping possession totally for Barca. A DM that can throw away 3 goal leads against Roma and Liverpool, is that one a DM?

DM position is not about intellectual masturbation. There are DMs that can pass decently and still track runners. Jorginho should go and join his boss Sarri who is willing to build a whole team around him. We can't afford to build on sandy ground.