Parachute Payments

[SH]

Another great article from @Swiss Ramble, detailing parachute payments across recent and future seasons:

* Stoke, Swansea and WBA get £91m over three seasons 2018/19-2020/21 if not promoted back.
* QPR have already had (and wasted) £74m of their £90m from 2015's relegation.
* Premier League drop-outs have collected a combined £1bn over the last five seasons. Nice return for failure!

 

[wanderer paul]

Always a good read, Swiss Ramble, but those figures are just incredible and it seems wrong to compensate those Clubs for failure. It allows them to 'have a go' at getting back to the EPL quick. For some though, it has been a nightmare. Which has been fun to see.

 

[hatfieldbee]

Always a good read, Swiss Ramble, but those figures are just incredible and it seems wrong to compensate those Clubs for failure. It allows them to 'have a go' at getting back to the EPL quick. For some though, it has been a nightmare. Which has been fun to see.

Is "noghtmare" a freudian slip?!

 

[Ealing Bee]

... those figures are just incredible and it seems wrong to compensate those Clubs for failure. It allows them to 'have a go' at getting back to the EPL quick

"Compensation for failure" is one way of looking at it, and a valid one at that (imo).

But there is an alternative way of looking at parachute payments which is equally valid (also my opinion).

The whole point about having a pyramid with promotion and relegation is that there be a reasonable levelling of standards between the two divisions (or the bottom of the Prem and the top of the Championship, at any rate).

So that the teams going up be not doomed to go straight back down again. But we all know that a team good enough to go up isn't necessarily good enough to compete in the Prem. To do so at that level, they need Prem-standard players. Who will demand Prem-standard wages, and on a 2/3/4 year contract at that.

Therefore promoted clubs must know that if they do sign such players on long contracts, they won't subsequently go bust if they go straight back down again, hence the parachute.

Otherwise the alternative is a succession of clubs entering the Prem with the players who got them promoted (only), getting humped every week and going straight back down again having added nothing to the competition.

Of course it is all a balance, esp with the way it affects the Championship. But from what I can see, recently promoted clubs are doing OK in the Prem, while the level of competition in the Championship is as fierce as ever.

 

[abeeforever]

Always a good read, Swiss Ramble, but those figures are just incredible and it seems wrong to compensate those Clubs for failure. It allows them to 'have a go' at getting back to the EPL quick. For some though, it has been a nightmare. Which has been fun to see.

That's the bit about it all I enjoy the most, but I still can't get my head round getting £millions for failing, if I was a failure when I was in the work place, I got the sack with no money attached, and that applied to most of us, strange old world !!!!!!

 

[rhbee]

That's the bit about it all I enjoy the most, but I still can't get my head round getting £millions for failing, if I was a failure when I was in the work place, I got the sack with no money attached, and that applied to most of us, strange old world !!!!!!

Football's weird. In what other business can you be several hundred million pounds in debt and not be liquidated?

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

Football's weird. In what other business can you be several hundred million pounds in debt and not be liquidated?

The answer to that is fkin loads of them to tell you the truth

 

[Full Metal Jacket]

"Compensation for failure" is one way of looking at it, and a valid one at that (imo).

But there is an alternative way of looking at parachute payments which is equally valid (also my opinion).

The whole point about having a pyramid with promotion and relegation is that there be a reasonable levelling of standards between the two divisions (or the bottom of the Prem and the top of the Championship, at any rate).

So that the teams going up be not doomed to go straight back down again. But we all know that a team good enough to go up isn't necessarily good enough to compete in the Prem. To do so at that level, they need Prem-standard players. Who will demand Prem-standard wages, and on a 2/3/4 year contract at that.

Therefore promoted clubs must know that if they do sign such players on long contracts, they won't subsequently go bust if they go straight back down again, hence the parachute.

Otherwise the alternative is a succession of clubs entering the Prem with the players who got them promoted (only), getting humped every week and going straight back down again having added nothing to the competition.

Of course it is all a balance, esp with the way it affects the Championship. But from what I can see, recently promoted clubs are doing OK in the Prem, while the level of competition in the Championship is as fierce as ever.

I understand the argument but I think it contains a flaw.

If parachute payments are too generous then it encourages those 10-12 PL clubs most at risk of relegation to pay unduly high wages. (By reducing the potential financial impact of relegation in any of the three or four years of the expensive contracts they are handing out). It therefore inflates all PL wages and thus defeats its own purpose of helping promoted clubs to be competitive.

I realise that it is a difficult balance to draw - too high and you inflate all wages as I've described and too low and you condemn newly promoted clubs to a quick demise - but at the moment I think it might be a bit on the high side. You could still give promoted clubs a sporting chance at a lower level of parachute payment, which in turn would be less of a distortion to the Championship.

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

I understand the argument but I think it contains a flaw.

If parachute payments are too generous then it encourages those 10-12 PL clubs most at risk of relegation to pay unduly high wages. (By reducing the potential financial impact of relegation in any of the three or four years of the expensive contracts they are handing out). It therefore inflates all PL wages and thus defeats its own purpose of helping promoted clubs to be competitive.

I realise that it is a difficult balance to draw - too high and you inflate all wages as I've described and too low and you condemn newly promoted clubs to a quick demise - but at the moment I think it might be a bit on the high side. You could still give promoted clubs a sporting chance at a lower level of parachute payment, which in turn would be less of a distortion to the Championship.

Scrap parachute payments entirely and make it a league condition that all player/managerial contracts have a mandatory 70% wage reduction clause in the event a club is relegated from the Premier League.
If that means players then look to leave then fine and they can choose who to offer new deals to on terms they can afford.
It would mean the ball is in their court and really shouldn't go bust barring paying insane OTT wages even for the prem in comparison to their size.

 

[kaebess]

Due to the rule changes 5 clubs on their last year of money. 3 with a possible chance to go back up. With 2 possibly going the other way.

On top of that you have the 3 in their first year of " assistance "

All again and again and again, re- confirms how well our little club is run

 

[ladbroke]

Considering a lot of these teams now sell their top stars for large sums I am more than certain that this covers any wage that they now suffer from, from the relegation and loss of the bigger riches.
Is Shaqiri still at Stoke? No, they got large sum for him and he is also of their wage bill.
How about teams put in relegation wage drop clauses in. The players need to fight more to keep their high salary. If they gets relegated, their salary drops and thus the team technically has no reason to sell. This is turn encourages player to play better.

 

[Full Metal Jacket]

Scrap parachute payments entirely and make it a league condition that all player/managerial contracts have a mandatory 70% wage reduction clause in the event a club is relegated from the Premier League.
If that means players then look to leave then fine and they can choose who to offer new deals to on terms they can afford.
It would mean the ball is in their court and really shouldn't go bust barring paying insane OTT wages even for the prem in comparison to their size.

Interesting idea but wouldn't you have to apply it to all PL clubs, not just the promoted ones? (Otherwise the promoted clubs would find it extremely hard to recruit good players). And wouldn't you also have to retrospectively apply it to existing contracts among the existing PL clubs?

I'm not sure of the practicality or legality of that. Golden age for lawyers?

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

Considering a lot of these teams now sell their top stars for large sums I am more than certain that this covers any wage that they now suffer from, from the relegation and loss of the bigger riches.
Is Shaqiri still at Stoke? No, they got large sum for him and he is also of their wage bill.
How about teams put in relegation wage drop clauses in. The players need to fight more to keep their high salary. If they gets relegated, their salary drops and thus the team technically has no reason to sell. This is turn encourages player to play better.

I did just say that.....:tongue:

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

Interesting idea but wouldn't you have to apply it to all PL clubs, not just the promoted ones? (Otherwise the promoted clubs would find it extremely hard to recruit good players). And wouldn't you also have to retrospectively apply it to existing contracts among the existing PL clubs?

I'm not sure of the practicality or legality of that. Golden age for lawyers?

I did mean apply it to all clubs yes. I don't think you could necessarily restrospectively apply it. That'd be a no-go imo. However just bringing it in from all contracts from now on would probably be good enough and you'd have a short window where some relegated clubs would be more at risk. However if you brought it in now by the time you'd phased out parachute payments all the clauses would probably be in almost everyone's contracts by then.

 

[ladbroke]

I did just say that.....:tongue:

took me an hour as at work to actually post that lol

 

[Ealing Bee]

I understand the argument but I think it contains a flaw.

If parachute payments are too generous then it encourages those 10-12 PL clubs most at risk of relegation to pay unduly high wages. (By reducing the potential financial impact of relegation in any of the three or four years of the expensive contracts they are handing out). It therefore inflates all PL wages and thus defeats its own purpose of helping promoted clubs to be competitive.

I realise that it is a difficult balance to draw - too high and you inflate all wages as I've described and too low and you condemn newly promoted clubs to a quick demise - but at the moment I think it might be a bit on the high side. You could still give promoted clubs a sporting chance at a lower level of parachute payment, which in turn would be less of a distortion to the Championship.

You have a point, but in the end, the 10-12 vulnerable clubs spend excessive amounts of money out of desperation (i.e. to stay on the gravy train).

If there were no parachute payments, they'd arguably be even more desperate, and so be tempted to spend even more money.

As it is, going down need not be such a disaster.

Unless you're QPR...

Another way of looking at this is that over the last 5 years alone, the EPL has paid a billion quid of money which they have generated, to another league entirely (indeed one which competes with it to an extent).

Of course, nothing they do is for charitable reasons - quite the contrary. But if there is a problem in that the money only goes to some of the clubs in the Championship (i.e. those who managed promotion), the alternative eg of spreading the parachute between all the Championship clubs would be "rewarding failure" even more, since you're giving money to clubs which can't even get promoted to the EPL never mind stay in it.

I think one adjustment which might help would be to relax the FFP Rules for those Championship clubs which are not receiving parachute money. So that if an owner has his own money, and wants to put it into his own club to "level the playing field", then why not let him (so long as they can afford it without going into debt or risking the club)?

Unless there is some flaw that I'm missing, this suggestion would allow eg Mr. Benham to spend his £100m trying to achieve promotion, then build a new stadium from the proceeds if/when it happens, rather than the other way round.

 

[Ealing Bee]

Scrap parachute payments entirely and make it a league condition that all player/managerial contracts have a mandatory 70% wage reduction clause in the event a club is relegated from the Premier League.
If that means players then look to leave then fine and they can choose who to offer new deals to on terms they can afford.
It would mean the ball is in their court and really shouldn't go bust barring paying insane OTT wages even for the prem in comparison to their size.

Absolutely not!

Let us assume it is legal (doubt whether it is, personally). Applied to all clubs, then you'd find they'd all offer one year contracts only. Which would mean that English clubs would have to pay a huge salary premium over other Leagues (in order to be competitive in signing players), which would only inflate wages more.

Worse, with one year contracts, relegated clubs would lose all their best players without the compensation of a transfer fee, and even surviving clubs would lose their best players to higher paying big clubs,with the net result of players moving all the time. Meanwhile, the Big Six would be less affected than the rest, since they're already offering top wages, and anyone who signs for them knows they're not going to get relegated, so players know they just need to stay in the squad to get their contract rolled over each year.

Meanwhile, it would make it very hard for promoted clubs to sign players. Let's say you have a 22 y.o. star player at a top Dutch or Portugese club. He's on £20k a week at home. He wants to go to England (for money and career) and a recently promoted club can afford his transfer fee (say £20m). The English club can offer him eg £40k per week. If he knows there's a risk that in year two or three, he could be down to £12k per week , then he'll gravitate towards the 7 or 8 clubs who are safe enough from going down - even if it means he might only be a squad player, rather than a regular.

Failing that, it would be worth his while going to Italy, Germany or Spain instead, and taking eg £30k per week for 3 years guaranteed.

And failing that, he could up his salary at home to, say, £25k per week for another year or two, with the added bonus that he gets to stay in Eindhoven or Oporto, rather than trudging to Wolverhampton or Middlesbrough!

All of which would make it even harder than it already is for promoted clubs to attract the players they need to stay competitive. Which in turn would lead to more yo-yo clubs, with the established Prem clubs left safer than ever.

In other words, an ever less competitive league, which is what we're trying to avoid in the first place.

 

[SH]

Extraordinary that Aston Villa, Birmingham, Blackburn, Blackpool, Bolton, Hull, Middlesbrough, Norwich, Reading, Sunderland, Wigan and, particularly, the mob from the Bush, have all received parachute money in the last four seasons alone... (and I wouldn't swap our team or squad with any of them )

 

[Full Metal Jacket]

You have a point, but in the end, the 10-12 vulnerable clubs spend excessive amounts of money out of desperation (i.e. to stay on the gravy train).

If there were no parachute payments, they'd arguably be even more desperate, and so be tempted to spend even more money.

As it is, going down need not be such a disaster.

Unless you're QPR...

Another way of looking at this is that over the last 5 years alone, the EPL has paid a billion quid of money which they have generated, to another league entirely (indeed one which competes with it to an extent).

Of course, nothing they do is for charitable reasons - quite the contrary. But if there is a problem in that the money only goes to some of the clubs in the Championship (i.e. those who managed promotion), the alternative eg of spreading the parachute between all the Championship clubs would be "rewarding failure" even more, since you're giving money to clubs which can't even get promoted to the EPL never mind stay in it.

I think one adjustment which might help would be to relax the FFP Rules for those Championship clubs which are not receiving parachute money. So that if an owner has his own money, and wants to put it into his own club to "level the playing field", then why not let him (so long as they can afford it without going into debt or risking the club)?

Unless there is some flaw that I'm missing, this suggestion would allow eg Mr. Benham to spend his £100m trying to achieve promotion, then build a new stadium from the proceeds if/when it happens, rather than the other way round.

Yes, I'm not arguing for no parachute payments - only that they be set at an appropriate level. I think at the moment the balance has tilted towards being too generous.

On FFP, the original intention was to protect smaller clubs being swamped by the spending power of bigger clubs with rich backers. But TV money has changed the equation and the bigger clubs are now more powerful than ever. The FFP model has essentially backfired and serves only to hinder smaller clubs from competing on those occasions when they are fortunate enough to have a rich backer. So your idea might work and certainly is worth consideration.

 

[ladbroke]

Yes, I'm not arguing for no parachute payments - only that they be set at an appropriate level. I think at the moment the balance has tilted towards being too generous.

On FFP, the original intention was to protect smaller clubs being swamped by the spending power of bigger clubs with rich backers. But TV money has changed the equation and the bigger clubs are now more powerful than ever. The FFP model has essentially backfired and serves only to hinder smaller clubs from competing on those occasions when they are fortunate enough to have a rich backer. So your idea might work and certainly is worth consideration.

This is my thinking of the unfairness of the ffp.

Without ffp, we could, if MB wanted, spend more on wages to keep the likes of Gray, Woods, or even achieved signing Pritchard. But because of this, the players left for those that effectively came down from premier league, or still have payments from relegation, for muvh more money. They can afford it because of this parachute payments.
They get something like £40m a year. This means they're able to still pay 10 players earning circa £80,000 a week. Are they realistically going to have 10 players on that figure? Doubtful. If they did, are they likely to sell them for more than say £10m average? Likely.
So now, we have a team that could sell 3-4 players earning that ludicrous sum being sold for say £25-30m. This means they not only save say £12-16m in wages, but also now have an additional £25m.
They can then afford £10m plus for a striker (Hogan) on big wages taking from a club like Brentford who have them on smaller wages and can not even give them a rise because of ffp.
So in theory, it allows the big teams to cherry pick the best players from the middle/weak teams and the rest play catch up every season.

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

Absolutely not!

Let us assume it is legal (doubt whether it is, personally). Applied to all clubs, then you'd find they'd all offer one year contracts only. Which would mean that English clubs would have to pay a huge salary premium over other Leagues (in order to be competitive in signing players), which would only inflate wages more.

Worse, with one year contracts, relegated clubs would lose all their best players without the compensation of a transfer fee, and even surviving clubs would lose their best players to higher paying big clubs,with the net result of players moving all the time. Meanwhile, the Big Six would be less affected than the rest, since they're already offering top wages, and anyone who signs for them knows they're not going to get relegated, so players know they just need to stay in the squad to get their contract rolled over each year.

Meanwhile, it would make it very hard for promoted clubs to sign players. Let's say you have a 22 y.o. star player at a top Dutch or Portugese club. He's on £20k a week at home. He wants to go to England (for money and career) and a recently promoted club can afford his transfer fee (say £20m). The English club can offer him eg £40k per week. If he knows there's a risk that in year two or three, he could be down to £12k per week , then he'll gravitate towards the 7 or 8 clubs who are safe enough from going down - even if it means he might only be a squad player, rather than a regular.

Failing that, it would be worth his while going to Italy, Germany or Spain instead, and taking eg £30k per week for 3 years guaranteed.

And failing that, he could up his salary at home to, say, £25k per week for another year or two, with the added bonus that he gets to stay in Eindhoven or Oporto, rather than trudging to Wolverhampton or Middlesbrough!

All of which would make it even harder than it already is for promoted clubs to attract the players they need to stay competitive. Which in turn would lead to more yo-yo clubs, with the established Prem clubs left safer than ever.

In other words, an ever less competitive league, which is what we're trying to avoid in the first place.

Totally disagree on all of that.
I don't think they'd offer one year contracts and that would be the point of the mandatory relegation wage drop. You wouldn't need to offer one year contracts to play it safe. They therefore wouldn't have to pay a premium over other leagues and it wouldn't inflate wages more.
So losing all their players on a one year contract is not a worry because it simply wouldn't happen.
It's already hard for a lower club to entice a player and really what makes the difference for them is the chance of them actually getting in the team - if it's money related they lose anyway - so it would change nothing.
They would still be able to pay very good money compared to all the other European leagues and the relegation wage drop clause would simply mean the club is protected. If it was that much of a worry for a player then they could negotiate a relegation release clause in their contract for X million to allow them to escape if relegation happened. Clubs would still probably agree to it to sign the player.
Right now all that's happening is clubs are overspending to get to the Prem and living off their ill-gotten gains via parachute payments at the expense of more sensibly run clubs.
Getting rid of all this parachute money and having a beefed up and properly enforced FFP system would stop the ridiculous advantage given to those who overspend and hope to live off the proceeds for years after.
Parachute payments or not isn't really going to change anything with regards the Premiership elite anyway and it will still be most of the rest trying to come up or avoid going down.

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

This is my thinking of the unfairness of the ffp.

Without ffp, we could, if MB wanted, spend more on wages to keep the likes of Gray, Woods, or even achieved signing Pritchard. But because of this, the players left for those that effectively came down from premier league, or still have payments from relegation, for muvh more money. They can afford it because of this parachute payments.
They get something like £40m a year. This means they're able to still pay 10 players earning circa £80,000 a week. Are they realistically going to have 10 players on that figure? Doubtful. If they did, are they likely to sell them for more than say £10m average? Likely.
So now, we have a team that could sell 3-4 players earning that ludicrous sum being sold for say £25-30m. This means they not only save say £12-16m in wages, but also now have an additional £25m.
They can then afford £10m plus for a striker (Hogan) on big wages taking from a club like Brentford who have them on smaller wages and can not even give them a rise because of ffp.
So in theory, it allows the big teams to cherry pick the best players from the middle/weak teams and the rest play catch up every season.

Yeah it's a ridiculously stacked unfair playing field and it's just an excuse that they couldn't survive if they go down.
If they run the clubs properly they could survive and would simply have to plan better for it.
Now if this means structuring how they attract and pay players differently. So what?
The top 6 are rarely challenged anyway, bar freak occurences like Leicester managed, and they didn't buy their way to the league. They acquired relative unknowns well and profited later on. Scrapping parachute payments really would have been unlikely to make any difference to them.
The suggestion of more yo-yo'ing is meant to be a negative.....but that's misguided imo. Without the parachute payments, those coming down are going to be much more beatable for the rest, and you're probably going to see an increased variety of teams going up to the top, that's a good thing. Those going up with get the benefit of PL money while they're there and become stronger for it.
So more clubs would get stronger rather than less.

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

Furthermore.....instead of distributing this huge amount of money to the parachuting clubs........why not split it between ALL Championship clubs.......
Going on ballpark figures from a quickly Googled article it's about £40m each this year for the three relegated teams, and will drop to £25m then £20m each.
So that's over £250m effectively being dished out each each to relegated clubs or ones from previous relegation years.
That could easily be £10m more, each year, to every single Championship club.
Just think what that would do for the finances of most Championship clubs.
Even little old Brentford would be able to operate at a break-even level with our tiny attendances.
I'd say having the full raft of Championship level clubs having that kind of financial benefit would make this already strong league even fiercer.
That could only be good for all of the clubs, whether they choose to spend more (within FFP) to get promoted or not and would likely be good for English football as a whole.

 

[jlove]

This is my thinking of the unfairness of the ffp.

Without ffp, we could, if MB wanted, spend more on wages to keep the likes of Gray, Woods, or even achieved signing Pritchard. ...

But, on the other side of that coin, we have built a squad that is essentially a group of younger players, with a few outliers, who all have a similar mindset, character and objective; this collective vision across the squad, all striving to improve themselves and each other, is a unique feature and may be worth a % advantage. If the Club was able to pay the wages to keep some of these players on past their peak value, that may have a negative effect on squad cohesion and could negate our uniqueness. I say 'let them have their parachute payments', we do things differently here.

 

[PhilE]

Good subject - deserves its own thread though rather than polluting MBs one.

My take on Parachute Payments is that it is a totally blunt instrument lazily introduced to solve a problem which, while undoubtedly existing, did not attempt to understand the issue or consider knock on side-effects of the proposed solution.

Effectively the need was to provide a form of redundancy insurance to relegated clubs so that they could still attract players but they would be able to pay them should they be relegated. The solution, devised after I assume a great deal of thought, was give them a bag of money every season....wow I wonder how long that took. The side effect of this thrown together solution was to offer a competitive advantage to relegated clubs that as well as being able to continue to pay (and play) the highly skilled players are also able to use any spare cash to recruit (or steal) the best players from their competitors by offering them level of earnings that would not normally be possible,

If they had thought about the problem for more than 5 minutes then I would like to think they would have come up with something better.

If the need is to protect PL bought players salaries then why not have the PL underwrite a percentage of those wages in the event of relegation - carefully controlled and agreed at purchase time so the percentage is right. That way at least the 'parachute money' is ring-fenced for a particular purpose and cannot be used to pay wages of players bought after relegation. You cannot compel a team to sell a player so of course they will continue to gain advantage while they stay but this has to be managed by, for example. ensuring that the subsidised wage still offers an incentive to sell - possible offer incentives in the form of cash to sell, or disincentives to retain e.g. a claw back by the PL on any transfer gains.

Oh and the above is just initial thought which I appreciate have holes you could drive a bus through but I am sure that with some thought the PL in consultation with the EFL could come up with something that not only addresses the problem but also the 'backward compatibility'.

 

[Banana]

Good subject - deserves its own thread though rather than polluting MBs one.

I beat you too it

 

[AB]

I did mean apply it to all clubs yes. I don't think you could necessarily restrospectively apply it. That'd be a no-go imo. However just bringing it in from all contracts from now on would probably be good enough and you'd have a short window where some relegated clubs would be more at risk. However if you brought it in now by the time you'd phased out parachute payments all the clauses would probably be in almost everyone's contracts by then.

That would still be pretty harsh on newly promoted teams. A more practical way might be to phase out parachute payments while phasing in a mandatory relegation clause in player contracts (ie in year one reduce parachute payments by 10%, put in a 10% relegation clause, then increase the amounts year by year over 5 years to end up with no parachute payment and a suitably high relegation clause). However, while that might make transition between the PL and the League more competitive, it would also be likely to have the effect of further entrenching the position of the clubs in the top 6 of the PL as they would not only be able to offer the big wages they can today but also be in a position to make a strong claim to players that the risks of the relegation clause kicking in would be lower than if they went to other PL clubs.

Given how many smaller clubs have managed to get into and stay in the PL without parachute payments and how many clubs with parachute payments have found getting back up hard (and in some cases so hard that they, like Sunderland and Wolves, have dropped down to L1 or lower) I'm not sure that they're really a problem. I think it is arguable that our own business model wouldn't work nearly as well if there weren't a load of teams in the Championship with parachute payments ripe for spending on our players. If parachute payments went, we'd still be relatively poor but would have lost a major source of revenue.

 

[IDontBeeLieveIt]

That would still be pretty harsh on newly promoted teams. A more practical way might be to phase out parachute payments while phasing in a mandatory relegation clause in player contracts (ie in year one reduce parachute payments by 10%, put in a 10% relegation clause, then increase the amounts year by year over 5 years to end up with no parachute payment and a suitably high relegation clause).

Was just a broad brush suggestion in principle. You could of course tweak it as you say. Although I still think you really wouldn't need to be that conservative and by the time you started getting rid of it clubs would have known about it for a while. Therefore could make it an immediate drop, or much less phased, as it should have been planned for.

However, while that might make transition between the PL and the League more competitive, it would also be likely to have the effect of further entrenching the position of the clubs in the top 6 of the PL as they would not only be able to offer the big wages they can today but also be in a position to make a strong claim to players that the risks of the relegation clause kicking in would be lower than if they went to other PL clubs.

I think this aspect is a bit of a red herring personally, think they'd be little more entrenched than they already are, and aren't really competing for players with the clubs in major danger of relegation anyway. Certainly isn't something worth worrying about imo compared to the bigger negative aspects of the parachute payments imo (and the benefit that money could do if distributed to all clubs instead).

Given how many smaller clubs have managed to get into and stay in the PL without parachute payments and how many clubs with parachute payments have found getting back up hard (and in some cases so hard that they, like Sunderland and Wolves, have dropped down to L1 or lower) I'm not sure that they're really a problem. I think it is arguable that our own business model wouldn't work nearly as well if there weren't a load of teams in the Championship with parachute payments ripe for spending on our players. If parachute payments went, we'd still be relatively poor but would have lost a major source of revenue.

I can see this point but I still think they're an unfair advantage and essentially mean points lost whilst a strong team rebuilds and continues to get stronger with all that extra money and quite often one bounces back up. I personally don't think we'd suddenly struggle to sell players. In fact with every club getting £10m more per year instead of being wasted on parachute payments we could well actually get more bids for our players. Regardless - I wouldn't say Brentfords model should be the sole reason for changing the rules Personally I think they're an unhealthy distortion of the leagues and the sooner they're scrapped the better. Protection from financial difficulty when a club comes down could be done in countless better ways imo (some people have suggested others like subsidising a portion of wages temporarily for example).

 

[Chomp]

Parachute payments and the 'yo-yo' club phenomenon between the Premier League and Championship

Are parachute payments providing a springboard for clubs to get promoted back to the Premier League?

www.bbc.co.uk