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Birmingham City are far from the only club in the Championship chasing fools gold

A general view of Andrew's Trillion Trophy Stadium ahead of the match during the Sky Bet Championship match at St Andrew's Trillion Trophy Stadium, Birmingham. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 13, 2019. See PA story SOCCER Birmingham. Photo credit should read: Simon Cooper/PA Wire. RESTRICTIONS: EDITORIAL USE ONLY No use with unauthorised audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or "live" services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publications
Birmingham City have been deducted nine points for breaking EFL spending rules  Credit: PA

In the Football League’s fulsome and damning judgment of Birmingham City’s chronic overspend, there is a passage in which the club, in their desperation, try to assert the argument that although they broke financial fair play rules, they did it so badly that no advantage was gained.

This is what might reasonably be described as the idiot’s defence. Having accepted that their losses far exceeded the £39 million permitted over the three seasons in question, the owners of Birmingham tried to run one more play. This one was crazy but it might just work. Yes, they said, almost £10 million more than permitted had been spent but they invited the EFL to prove that the outgoings had yielded anything approaching a “measurable sporting advantage”.

In short, they and their lawyers tried to make a virtue of their own ineptitude. The helpless fools powerless to stop themselves spending way too much on players who were never going to get them promoted. At this point Charles Flint QC, chairman of the EFL commission, was obliged to point out that was simply not how FFP worked, and if it was there would be little point having the sanction – although all the grown-ups in the room would have known that anyway.

By their own admission, Trillion Trophy Asia are not good owners, and the nine-point deduction will be their badge of dishonour. What is it, one might ask, that would persuade the owners of a solid Championship club to go on a suicidal spending mission doomed to propel them into a relegation fight? The answer would be, because many in the Championship are doing the same and their reasons are entirely for the benefit of ownership.

The next group of clubs alleged to be close to FFP breaches includes some names bigger than Birmingham – the likes of Aston Villa, Derby County and Sheffield Wednesday. Each of them gambling on promotion to the Premier League with no scope for failure. Villa claim they will have no issue. This is a win-or-bust approach to football club ownership and, in the Championship, bust can cost you upwards of nine points and a relegation battle.

A fan runs onto the pitch while Kortney Hause of Aston Villa celebrates after scoring a goal to make it 3-1 during the Sky Bet Championship match between Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa at City Ground on March 13, 2019 in Nottingham, England
Aston Villa are alleged to be one of a clutch of Championship clubs close to a FFP breach  Credit: Getty Images

In their promotion season last year, Wolverhampton Wanderers lost more than £1 million per week over one year. The losses of Cardiff City, another promoted team, reached £34 million, the majority of that a £23 million bonus payment. There are no 2017-2018 figures yet for Fulham, the third promoted side, but the last available accounts for the previous financial year recorded losses of more than £21.5 million. Championship losses were as substantial for the teams promoted in the summer of 2017 with Newcastle United losing £47 million, Brighton and Hove Albion £39 million and Huddersfield Town £20 million.

Perhaps the likes of Wolves, Newcastle and even a club as well run as Brighton can argue that these are calculated losses, made with the confidence that they have the infrastructure to achieve promotion or rebalance the books over the FFP monitoring period. What will others say when the EFL comes knocking? Will they too run the idiot’s defence, or will they just hope that by then the rules have been changed to suit them.

“Protecting the long-term viability and sustainability of club football,” was Flint QC’s précis of the purpose of FFP. There is no doubt that some clubs now view those basic principles as an obstacle to the precarious financial positions they are adopting with a view to Premier League promotion. Which is why a proposal to amend FFP rules is understood to have met with a robust response from Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson at Tuesday’s meeting in Nottingham.

But in whose interests are these risks being taken? They are forever dressed up as reflecting the will of the fans or showing necessary ambition, but for many supporters the risks are too great. Birmingham, for instance, have spent 41 out of 72 seasons post-1946 outside the top flight. Since the Premier League began they have spent seven campaigns in it. Their owners may well have wished to be promoted, and no doubt their supporters would enjoy it, but the latter can tell the former that it is not germane to their club’s existence.

The point being that under the very rules conceived of to protect the long-term viability of these clubs, unnecessary and potentially damaging risks are being taken. No club have a right to belong in the Premier League permanently and none deserve to be destroyed in a kamikaze attempt to get there.

Many supporters are a lot more comfortable with life outside the Premier League than ownership would like to believe. But for the owners themselves, so often the gamble – the investment – is predicated on promotion, and the value that adds to their asset.

There are too few deterrents. Bournemouth were fined around £4.75 million for the losses they racked up working to promotion in the 2014-2015 Championship season. Leicester City made a £3.1 million settlement last year with the EFL over losses that led up to their promotion in 2014, and by the time the bill came they had already won the Premier League and had a season in the Champions League. Queens Park Rangers, another club who might well have considered the idiot’s defence, paid £40 million for their FFP breach, and few would say it was worth it.

If it were the case that clubs breaching FFP would have points deductions in the Premier League then the sanction would have much more bite than it currently does in punishing incompetent regimes like the one at Birmingham, or handing small fines to latterly-established top-flight sides. A points deduction for a newly promoted Premier League side would remove all the impetus and optimism of promotion, and have an effect on budgets and player signings.

It would be a much stronger signal to owners who gamble everything on promotion. Then again, one looks at the story of Birmingham, and the risks taken elsewhere, and wonders if there are not some who would be unhinged enough to do it anyway.

We're about to finally learn just how good Low is

The new four-year contract the German football association handed to Joachim Low on the eve of what turned out to be a disastrous World Cup finals for his defending champions was straight out of the Football Association playbook. Since then his team have been relegated in the Nations League, Mesut Ozil has withdrawn his services and Low has retired Mats Hummels, Thomas Muller and Jerome Boateng.

Which makes today’s Euro 2020 qualifier against Holland that much tastier.

The consensus is that the latest German generation are not what their predecessors were, which is the natural way of things in football. Every national manager dreams of his tenure coinciding with a brilliant group of young players but it rarely happens more than once. Low is in his 14th year in charge of Germany but we are only now seeing what kind of manager he is with more ordinary resources at his disposal.

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