Why Utd head honcho Woodward is wrong over Man City-bashing FFP

Manchester United head honcho Ed Woodward was glowing in his praise of financial fair play last week.

The Reds chief executive avoided any direct comment on Manchester City's two-year European ban, a punishment which was announced days before his pronouncement, and is now subject to an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

But he thought FFP was spot-on, saying: “I see a strong commitment from UEFA to ensure that Financial Fair Play continues to deliver the benefits that it clearly has in the industry.

“And if you look at the last five years, the overall operating profits across the top leagues in the 55 countries in Europe, they have gone from pretty large losses all the way up to to breaking even and small operating profits.

“I think it's been beneficial overall and it's up to the regulators to manage that.”

It was interesting that his comments came as United announced that their net debt had climbed by £73.6million in the second half of last year, with their gross debt sitting at a whopping £492million.

He was correct that FFP has had a beneficial impact across Europe in many ways, with net profits going from £1.54bn deficit to a £120million profit, as it stopped clubs from spending beyond their means.

But it failed to mention that net debt is up from £6bn to £7.2bn across the continent.

Debt has been utterly forgotten in all this, dismissed with a wave of the hand as something which everyone has – from your mortgage to national governments, all of which sit on a mountain of IOUs.

Michel Platini, the Uefa president who pushed FFP through, wanted debt targeted, because not only does it put clubs at risk of plunging into crisis, it also leaches money out of the game.

Liverpool tottered on the verge of bankruptcy in 2010 due to the leveraged debt which American owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett had piled against the club in their 2007 takeover.

For an ideal that was intended to protect clubs from their own over-reaching ambitions, or rather those of greedy owners, the omission of debt from the FFP rules is staggering.

Supporters of FFP have neatly evolved their arguments, so that the idea of clubs being protected from themselves has now become clubs being protected from others, significantly from big-spending owners, usually those with an oil or gas background.

United would have likely failed an FFP that included debt, as likely would Barcelona, Real Madrid, Juventus and a few other European big hitters. That alone perhaps explains why debt was quietly dropped from the embryonic rules.

Debt went from being Platini's bogeyman to being a part of everyday life, something we all comfortably live with. But that other staple of business life, capital investment, was identified a the actual enemy.

Is there another industry on the planet that approves of debt but clamps down on strong owner investment?

Suddenly, the threat is not clubs over-stretching in their pursuit of success and the riches it brings.

No, the real is portrayed as the limitless pockets of owners like City's Sheikh Mansour, or Paris St Germain's Nasser El Khalaifi.

They have been forcing everyone else to spend money they did not have, goes the spurious argument - it simply is not fair, they say.

That conveniently ignores the fact that big spending was not invented by City or PSG – United, Real Madrid and Barcelona have been at the forefront of that vice for years.

A £50million signing whose fee was raised by flogging United duvet covers in Thailand is no more or less inflationary than one whose cost is funded by a beneficial owner.

United have broken the British transfer record more times than any other club. City have never broken that particular record.

Liverpool have the second highest transfer spend in a calendar year, behind Barcelona. City trail in third.

City also have no signings in the top 23 of the most expensive transfer fees, while United have four, Liverpool one, Barcelona four and Real Madrid five.

Indeed, it seems the clubs which actually ARE inflating transfer fees, and driving would-be competitors to match their efforts, are those who have always done so – Europe's traditional elite.

Therein surely lies the true purpose of FFP, whichever way Woodward and the rest of the traditional powerbase cut it up.