Quote Originally Posted by calumhibee1 View Post
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Someone posted a good video recently about the creative accounting that you mention but I can’t for the life of me find it.

I couldn’t get my head round it, but it was basically showing ways that clubs avoid falling foul of FFP and essentially finding ways of showing what would look to be a huge loss to the regular person to look like a huge gain in the accounts. Think Man Utd and Di Maria was the prime example used. I’ll make up the numbers for an example:

Something along the lines of the original deal including £50m fee + £50m contract would cost £100m over 5 years but because they sold him after 1 year for £30m this meant they saved £40m on wages. The ‘profit’ would show as £10m (£60m spent in total on fee and wages, £30m fee received and £40m wages saved = £70m ‘gained’) rather than a £30m loss.

I don’t really get how you’re allowed to do it but apparently they do.

Edit: and after all that, I have found the video!

https://youtu.be/wHgRiDvPzNY

Thanks for posting.

I do get that transfer fees can amortised across the length of a contract, and that is quite legitimate. For example, Grealish wouldn’t be shown as a £100m hit to Citeh in summer 2021, but £20m a year for the next five years.

But the rest of it is taking the p*** quite frankly. Mind you, it’s just what a lot of companies in any sector would do.