OUT OF THE FIGHT, WENGER SEES FFP FOR RACKET IT REALLY IS
ACCORDING to Tony Pulis, there was a time when Arsene Wenger wanted long throws banned. It was in those years when Arsenal couldn’t win at Stoke, during Rory Delap’s time at the club, with his famously enormous, flat delivery. It should be no surprise, then, to discover that freed from the need to beat Chelsea and Manchester City, the man who coined the phrase ‘financial doping’ sees FFP for the protectionist garbage it is. ‘I am in favour of opening things up to more investment, which FFP does not allow for,’ he told L’Equipe. ‘The clubs that dominate Europe today are those that were built and made investments during an era when FFP did not exist. FFP prevents emerging clubs who want to invest from doing so. That is not normal. These rules have fixed a hierarchy, the big historical clubs are bigger and bigger and, obviously, they are all fighting for FFP to be scrupulously applied to others so that competitors can’t come through. Controlling club management rigorously, yes, verifying where funds are coming from, yes, but we need to encourage people to invest in football.’ ‘WTF?’ as they might be saying at Manchester City right now. For while it is nice for Le Professeur to join the ranks of the enlightened, regular readers may spot that some of us have been saying precisely this for two decades now. So what has changed? Only that now he’s impartial, he can see FFP’s obvious flaws. Back then, he was a football boss with a grudge, and all the logical sophistication needed to deliver a Delap thrown-in.