KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum There will be no bidding war

Just my opinion, but if there were to be a deal - and I'm skeptical there'll be any deal at all - then it would have to include players. We'd be desperately short up front, especially in Europa where Suarez is cup-tied. What if we had an injury there?

So I think if Chelsea wanted a deal, they'd have to include a striker in the deal. And I don't think Sturridge would cut it. I suspect that reasoning is where all this Anelka speculation has come from.

But I'm pretty sure it's all speculation. I still think the club is better off refusing any kind of deal at all, as is our right.

I've been thinking a bit more about the implications of the UEFA financial fair play rules.

Basically, Chelsea are desperate. We would be fools to sell Torres to them, even if he wants to go. And Torres would be a fool to go.

Here's what the financial fair play rules mean as I understand them. Very broadly speaking, a club has to break even from 2011/2012 onwards, because if it doesn't, it will be excluded from European competition in 2013/2014.

Obviously that screws any club that runs at a loss especially those that have a sugar daddy pouring money in. From the end of this season, they can't do that if they want European football.

What they can do is buy now. Unless there's some extra rule preventing it, I reckon they could even buy now just to sell in summer and effectively trade the player for someone else. The rich men have a huge incentive to pour money into their club playthings this season. You may have noticed them doing just that (or trying to do that at any rate). They also have an incentive to reduce their wage bills. You may have noticed them trying to do that as well.

Chelsea fit into that box of course. From the end of this season they have problems. I believe they are not currently profitable. And they have an aging squad that looks like it's going to need investment. They are, to put it finely, screwed. It is the worst possible time to be joining them (unless you were just looking to join them for the rest of the season and then move on to more profitable pastures?)

But what does it mean to us? Thanks to our owners, good times! We should be profitable, now we're not servicing mountains of debt. (Arsenal are in a great position, I think Spurs might be as well, and Man Utd might be if they weren't under a mountain of debt - other than that, the Premier League picture does not look all that rosy)

But this means there is no way we'd sell Torres now. Think about it. Say we sell him and we get some huge amount of money - £50 million say - unless we spend it now, we can't spend it. If we spend it in the summer, it'll show up as a loss on our balance books for the 2011/12 financial season. The fact that we'd have made a profit the previous season wouldn't figure in the accounting. If we make a loss over 2011/12 and 2012/13, we'd potentially be excluded from Europe in 2013/14, it wouldn't matter that we made a profit in 2010/11, that's not considered. It wouldn't matter that we had £50 million in the bank from the earlier sale of Torres to spend. We still couldn't spend more than our profit, we'd have to break even.

And that's aside from any potential impact on revenue from the loss of Torres.

Whereas if we sell him in summer - even if it's for less - that's income for that financial season. We could use that to buy other players.

The bottom line is, revenue is vital. That means European competition is vital. That means spending now is wise, whereas selling now and spending later is most certainly not.

All of which, to me, adds up to: LFC are surely not stupid enough to sell Torres now, whether he likes it or not.

Hmm.. That's pretty interesting alright!

Looking forward to reading some articles that'll pop up around the net discussing the implications the financial fair play rules will have on some clubs/leagues

Just a small note: Bying a player doesn't turn up in the balance book as a loss. You must have been confused by the book keeping rules here!

This is how it works: Buy a player (for 100) and the spending turns up on the debit side in the balance book - the player is an asset. When You sell him (for 120) the balance book is cleared (credit 100) and the difference (20 = profit) turns up in the result book. If he had been sold for 80, then the loss had been 20 in the result books.

You're quite right, technically. But I don't think I was so much confused as confusing.

In the context of the financial fair play rules, the fact that the player is an asset is irrelevant (unless that player is sold again during the relevant accounting period). Financial fair play is about expenditure against income. If we buy a player for 50m in summer, that takes the balance of our expenditure/income down by 50m.

So I should really be talking about expenditure rather than loss as such to be clear.

That's correct!