Kieran Maguire: Liverpool FFP figures could be ‘manipulated’ amid ‘unjustifiable’ source reveal
Uefa’s new Financial Fair Play rules are open to “manipulation” by Liverpool and every other side that uses a traditional accounting window.
That is the view of finance guru Kieran Maguire, speaking exclusively to Football Insider about the latest from behind the scenes at Uefa.
An analyst told this site on Thursday (20 October) that there is “real concern” that the new financial curbs – which limit clubs to spending 70 per cent of annual income on wages, transfers and agent fees – are open to obfuscation.
Anxieties are centred around the new assessment window, which works on a calendar year basis.
The previous set of FFP rules assessed clubs’ spending on a season-by-season basis, mirroring the way nearly all clubs record their accounts.
Maguire explained why this new system is “difficult to justify”.
“The decision to use a calendar year for financial and sustainability rules does seem very strange on the face of it,” he told Football Insider’s Adam Williams.
“It is inconsistent with the concept of clubs buying and selling for an individual season. Therefore, difficult to justify.
“The benefit from Uefa’s point of view is that it does allow obfuscation, and therefore it’s more difficult for independent reviewers to reach any logical analysis.
“It’s not going to be possible to make a broad assessment of where clubs are going to stand on an FFP perspective.
“This allows the suits to manipulate the figures as they suit themselves.“
In other news, Liverpool set sights on Borussia Dortmund sensation Youssoufa Moukoko as Jurgen Klopp “blown away”.