Sevco face the most horrendous consequences if they reach next season’s Europa League qualifiers- being forced to operate within their means like every other club in European competition!
Dave King demanded a ‘strong second’ when the #goingfor55 campaign was launched in the summer with Graeme Murty’s side battling to hang on to third place.
Should Sevco stay in third place, or if they fall to fourth and Celtic or Aberdeen win the Scottish Cup allowing the fourth team in the SPFL to go into the Europa League, the club from Ibrox face being placed in a UEFA straight jacket.
The SFA could spare them that pain by applying UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules which only allow a licence to clubs that have losses of €5m over a three year period but that seems unlikely.
UEFA look at a club’s finances over a three year period which would cover the journey from two seasons in the Championship plus this season’s Premier League campaign.
Those Championship seasons ran up losses of £11.9m with another loss of at least £6m expected taking the club well over the £4.5m losses allowed by UEFA.
Sevco’s basket case finances are similar to Hull City who qualified for the 2015/16 Europa League qualifiers after finishing runners up in the FA Cup.
At the start of the season Hull had no plans to play in UEFA competition, two qualifying rounds was a jolly for the fans but the prize money wasn’t pivotal to the survival of the company.
After Hull missed FFP by a mile UEFA announced, after competing in the 2015/16 qualifiers: “The CFCB (Club Financial Control Body) Investigatory Chamber has announced that four clubs – Hapoel Tel-Aviv, Hull City, Panathinaikos and Ruch Chorzow – have individually agreed to settlement agreements following non-compliance with financial fair play (FFP) break-even regulations.
“Each of the settlement agreements includes break-even targets, whereby each club will need to prove by no later than 31 December 2015 to have reached full compliance with the UEFA Club Licensing and FFP Regulations, and financial contributions, whereby each of the clubs agrees to pay an unconditional amount of 200,000 Euro.”
While they chase an unlikely jackpot of £5m from UEFA for reaching the group stage of the Europa League Sevco would then be forced to provide a break even plan by 31 December 2017.
If they fail to comply they would then be faced with a restriction on the number of players they can register, have their prize money withheld or be expelled from future competitions.
Turkish side Galatasaray were banned from this season’s Europa League for failing to comply with FFP.
While Mr King chases a Europa League place the cost could be horrendous with UEFA suddenly showing interest in the company finances, something that the South African based criminal should have considered before applying his over investment plan..
