Financial Fair Play catches up with South Yorkshire rivals

Good Morning. It's Friday 15th November, and here are the latest headlines from Elland Road...


Financial Fair Play catches up with South Yorkshire rivals

Sheffield Wednesday have been charged by the EFL for misconduct around the submission of their accounts for the 2017/18 season, for questions marks over the circumstances surrounding the sale of Hillsborough stadium for £60m.

Our fellow Yorkshire neighbours are likely to be in breach of Financial Fair Play regulations, which limit losses of Football League clubs to £39m over three years. To address that, Dejphon Chansiri sold Hillsborough Stadium to another company that he owned for £60m. That generated a huge profit, which could then be offset against the losses, meaning Wednesday were then compliant with FFP.

Where does this leave Derby, Reading and Villa? Reading sold the Madejski for £27 million, substantially less than Hillsborough. It is smaller, but it is more modern and it is in Berkshire, where land prices there are significantly higher. Villa sold Villa Park for £56m which is ridiculous when you consider West Ham sold Upton Park for 40 million. Then there is Derby! 80 million for Pride Park. Surely they should have been the first club to have been charged?

What should their punishment be? Can Tom Lees be to blame?





Tweak in Bielsa's tactics made the difference to Costa - Mills

Last Saturday we finally saw a far improved performance from Helder Costa and according to ex player, now soccer pundit Danny Mills, he credits Bielsa for tweaking his tactics!

It was a bit more of a 3-4-3 formation, tweaked a little bit. More or less with wing backs and of course that just allows Costa to play a little bit higher up the pitch and to use that pace and ability go forward – not just having to defend as a wing-back. Sometimes it’s those little changes, those small, little, tactical changes that can often help a player out, release you of your defensive duties and allows you freedom going forward.

Leeds fans top the attendances both home and way

Here’s a look at the average Championship home attendance plotted against the away attendances.

Average home attendance (minus away fans)
1 Leeds United 33,943
2 Nottingham Forest 26,374
3 Derby County 24,931
4 Sheffield Wednesday 22,784
5 WBA 22,387
6 Cardiff City 21,711
7 Stoke City 20,955

Average away attendances after GW16
1 Leeds United 3,781
2 Sheffield Wednesday 2,558
3 Derby County 2,095
4 Birmingham City 2,022
5 Luton Town 1,984
6 Nottingham Forest 1,913





We all know that Leeds Utd is a well supported team, but it is the 4th largest city in England, and is the largest City in the Country to have just one football club. This is what the table would look like if you divided the attendance as a percentage against the ground capacity.

1 Luton Town 98.4%
2 Nottingham Forest 91.5%
3 Huddersfield Town 89.8%
4 Leeds United 89.1%
5 Brentford 88.8%
6 WBA 87.9%