A brief history of FFP - important you get this before we go any further

People like to talk about the impact of wealthy owners on the competitive landscape.  Fair enough. Crucially though, most start from a completely false premise - that football was fair before these owners arrived.  The reality is that the game had already been deliberately distorted years before the likes of Sheikh Mansour had his first taste of Holts Mild and fell in love.

So I've explained how we got to the current state of play in ten easy steps, each in their original form i.e. not exceeding 140 characters, including hashtags.  You're quite welcome:

1.Elite clubs wanted lion's share of growing money in football.  They set up a pressure group, G14 to reform game in their favour. #FFP

2. G14 threatened breakaway so UEFA created UCL that rewards elite clubs massively, creating huge wealth gap #FFP

3. Wealth gap self-perpetuates through sponsorship, more fans, more success, more cash.  Becomes hard to fail #FFP

4. All other clubs go from being in reasonable contention to being well adrift of "Big 4" that are top 4 every year #FFP

5. Wealthy individuals see opportunity to revive those clubs and gatecrash the party #FFP

6. Elite clubs get scared and pressure UEFA.  They create #FFP which makes contrived distinction between sources of wealth #FFP

7. Corporate investment from sponsors, gate receipts, TV revenue (highest among elite) = good #FFP

8. Non-borrowed private investment = bad.  No action on redistribution of wealth or preventing debt #FFP

9. Gatecrashers find/contrive ways to increase revenue to comply with #FFP

10. Fans of elite clubs and semi-informed (often biased) analysts wail and gnash teeth.  The end.  #FFP