I'd welcome any sanctions against Liverpool. I'm incredibly proud of Liverpool trying not to rely on massive investment and trying to buy and nurture young talent rather than spend big on existing talent. Anything that reinforces that is only a good thing to me even if it might affect the club adversely in the short term. Having said that, I know there would be a lot of Liverpool fans disagreeing with it!
I hate what I see at City, Chelsea and PSG (to name but a few). I hate the concept that you can buy success. Is FFP not putting a dent in that concept? I'm not as well read on it as you I'm sure since it hasn't particularly been a threat to Liverpool recently but what I do hear is that City/Chelsea etc are having to curtail their spending and give more thought to their financial futures. This is only a good thing to me.
I'm curious and hopefully you can shed some light but how does it entrench the football hierarchy? How are clubs being punished for investing responsibly? I'm genuinely asking because I'm sure you know more than me.
First I think NYCFC is proof that MCFC is trying to develop talent. A significant chunk of MCFC's debt is due to infrastructure at the academy and purchasing NYCFC. I don't know how much if wage-related, but a significant chunk is not. I don't know if Chelsea or PSG have made similar investments.
Second, I'm not sure what you mean by "investing responsibly." Do you mean not spending as much on transfer bills? I'm not sure that's investing responsibly but just not investing. Do you mean spending on infrastructure?
To me, spending responsibly in this context ought to mean spending money that the club can afford to pay. Saddling a club with debt vis-a-vie Pompey is wrong. An owner spending money he has is not irresponsible. Now, you can make bad decisions and spend the money you have on players not worth the cost, but I'm not sure that's the domain of the FFP.
As far as entrenching, I'll take the example of MCFC v. Man United. Man United has built up years of following and routinely purchase top players (there are plenty of other clubs that fit this bill too). As a result, they have more favorable positions in the UCL seeding. This allows them to go farther in competitions, earning more. it also allows them to attract more fans and command higher sponsors. Now, for City they have to work their way to earn that kind following and positioning in the leagues, especially UCL. Man U's past success gets them Pot 1 and the top team in their group whereas City get Pot 3 at the moment and have been drawn into tough groups each year they've been in the competition.
That's a long way of saying that teams that haven't been giants have a long trek ahead of them in order to command the kind of profits that would allow them to spend like giants under FFP. However, in order to get that to that level they have to spend that kind of money. If Man City operated under the tight budgets FFP gave them, they would have a hard time winning the EPL or advancing out of the group stages of the UCL, which are the kind of accomplishments that help create fans both home and especially abroad and which bring in prize money.
Now, you can say "Oh, well they just want to short track success. they need to invest in development and wait until the players develop and then they can compete." I have a few issues. First, is why should they have to wait? Why does it make sense for FIFA or UEFA to say "hey, you'd like to invest in football? How about no, you just can own a mediocre team for a while." Second, let's say you do that and it takes what 5, 10 years for an academy to produce top flight results. In that ten years, the gap between you and the giants has continued to grow as the giants earn more trophies, more history, more success, more fans, more sponsors, more stadium seating, etc. So you have developed the next Messi. Messi Jr. graduates and sees some top flight playing time. He's good in his debut and...he is immediately signed away after a season or maybe even two to a giant club, because they are in a better position to help him attract sponsors, buy other players to field a well-rounded team, play in the competitions he's dreamed of since he was a lad.
You see, spending on success now helps create the atmosphere and culture where they can more easily retain top developed players. Even if City and PSG aren't winning the Champions League, they've been able to compete for trophies.
I guess to me if the Sheiks or Romans or whoever are willing to take a significant short-term loss in hopes of creating long-term success, that's their decision and as long as no one other than them would suffer the consequences of that risk not working out, that's ok.