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I was wondering how Chelsea seem to be able to buy everyone and not shatter FFP rules.
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AFLW 2024 - Round 6 - Chat, game threads, injury lists, team lineups and more.
Football club finances / FFP
- Thread starter moomba
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Gives us time.
Art Vandelay_
TheBrownDog
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FIFA run national football and yet it is still far less corrupted than club football. Tournaments are awarded less than fairly but players can't really choose who to play for. Maybe I'll get some enjoyment watching Euros and Copa.
Club football is ****ed.
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Ed_Gein
Very good. But brick not hit back!
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Good article in The Times.
www.thetimes.com
Hypocritical Man City’s only goal was sportswashing but league let them in
Panicking powerbrokers now realise the scale of their error – unless these cuckoo owners are expelled from the nest, English football’s whole ecosystem faces collapse
Matthew Syed
Wednesday June 05 2024, 8.00pm BST, The Times
Did they suppose the document would never leak? Did they not count on the brilliant investigative reporters at Times Sport, the best in the business? Did they hope that their perversion of the words of John Stuart Mill, in his wonderful tome On Liberty, would never see the light of day? Or do they no longer care about how they look, knowing that a proportion of Manchester City fans will take to social media to defend the indefensible, turning tribal allegiance into an advanced form of cognitive dissonance?
“The tyranny of the majority” is the breathtaking claim of City. They argue that their freedom to make money has been limited by the Premier League’s rules on sponsorship deals, which forbid related companies (such as Etihad Airways sponsoring a team backed by Abu Dhabi) from offering cash above the commercial rate determined by an independent assessor. They say they are being persecuted, held back by a cartel of legacy clubs that want to monopolise success at their expense.
I am guessing that all fans will see through this comedy gold. City have won the past four Premier League titles and more than 57 per cent of the available domestic trophies over the past seven years. According to my former colleague Tony Evans, this makes them the most dominant side in top-flight history: more dominant than Liverpool in the Seventies and Eighties (41 per cent), more dominant than Manchester United in the Nineties (33 per cent).
Indeed, they are almost as dominant as the emirate of Abu Dhabi, which understands the concept of tyranny quite well having engaged in human rights abuses of a kind that led Amnesty International to question its treatment of immigrant workers and to condemn the arbitrary detention of 26 prisoners of conscience.
But dominance is, as Einstein might have said, a relative term. City want more money than they have at present, more dominance than they enjoy now, more freedom to spend on players (their bench is worth more than the first teams of most of their rivals) so that they can win, what, 40 league titles in a row? That would indeed turn the Premier League from what many regard as a fairly enjoyable competition into a tyranny of the minority.
And this is why the story revealed by my colleague Matt Lawton will cause the scales to fall from the eyes of all but the most biased of observers. The motive of City’s owners is not principally about football, the Premier League or, indeed, Manchester. As many warned from the outset, this was always a scheme of sportswashing, a strategy of furthering the interests of a microstate in the Middle East. It is in effect leveraging the soft power of football, its cultural cachet, to launder its reputation. This is why it is furious about quaint rules on spending limits thwarting the kind of power that, back home, is untrammelled.
And let us be clear about what all this means. An emirate, whose government is autocratic and therefore not subject to the full rule of law, is paying for a squad of eye-wateringly expensive lawyers to pursue a case in British courts that directly violates British interests. For whatever one thinks about what the Premier League has become, there is no doubt that its success has benefited the UK, not just in terms of the estimated contribution to the economy of ÂŁ8billion in 2021-22, but also through a tax contribution of ÂŁ4.2billion and thousands of jobs.
Yet what would happen if the spending taps were allowed to be turned full tilt by removing restraints related to “associated partners”? That’s right: what remains of competitive balance would be destroyed, decimating the league’s prestige and appeal.
Remember a few years ago when leaked emails showed that Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the City chairman, “would rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them for the next ten years”. Isn’t it funny that such people love the rule of law abroad — seeing it as a vehicle for outspending counterparties on expensive litigation — almost as much as they fear it at home? It’s as though City have ditched any pretence to care about anything except the geopolitical interests of their owners. What’s certain is that the Premier League can no longer cope with multiple City lawsuits and has had to hire outside help. In this case, as in so many others, the rule of law is morphing into something quite different: the rule of lawyers.
In some ways you almost feel like saying to football’s now panicking powerbrokers: it serves you right. These people welcomed Roman Abramovich, then stood wide-eyed while state actors entered the game too. They surely cannot be too surprised that the logical endpoint for this greed and connivance is that the blue-ribband event of English football is now fighting for its survival. When you sup with Mephistopheles, you can’t complain when the old fella returns to claim his side of the bargain.
But the dominant sense today is the shameless hypocrisy of the owners of City. They said that they were investing in City because they cared about regenerating the area. They now say that unless they get their own way, they are likely to stop community funding. They said that the commercial deals were within the rules; they now say that the rules are illegal. They said that competitive balance was important for English football; they now want to destroy it. They said they were happy with the democratic ethos of Premier League decision-making; now they hilariously say it’s oppressive.
I suspect at least some City fans are uncomfortable with this brazenness and may even be belatedly reassessing the true motives of the club’s owners. What’s now clear is that cuckoos have been let into the Premier League nest. Unless they are properly confronted or ejected, they could now threaten the whole ecosystem of English football.
Hypocritical Man City’s only goal was sportswashing but league let them in
Panicking powerbrokers now realise the scale of their error – unless these cuckoo owners are expelled from the nest, English football’s whole ecosystem faces collapse
www.thetimes.com
Hypocritical Man City’s only goal was sportswashing but league let them in
Panicking powerbrokers now realise the scale of their error – unless these cuckoo owners are expelled from the nest, English football’s whole ecosystem faces collapse
Matthew Syed
Wednesday June 05 2024, 8.00pm BST, The Times
Did they suppose the document would never leak? Did they not count on the brilliant investigative reporters at Times Sport, the best in the business? Did they hope that their perversion of the words of John Stuart Mill, in his wonderful tome On Liberty, would never see the light of day? Or do they no longer care about how they look, knowing that a proportion of Manchester City fans will take to social media to defend the indefensible, turning tribal allegiance into an advanced form of cognitive dissonance?
“The tyranny of the majority” is the breathtaking claim of City. They argue that their freedom to make money has been limited by the Premier League’s rules on sponsorship deals, which forbid related companies (such as Etihad Airways sponsoring a team backed by Abu Dhabi) from offering cash above the commercial rate determined by an independent assessor. They say they are being persecuted, held back by a cartel of legacy clubs that want to monopolise success at their expense.
I am guessing that all fans will see through this comedy gold. City have won the past four Premier League titles and more than 57 per cent of the available domestic trophies over the past seven years. According to my former colleague Tony Evans, this makes them the most dominant side in top-flight history: more dominant than Liverpool in the Seventies and Eighties (41 per cent), more dominant than Manchester United in the Nineties (33 per cent).
Indeed, they are almost as dominant as the emirate of Abu Dhabi, which understands the concept of tyranny quite well having engaged in human rights abuses of a kind that led Amnesty International to question its treatment of immigrant workers and to condemn the arbitrary detention of 26 prisoners of conscience.
But dominance is, as Einstein might have said, a relative term. City want more money than they have at present, more dominance than they enjoy now, more freedom to spend on players (their bench is worth more than the first teams of most of their rivals) so that they can win, what, 40 league titles in a row? That would indeed turn the Premier League from what many regard as a fairly enjoyable competition into a tyranny of the minority.
And this is why the story revealed by my colleague Matt Lawton will cause the scales to fall from the eyes of all but the most biased of observers. The motive of City’s owners is not principally about football, the Premier League or, indeed, Manchester. As many warned from the outset, this was always a scheme of sportswashing, a strategy of furthering the interests of a microstate in the Middle East. It is in effect leveraging the soft power of football, its cultural cachet, to launder its reputation. This is why it is furious about quaint rules on spending limits thwarting the kind of power that, back home, is untrammelled.
And let us be clear about what all this means. An emirate, whose government is autocratic and therefore not subject to the full rule of law, is paying for a squad of eye-wateringly expensive lawyers to pursue a case in British courts that directly violates British interests. For whatever one thinks about what the Premier League has become, there is no doubt that its success has benefited the UK, not just in terms of the estimated contribution to the economy of ÂŁ8billion in 2021-22, but also through a tax contribution of ÂŁ4.2billion and thousands of jobs.
Yet what would happen if the spending taps were allowed to be turned full tilt by removing restraints related to “associated partners”? That’s right: what remains of competitive balance would be destroyed, decimating the league’s prestige and appeal.
Remember a few years ago when leaked emails showed that Khaldoon al-Mubarak, the City chairman, “would rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them for the next ten years”. Isn’t it funny that such people love the rule of law abroad — seeing it as a vehicle for outspending counterparties on expensive litigation — almost as much as they fear it at home? It’s as though City have ditched any pretence to care about anything except the geopolitical interests of their owners. What’s certain is that the Premier League can no longer cope with multiple City lawsuits and has had to hire outside help. In this case, as in so many others, the rule of law is morphing into something quite different: the rule of lawyers.
In some ways you almost feel like saying to football’s now panicking powerbrokers: it serves you right. These people welcomed Roman Abramovich, then stood wide-eyed while state actors entered the game too. They surely cannot be too surprised that the logical endpoint for this greed and connivance is that the blue-ribband event of English football is now fighting for its survival. When you sup with Mephistopheles, you can’t complain when the old fella returns to claim his side of the bargain.
But the dominant sense today is the shameless hypocrisy of the owners of City. They said that they were investing in City because they cared about regenerating the area. They now say that unless they get their own way, they are likely to stop community funding. They said that the commercial deals were within the rules; they now say that the rules are illegal. They said that competitive balance was important for English football; they now want to destroy it. They said they were happy with the democratic ethos of Premier League decision-making; now they hilariously say it’s oppressive.
I suspect at least some City fans are uncomfortable with this brazenness and may even be belatedly reassessing the true motives of the club’s owners. What’s now clear is that cuckoos have been let into the Premier League nest. Unless they are properly confronted or ejected, they could now threaten the whole ecosystem of English football.
Ed_Gein
Very good. But brick not hit back!
- Dec 17, 2003
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Yes, well I believe there is a quote "It's not about what's right or wrong, it's about what you can prove in court"
Blind Freddy can see (except City supporters) City have been dodgy at best behind closed doors and the owners have financially doped the club beyond belief where now they are spending millions upon millions on lawyers to mitigate any penalties.
Not going to lie, it's kinda funny watching you concede very little, if anything at all, in regards to any wrongdoing, mooma - and it's exactly the kinda cognitive dissonance the author mentioned in the article.
Blind Freddy can see (except City supporters) City have been dodgy at best behind closed doors and the owners have financially doped the club beyond belief where now they are spending millions upon millions on lawyers to mitigate any penalties.
Not going to lie, it's kinda funny watching you concede very little, if anything at all, in regards to any wrongdoing, mooma - and it's exactly the kinda cognitive dissonance the author mentioned in the article.
TheGreatBarryB
Hall of Famer
Yep the cognitive dissonance is very strong in City fans ..it’s an interesting psychological study
moomba
TheBrownDog
- Thread starter
- #3,636
Ha ha, sounds like something you've been waiting to get off your chest for a while.
Not sure what it has to do with my post though, I wouldnt have a clue if we'll win, lose or something in between. Just know that no matter the result it wont have anything near the impact on football that some journos are trying to make out.
But you seem to have made your mind up so I'll leave you to it.
moomba
TheBrownDog
- Thread starter
- #3,639
Have a lot of sympathy for Villa, great achievement to get into the champions league ahead of teams that have spent much more. And now faced with having to sell key members of the team before they see a penny of the ÂŁ100m champions league money they've earned.
TheGreatBarryB
Hall of Famer
You see Nassef other clubs complying by these rules and the fact you haven’t is probably why you finished fourth this season. Maybe also need a history lesson on clubs going bust / near bust. Doesn’t this guy live in the UAE? Interesting timing
TheGreatBarryB
Hall of Famer
I meant it’s their turn now where they need to sell. Like Forest, Everton and Leicester should have two seasons. Villa to continue to play by the rules like their opponents have. There’s nothing to complain about
moomba
TheBrownDog
- Thread starter
- #3,643
Great news for the sides already earning champions league money. Less competition means more chance of continuing to earn the hundreds of millions in champions league money. Probably be able to raid a few of these teams for their best players on the cheap too.
SM
Bigfooty Legend
You said they finished fourth because others complied with the rules and they didn't. They've done everything correctly but now are forced to sell. It's a bit rotten.
TheGreatBarryB
Hall of Famer
May be a few City players to raid soon
Couldn’t they have sold players this season knowing what was coming? As that article states last two years they have had a wages to turnover ration of 89% ..fourth highest in the league. Only Leicester, Forest and Everton have higher ratio.
SM
Bigfooty Legend
The issue is they sold Grealish and that profit is now dropping out of the three year cycle. The point I made some time back that when we sold Bowen we didn't actually spend that profit, but because it's now dropped out of our cycle it's 'lost' to us. Again, a bit rotten.
moomba
TheBrownDog
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Villa have been doing just fine under FFP
www.football365.com
Premier League net spend table over the last five years
Forget the league table, it's all about the Premier League net spend table. And Chelsea, Man Utd and Arsenal are ahead of the other 17.
www.football365.com
- Dec 22, 2009
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Well what a surprise Villas owner supports sportswashers
Nassef Sawiris Moves His Company Headquarters To Abu Dhabi
Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris plans to relocate investment and family business office NNS Group's headquarters to Abu Dhabi next year.
www.forbesmiddleeast.com
Is anyone surprised?
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