The Super League | FA + PL: New Charter & Fines | UEFA: Settlement

[waspish]

But as much as we dislike the champions league IT IS NOT a closed shop. This is. This is a way for big clubs who are massively in debt a way to reduce that.

Why we are anywhere near this is absolutely beyond me

err you seen the new revamped uefa champs league set up! It’s literal is a closed shop!

 

[MarsLlama]

I have no time for heartbreak etc. Lining the shareholders pockets and securing a business' long-term success is the directors' duty. Supporters are no longer shareholders.

People should, IMO, keep an open mind and see how this plays out but be vocal in their opposition to the whole thing.

We were already rich as fuck. More money than the EFL combined, I'm guessing.

United, Barca, Real need this because they're in crippling debt, but we don't.

 

[Steve68]

Assuming this thing goes ahead - what will ‘winning’ it actually mean?

It won’t mean entry into a European competition.

It‘s just going to be money and a fancy piece of tin as far as I can see and that doesn’t excite me at all.

I also don’t care about playing other ’super-clubs’ all this time. Those matches are icing on the cake when they happen. The joy of the open Premiership is playing clubs with a historical and emotional ‘hinterland’. They have a history.

These are clubs and players I know over decades. Playing Leeds or Southampton is to play matches with deep context. It is to play matches with consequences for all, that resonate beyond the 2 teams on the field. For relegation, for European qualification. For the perverse pleasure of seeing a hated rival struggle to get into Europe or avoid relegation.

Now all that is reduced to them getting a reduced position based slice of the prize money pie. All winning means is a bigger slice.

I guess I’m old, I guess I’m ‘Legacy‘ and I guess I’m financially inconsequential but I’d rather we went back to the excitement of our Keegan-era stampede up through the divisions than this soulless proposal.

 

[Chippy_boy]

But as much as we dislike the champions league IT IS NOT a closed shop. This is. This is a way for big clubs who are massively in debt a way to reduce that.

Why we are anywhere near this is absolutely beyond me

Presumably because we figured not being involved in it would be worse? Or maybe we figured we'd have some chance of shaping the rules if we are in, and none if we are not?

 

[PragueBlue]

But as much as we dislike the champions league IT IS NOT a closed shop. This is. This is a way for big clubs who are massively in debt a way to reduce that.

Why we are anywhere near this is absolutely beyond me

The SL isn't a closed shop but obviously reduced admittance as only 5 would qualify.

 

[Brightwell Bros.]

But as much as we dislike the champions league IT IS NOT a closed shop. This is. This is a way for big clubs who are massively in debt a way to reduce that.

Why we are anywhere near this is absolutely beyond me

I don't get how people don't understand this. No one - NO ONE - thinks UEFA or the Premier League or the Champions League is a paragon of virtue or civic minded charity. But at it's very core it's a competition that West Ham or Leicester or Everton or Man City, through good management, investment, good luck or a mixture of the three, can work towards. Yes, the scales or rigged, yes that's easier said than done, but it's clear to everyone how you do that. This breaks that, and it breaks it in a way where there is no going back. The CL can always be rejigged or reformed, for better or worse, but this shatters 70 years of national football's relationship to European football and is just deeply, grossly unfair. Of all the fans, you'd hope City fans understand this. They've used a pandemic to pull a trigger on something that if it happened 10 years ago would have killed us dead.

We aren't bigger or more important than Newcastle, Derby, West Ham, Everton, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Wolves and so on and so on, we are just having a good run. We don't deserve a good run forever, no one does.

 

[Tricky_Trev]

But as much as we dislike the champions league IT IS NOT a closed shop. This is. This is a way for big clubs who are massively in debt a way to reduce that.

Why we are anywhere near this is absolutely beyond me

The new CL format allows elite clubs that don’t qualify for it to just be invited into it anyway. Both are shite.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Interesting. The key word is rights though. If no-one pays them to screen the matches, then they have only match-day revenues and the business model fails.

Think production company that uses a well known streaming organisation to publish content. I believe it will be Amazon Prime.

 

[Cobwebcat]

The SL isn't a closed shop but obviously reduced admittance as only 5 would qualify.

Based on what?

 

[Chippy_boy]

We were already rich as fuck. More money than the EFL combined, I'm guessing.

United, Barca, Real need this because they're in crippling debt, but we don't.

Yes but we need global recognition as being one of, if not the most successful clubs in world football. Which is not possible if the top 10 clubs play in a competition we are not in.

 

[BobKowalski]

Re that last bit - I think the organisers of the SL wanted at least 12 teams on board before announcing it, and they wanted to announce it just before UEFA revealed their CL revamp plans. As Bayern, PSG, etc, didn't give an answer it seems that City (and perhaps Chelsea) were perhaps told it's now or never so the club felt they had little choice but to put their name to it as that's what they required from us rather than a verbal agreement?

Funnily enough, regarding the other bolded bit I was thinking exactly the same earlier this morning. It sounds far fetched but this could be part of a masterplan. Us and Chelsea pull out (which was our plan all along), and try and get Spurs onside too but if they don't join us, no problem because we now have a chance of getting them and the 3 main instigators booted out of the Premier League by way of a 16-4 vote!

No, City are in this because ultimately this is what they want too, for themselves and the investors that have come on board.

City may have preferred it happen differently, or with the backing of UEFA or FIFA, but City who have fought UEFA and other top clubs to get a seat at the top table were never going to pass on an invite to join as a founding member of this type of competition. It is pretty much what they have wanted for the past decade. To be in at the start and set the rules.

UEFA may entice City back with promises etc, but UEFA tried to fuck us twice so what value do their promises have? The game changer could be FIFA, who are just as likely to give this their backing as oppose it.

Right now you have twelve clubs with contracts and £3.5 billion funding. What are UEFA going to do? Ban them from a competition they aren’t interested in playing in? Ban players from the Euros? Good luck with that. Also the PL, same question. Ban the six biggest clubs? Again good luck, because what would be left is the Championship version 2. You think anyone is paying billions to watch Burnley v Brighton?

Things aren’t going back to the way it was. Not for the PL and not for UEFA. The 12 clubs have already ‘won’. To get the clubs back UEFA have to offer what the ESL offers. For the PL, they need those six clubs, otherwise they just have a slightly better version of the Championship.

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

The SL isn't a closed shop but obviously reduced admittance as only 5 would qualify.

Bizarrely the ESL would possibly be less of a closed shop than the revamped CL, at least to English clubs, as this new league will want those 5 teams to come from the bigger leagues I guess.

What a shitshow European club football is. Wish it was never started.

 

[PragueBlue]

Based on what?

I haven't seen any clarification of the criteria for that yet. Presumably it would be performance based but until there is clarification, we won't know for sure.

 

[PabloZabeleta]

err you seen the new revamped uefa champs league set up! It’s literal is a closed shop!

It's not as it still has qualification based on merit. And it's not putting two, potentially all three domestic top level competitions at risk for the sake of a league that can't ever be reached by most clubs no matter how well they play

 

[Chippy_boy]

Think production company that uses a well known streaming organisation to publish content. I believe it will be Amazon.

Yes possibly.

I think there's water to flow under the bridge here though. Monopolies, competition laws, abusing dominant position the marketplace etc. There's all sorts of legal challenges and other pressures could be brought to bear... and possibly will be.

 

[willipp]

The SL isn't a closed shop but obviously reduced admittance as only 5 would qualify.

How long till those 5 places are given to the highest bidders or LA Galaxy and New York Red Bulls. The whole 5 additional teams a pure smoke screen.

 

[Coatigan]

Every front page is on this today, and I think the owners of the English clubs have hugely underestimated the strength of feeling this has generated. They apparently expected anger but no focus groups could have prepared them for this. Would expect some vigorous rowing back in the coming days.

On the assumption they care.

 

[Grassland Blue]

I voted yes, not due to any great love for the concept but because I’d rather see City in it, if it’s going ahead, than locked out of the continent’s biggest competition for all time.

Really, a binary choice isn’t enough to properly give a rounded view on it. I’d have ticked a box saying I’d be most happy if it didn’t go ahead at all, but that wasn’t an option.

Would you like to see a future world where rags, dippers, et al are in this competition, and have wheedled their way back into the premier league, while city are stuck in second rate European competitions that no one watches?

But is the ESL really a competition?

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

I haven't seen any clarification of the criteria for that yet. Presumably it would be performance based but until there is clarification, we won't know for sure.

Well it won't be the best 15 clubs in Europe and 5 from a fair play system. It will be 5 that can at least attempt to compete.

 

[waspish]

The SL isn't a closed shop but obviously reduced admittance as only 5 would qualify.

And if the five biggest leagues in Europe get those places for winning the league and 6 premier league clubs already in the SL that means finishing 7th in premier league will get you in now if these premier league owners look at that they will see money signs! Say again uefa revamped competition is like a closed shop as well!