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

[BobKowalski]

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.

The idea City would or should pass on an invite to join an elite league of 11 of the biggest clubs in world football and as a founder member is pure fantasy.

 

[Shaelumstash]

There's multiple parts to UEFA. There's the Secretariat - Ceferin and the employees - the national leagues and the clubs. Within the latter two, there's the powerful national leagues and others and likewise for the clubs, with the old G14 lording it over the other European clubs. So a lot of vested interests vying against each other.

I don't envy anyone in Ceferin's position, who has to try to keep all those competing forces in balance. The big clubs bring him his revenue so tend to have the loudest voices but inevitably and eventually, appeasing them season after season will just lead to them demanding more. Then, as we're seeing now, they'll ditch you when they think it's in their interests to do so.

I've said it before that Ceferin is probably our friend, in as much as he wants to keep everyone happy as far as possible. I believe he tried to stop the FFP shit but (again) a breakaway was threatened by our enemies. Maybe the CAS case was actually the catalyst for this ESL. The timing certainly fits.

I'm now even wondering if we're playing a long game in this, possibly working with Ceferin.

Maybe hopelessly optimistic but I wonder if we've fluttered our eyelashes at the breakaway group, understood their plans, suckered them in, then betrayed them by leaking the Super League plans and then we'll pull out, leaving them isolated, maybe even out of their national leagues and international outcasts. The PL needs 15 clubs to agree something as major as expulsion so 6 clubs in the ESL renders that path impossible. But if we were to withdraw, maybe Chelsea too, then a majority vote that sees the US-owned clubs outside the PL is obviously achievable. It would be stunning revenge.

But, as I say, maybe I'm just being hopelessly optimistic.

But then we could have done that without signing up. We could have got this to a point where we verbally committed but then walked away. That would have been a PR master stroke.

The thing is though, in a perverse way, joining this Super League actually gives us leverage with UEFA and the PL that we’ve never had before.

Gill and his cronies have already resigned from UEFA. That already strengthens our position with UEFA.

We’re almost in the position of kingmaker now. We seem the most likely to pull out and if we do, the whole pack of cards comes tumbling down.

My major concern is, surely we must have signed something with the SL that leaves us liable to pay them millions if we pull out.

 

[skyblue92]

We are being stitched up big time here. The clubs that want to stay at the top will get more revenue so widening the gap ahead of us once more. These clubs both hated and feared us with a passion and forced UEFA to go after us. They want us gone. UEFA couldn't do it so they've broken away and created a new competition into which we're invited but it widens the gap, so really we make up the numbers. The rags, and dippers, as two history clubs get more revenue too so that will put them ahead of us once more in the premier league. How long will it be before they decide we've broken some rule or change the rules to boot us out? Actually given that we're getting much less revenue so will find it impossible to compete against them in a few years again they probably don't have to. We have been lured into a trap and they've played a blinder the snakes.

This is exactly how I see it .. it’s so fucking obvious for all to see ! how have we signed up to this I don’t know, what a monumental cock up .
What a chance this would of been to stick two fingers up to united and Liverpool especially, come out of it all looking good for once and maybe the tune would of started to finally change regards to our owners etc
It was these clubs that instructed uefa to introduce ffp as any means to stop us , they will do the same if this goes ahead but instead they make there own rule book .
If we don’t back out of this it’s looking very bleak , I can see some already see this as a step to far . Sad times

 

[half & half derby scarf]

Same here, seems strange to see page after page of how we should stay with EUFA, the same EUFA we boo before every CL game?

Lesser of 2 appalling choices

 

[MarsLlama]

Same here, seems strange to see page after page of how we should stay with EUFA, the same EUFA we boo before every CL game?

I don't boo them because I'm not a child. Many, many other City fans in the same boat.

We have a choice between working with an organisation we don't like or destroying football.

Easy call for me.

 

[Chippy_boy]

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?

Very much the thought processes going on amongst our directors and owner, I would imagine.

 

[kippaxwarrior]

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

Yeah i get that and the new format is shite but teams like West Ham, Leicester could still qualify for the CL under that format if they finish in the top 4. Do you think they will be ever "invited" to the ESL?

 

[Cobwebcat]

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.

Is the correct answer. There is a reason you don’t know and it’s because nobody wants you to. In a matter of months it will completely closed.

 

[Coatigan]

Surely they cant be that naive, the yanks maybe, but im struggling to understand why they didint see this backlash coming. Especially doing this in the middle of a pandemic when so many smaller clubs and lower leagues are really struggling. It just looks plain awful.

there is no way they didn't see it coming. If they hadn't, we'd be hearing a lot more, misguided statwments, misplaced sentiments, attempts at selling it even. The total silence and the third party distant statement says they very much knew it was doomed for baklash and they would ride it out.

 

[dcye]

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!

You think they're going to have a 7th team in the competition from England? I'd say there's basically no chance, and they'll be looking elsewhere.

 

[dave_blue12]

People need to stop with this 'destroying football' bullshit.

Football will carry on at all levels post ESL.

 

[MarsLlama]

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

No, not at all. Not... not even close, actually.

In fact it's absolutely bizarre that you think that. I don't understand how you've reached that conclusion at all.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

I agree that the question posed in the poll is the wrong one, and skews it badly. Honestly, who didn't know that very few fans on here would be ‘happy’ about joining this league? You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes.
As I see it, there are three scenarios looming up . The first one is very unlikely:
1) This league is abandoned wholesale, the clubs completely backtrack, and after some negotiations with UEFA to make the Champions League even more favourable to the powerful clubs, we go back to the status quo ante.
2) This league is maintained, and the founder clubs, including any later clubs that are invited as guests, are expelled from their domestic leagues. Everything that I've read leads me to understand that the legal implications of that are not very clear at present.
3) This league is maintained, and the founder clubs keep the right to participate in their domestic leagues. This is problematic, because participation in domestic leagues is supposed to lead to qualification for the CL. Which the founder clubs would obviously be excluded from, and it would indeed not be their intention to participate in, since the Super League is a direct replacement. You would therefore be looking at teams as far down as sixth or seventh qualifying for it, where England is concerned. Also, the monumental amount of cash that participation in the Super League represents would skew the domestic leagues even more, and breed even greater resentment among the remaining domestic clubs.
Which of these three scenarios would be acceptable to you, as a supporter?* Can you envisage another scenario preferable to these three?

*I initially defined what I understand by ‘supporter’, but then scrubbed it, because it seemed arrogant to confine it to my definition. It's however you understand the term.

 

[decmancity]

Why do you have a problem with him bankrolling Salford up the leagues? This is exactly what we are trying to defend right now, that clubs can still work their way up. Do you have a problem with us having been bankrolled for thirteen years?

Bankrolling Salford is absolutely compatible with everything he has said. If he makes the right decisions, hires the right manager, who buys the right players and they play well enough, Salford should have a chance of one day playing top European football, just like West Ham should be next season if they finish in the top four.

Except he isn't "fxcking up the league", he is acting like a good owner and doing all the right things. The things we praised our owners for rightly before they backed this closed shop, however reluctantly they may have been.

I have no problem with what we have done, I knew exactly what was going to happen when we got took over, I don't make any excuses for it unlike neville. I have an issue with him parading around on Sky like he is the last bastion of hope for everything good with football when he is in bed with a billionare bank rolling a league 2 team for his own benefit.

Salford shouldn't have a chance of playing european football at all, he is bypassing decades of hard work from other teams simply because he can pay bigger wages and attract players that normally wouldn't look at League 2 twice. Exactly the same things he wants to moan about each week on the TV.

 

[Cobwebcat]

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.

Interesting points but when politicians are involved things can change. Already we have our government saying no foreign players will be given visas to play in the ESL. I don’t know if they would follow through but they could do that in a day.

 

[paulchapo]

This is exactly how I see it .. it’s so fucking obvious for all to see ! how have we signed up to this I don’t know, what a monumental cock up .
What a chance this would of been to stick two fingers up to united and Liverpool especially, come out of it all looking good for once and maybe the tune would of started to finally change regards to our owners etc
It was these clubs that instructed uefa to introduce ffp as any means to stop us , they will do the same if this goes ahead but instead they make there own rule book .
If we don’t back out of this it’s looking very bleak , I can see some already see this as a step to far . Sad times

It's so glaringly obvious I cannot believe the very astute men that run our club didn't see it, it's staggering. Maybe they did see it and realised they were fucked if they signed up and even more fucked if they didn't. Who knows?

 

[waspish]

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

Its on past history if rags finish 7th and West Ham finished 4th West Ham don’t qualify that’s the new revamped version!

 

[mat]

Statement From The Board

Latest news from Everton Football Club

www.evertonfc.com

Strong statement from Blue Scouse

 

[willipp]

there is no way they didn't see it coming. If they hadn't, we'd be hearing a lot more, misguided statwments, misplaced sentiments, attempts at selling it even. The total silence and the third party distant statement says they very much knew it was doomed for baklash and they would ride it out.

And more importantly they dont care what the backlash is and thats the sad thing.

 

[M147WN]

I had to skip over 100 pages, I was hoping that over night we might of fucked this off, I was hoping the club who i had always thought believed in the right things played their hand and say we had no desire for this, we went along with this to expose it, but it seems we are nothing but pigs at the trough, if they don't make a uturn, and apologise then for me until these greedy don't give a fuck owners leave OUR club i am finished with city, they are custodians of OUR club nothing more, until they about turn or fuck off then I'm done, 50 odd years I've given to the club, blood and tears for this club, until we do the right thing for football I'm done ,

Same as you pal, I will turn my back on the club I’ve loved, laughed & cried with for over half a century. And I would like to think many other match going Blues will do the same and vote with their feet!
Im too long in the tooth and too principled a fucker to be blatantly taken the piss out of like this!
I will not be party to financially bailing out those who would fuck us up the arse (& have tried to in the past) at the drop of a hat!