City & FFP | 2020/21 Accounts released | Revenues of £569.8m, £2.4m profit (p 2395)

[Salford_Blue]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Having a bit of a debate.

Just posted this on another forum.

Nothing Earth shattering, but still a valid point.



*Then you have Arsenal. The way a club should be run*

Arsenal are part owned by Stan Kroenke, who's worth £6bill, and Alisher Usmanov, who's worth £19bill.(both Forbes) Between them that's £25bill, give or take a few dollars.

Now you'd think they would have got together and combined some of their fortune and built the Emirates themselves, on the understanding that the money was repaid to them by the club over a period of time. Let's throw in a interest free loan as well.

But no, out of the £390mill cost of the stadium, £260mill was obtined from financial institutions.

How are you funding the project?

To finance this highly complex project, Ashburton Properties, a subsidiary of Arsenal Holdings plc was formed and obtained a £260million senior loan facility from a stadium facilities banking group. This banking group comprises: the Royal Bank of Scotland PLC, Espirito Santo Investment, The Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Banks PLC, CIT Group Structured Finance (UK) Limited and HSH Nordbank AG. Interest on the senior debt is set at a commercial fixed rate over a 14 year term.

Saying that, if the rumours are true about Kroenke and Usmanov not getting on, how on earth would they have come together to fund the stadium development?

Guessing, Arsenal could have saved in the region of £300mill-£350 in loan and interest repayments if those two had come together and funded the stadium themselves. Actually, aren't there other billionaire/millionaires on the Arsenal Board as well?

Yet Arsenal, Wenger, and Arsenal fans in general have the nerve to complain about Sheikh Mansour and his personal investment in Manchester City Football Club.

So more or less what the Glaziers are doing, except they never had personal funds that big to potentially save the interest payments?

And we are the bad guys?

Give me strength.

 

[chris63]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

PSG will side-step Fifa's Financial Fair Play rules by offering Manchester United target Angel Di Maria, the 26-year-old winger, a one-year loan move from Real Madrid.

Can they do this ?

 

[spacecadet]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Should get an all green away kit for every visit to Arsenal, Spurs and both sets of scouse bastards.

 

[Bozzie]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Martin Samuel at last saying it as it is...:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...ir-Play-gift-club-owners-buy-Aston-Villa.html

Whilst I generally agree with Martin Samuel and his view of FFP, I think to cite Platini and FFP as the reason no one will buy Aston Villa is somewhat simplistic.

Platini and UEFA wield very little actual power within European football. As a body they posture, they preen and they pontificate but they do so at the pleasure of the major European clubs. UEFA need Madrid, Barcelona, Munich and Man U far more than they need UEFA. We all know (largely due to Martin Samuel) that Platini's 'vision' of Financial Fair Play bears little or no resemblance to the model that has been implemented. The focus of FFP was dictated by the big clubs and it appears, so were it's prime targets, under the careful stewardship of Gill and Rumminigge.

Aston Villa could, with some astute management and significant investment, become a reasonably successful club. But why would any individual, or group of businessmen, invest shed loads of cash just to achieve 'reasonable' success. To achieve anything more than 'reasonable', as Sheik Mansour will testify, requires unlimited finance and an objective that is not solely based on financial returns. Football has simply become too much about finance and not enough about the game and fans. Who's fault is that? Too many people to remember and/or list. The advent of the Premiership definitely attracted speculative owners into the game. Individuals and companies whose interest was profit and who carried no affiliation to the clubs they bought. Both Liverpool and Man U have American owners who seek to take from the club rather than put into it. We are so fortunate to have the owners we do. The way football is currently means it is an incredibly expensive business to invest in with little prospect of success or return. That alone will limit the number of potential buyers for Villa as will the unrealistic valuation Randy Lerner has placed on the club.

 

[Anonymous]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Interesting comments section in the Samuel's piece in the fail - is that a bang and a clatter I can hear of a penny hitting the ground in Birmingham? And to think of all the abuse we got from Villa fans.

See that ship on the horizon Villans?

*EDIT*

Just for the record, this is not a pop at Villa, just a "we fucking warned you but you wouldn't listen ya numpties" type post.

 

[chesterguy]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Martin Samuel at last saying it as it is...:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...ir-Play-gift-club-owners-buy-Aston-Villa.html

Whilst I generally agree with Martin Samuel and his view of FFP, I think to cite Platini and FFP as the reason no one will buy Aston Villa is somewhat simplistic.

Platini and UEFA wield very little actual power within European football. As a body they posture, they preen and they pontificate but they do so at the pleasure of the major European clubs. UEFA need Madrid, Barcelona, Munich and Man U far more than they need UEFA. We all know (largely due to Martin Samuel) that Platini's 'vision' of Financial Fair Play bears little or no resemblance to the model that has been implemented. The focus of FFP was dictated by the big clubs and it appears, so were it's prime targets, under the careful stewardship of Gill and Rumminigge.

Aston Villa could, with some astute management and significant investment, become a reasonably successful club.But why would any individual, or group of businessmen, invest shed loads of cash just to achieve 'reasonable' success. To achieve anything more than 'reasonable', as Sheik Mansour will testify, requires unlimited finance and an objective that is not solely based on financial returns. Football has simply become too much about finance and not enough about the game and fans. Who's fault is that? Too many people to remember and/or list. The advent of the Premiership definitely attracted speculative owners into the game. Individuals and companies whose interest was profit and who carried no affiliation to the clubs they bought. Both Liverpool and Man U have American owners who seek to take from the club rather than put into it. We are so fortunate to have the owners we do. The way football is currently means it is an incredibly expensive business to invest in with little prospect of success or return. That alone will limit the number of potential buyers for Villa as will the unrealistic valuation Randy Lerner has placed on the club.

I dont think MS is being simplistic. You state that with some astute management and significant investment Villa could be reasonably successful. The issue is that the rules relating to FFP does not allow for that significant investment therefore why would anyone want to buy Aston Villa. It will always be a mid-table team now as will Southampton, Newcastle yes they might have the odd good season but if they do all their good players will go (see Southampton and Newcastle) and they will have seasons where they will flirt with relegation but as for being a top-4 side that boat has sailed so why would any rich owner buy the club

I have no sympathy for the owner nor the fans for we were slated by them for doing what we had to do to get to the top table

 

[mancity dan]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

The ship has already sailed for others to do what we have been able to do. FFP means that no other team or it's fans can dream of what we have been able to do under Sheikh Mansour.

 

[SilverFox2]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Martin Samuel at last saying it as it is...:-

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...ir-Play-gift-club-owners-buy-Aston-Villa.html

Whilst I generally agree with Martin Samuel and his view of FFP, I think to cite Platini and FFP as the reason no one will buy Aston Villa is somewhat simplistic.

Platini and UEFA wield very little actual power within European football. As a body they posture, they preen and they pontificate but they do so at the pleasure of the major European clubs. UEFA need Madrid, Barcelona, Munich and Man U far more than they need UEFA. We all know (largely due to Martin Samuel) that Platini's 'vision' of Financial Fair Play bears little or no resemblance to the model that has been implemented. The focus of FFP was dictated by the big clubs and it appears, so were it's prime targets, under the careful stewardship of Gill and Rumminigge.

Aston Villa could, with some astute management and significant investment, become a reasonably successful club. But why would any individual, or group of businessmen, invest shed loads of cash just to achieve 'reasonable' success. To achieve anything more than 'reasonable', as Sheik Mansour will testify, requires unlimited finance and an objective that is not solely based on financial returns. Football has simply become too much about finance and not enough about the game and fans. Who's fault is that? Too many people to remember and/or list. The advent of the Premiership definitely attracted speculative owners into the game. Individuals and companies whose interest was profit and who carried no affiliation to the clubs they bought. Both Liverpool and Man U have American owners who seek to take from the club rather than put into it. We are so fortunate to have the owners we do. The way football is currently means it is an incredibly expensive business to invest in with little prospect of success or return. That alone will limit the number of potential buyers for Villa as will the unrealistic valuation Randy Lerner has placed on the club.

Good post.

The traditional rich buyer has the traits you describe however I feel that ADUG (as Sheik M.'s Investment Arm) have had perhaps unique reasons to buy MCFC.

They accurately assessed that success on the field would give exposure to the ability of the Investment Group to work as a responsible source of funding for all types of Projects.
The ability to attract Global Sponsors to their advertising vehicle (MCFC) demonstrates the success of their original plan.

I've no idea where ADUG's plans will eventually go but I am full of admiration for the massive investment our part of Manchester has and is continuing to experience.

 

[fbloke]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

It was abundantly clear that FFP would devalue clubs and make them almost unsellable. I said it a few times in the earliest versions of the FFP threads.

The surprise for me is that such problems have now moved into the FL too.

It wont be long before the very league structure we have could be threatened and some historical names go under because of FFP.

There are quite literally dozens of clubs that only exist now because of owner investment, MIddlesbrough being a prime example.

If FFP had existed for in the 80's and 90's then Wolves, MIddlesbrough, Stoke City, Blackburn would all have gone the way of the dodo.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

I listened to our chairman's end-of-season interview again over the week end to refresh my memory of his views of FFPR. He was unconcerned, to say the least, and echoed the club's statement of May of this year, which stressed that the agreement with UEFA would have no impact on City at all. In fact, he went considerably further, and put FFP into context. He described the sanctions as "a pinch" and, if doing what is best for the club "means sometimes taking a pinch, we'll take a pinch and we'll move on."

His argument is that the owner and board had a clear strategy in 2008 which they began to implement then and which they are continuing to implement now and in the future. The club is now exactly where they wanted it to be when they began implementing the strategy and "FFP will not compromise the model" which they will continue to establish and he promised continued and continuous improvement, saying "some years you're going to win (trophies), some years you're not - but we're going to get better." The keynote of the interview was optimism; he explained that "our friends at UEFA" were trying to impose a business model which is very different to City's,but that "history will judge what was best for football and that, when he's interviewed again, in six years time we will all "see that our model is better than UEFA's.

What interests me is the differences between the two models and why our model is so superior. Firstly, football clubs, in economic terms, are small businesses, many of them very small. Even the "biggest" clubs have a turnover which is surpassed by a number of German family owned firms. Football is a world game but the clubs are small businesses, and still overwhelmingly local. They "import" foreign players but rely on sponsorship and ticket sales to keep the club afloat. The owner guarantees the debt. Clubs like Real, Bayern and United have done what they can to develop this 80s small business model by venturing further afield for sponsors, but the model is essentially the same: debt and sponsorship. By 2005 United found that for all the "prudence" of the plc, a successful small business was ripe for a hostile, predatory takeover. Enter the Glazers. Arsenal are the classic expression of the UEFA model: balanced books, break even so the shareholders get a dividend, charge high prices and cut labour costs. Arsenal pride themselves on their profit to turnover ratio, or, as martin Samuel puts it, not on the trophies they win but the on the purity of their bank statement. Their accountant should win their player of the year award every season. They're in trouble if other clubs start investing. United safeguard the Glazers pension pot, but invest from much bigger sponsorship deals. They win more trophies than Arsenal and have greater "brand awareness and value". City invest more than both... Hence, FFP limits shareholder investment to virtually nothing!

Khaldoon al-Mubarak is adamant that this will have no effect on City. City's model is based on heavy investment and globalisation. Sheik Mansour has invested heavily as owner, but the investment from his own pocket in players is now largely at an end and investment is in those things Platini cannot ban. Increasingly the funds will come from elsewhere anyway. This is where globalisation becomes important. It does not mean flogging tatty shirts to kids in Shanghai. It is most noticeable how unsuccessful United, Arsenal even Real and barca have been in penetrating South East Asia, Africa, the USA. This is because they try to do it as some foreign intrusion trying to bump up the profits and treating the peasants to a friendly every few years. The natives prefer their own teams. So that's what City give them. The City group and associates. Nissan announced a global advertising campaign yesterday, which is the first fruit of our deal with them. What their chief planning officer, Andy Palmer, said is interesting, "Campaigns will be more focused on promoting the “innovation and excitement” of Nissan rather than specific cars, although this could change as the strategy matures.

The car manufacturer expects the mix of City’s teams and Champions League to avoid alienating fans in the same way it would have done had it opted to back several high profile clubs.

Palmer adds: “Our philosophy has normally been to sponsor leagues or cups rather than teams because when you get into teams you normally get into [fan] allegiances usually. With the City Football Network of teams it’s almost like we’re sponsoring a league.

“We have the advantage of being able to work with blooming players that will move around the clubs. It’s like our GT academy [drivers] having a seat in a GT car and then eventually working their way up to Formula One. If Formula One is akin to the Manchester City first team, then there’s an opportunity to tell great stories around how players develop their skills and play for different teams in the network.” Nissan also plans advertising campaigns, involving City players at CL matches! Add to Nissan Indonesian soft drins cans, Vietnamese bank cards etc and an ever growing list of partners and shirts etc become a bye product of a much grander strategy. City's income will continue to outgrow that of the "small business" clubs even without the development of the collar site.

City will not challenge FFP in court - it's not our problem.