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

[Didsbury Dave]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

There are some very interesting noises coming from that meeting, particularly that platini quote. It looks to me like he's paving the way for significant change...particularly the "we have succeeded" line. That's his lunge for the moral high ground and damage limitation line. He loses less face by claiming that FFP was a success and now needs modifying.

There can be no doubt that City and PSG made a watertight case for the ridiculousness of these rules. Anyone with any common sense knows an industry which bans investment is based on lunacy.

It's funny Platini already sees FFP as a success. I wonder if that's because privately he was under enormous pressure to sanction City and PSG, and that this summer's fines, transfer spend limits, squad limitations, etc have put him a position with strength with regards the rest of the cartel and what happens next.

What I mean by that is, is it inconceivable that he's now saying to the likes of Bayern that the "sugar daddies" now know they can't just spend without limits on players, and that dialling back the regulations having made the point to City and Paris is the right and proper thing to do. After all there are many practical realities to FFP which are a farce (leveraged buy outs, debt burdens etc). Clubs like United, Madrid, even Barcelona, who carry heavy debt burdens, are subject to illegal state aid, etc are the next logically on UEFA's list of "bad" clubs to go after.

Anyway what I'm saying in a convoluted way is that I'm not surprised that there will be a dialling back of FFP and i'm not surprised if they find ways to allow for people like Mansour to come in and invest over a longer period of time to challenge the elite.

Most importantly though for City, FFP has now become an irrelevance. I can see us being in a position where needing to spend even 200 million next summer won't be a problem.

Exactly how I see it. The only way it has been "a success" is what you refer to: he can turn round to Gill et al and say "there, we did it".

There simply has to be a complete rework of FFP and I see this as the start of it. Who even knows what pressure has been brought behind the scenes by City and PSG? One thing's for sure: there were some heavyweight discussions taking place in the summer when the announcements were delayed. I think the legal implications of this, when faced with pockets as deep as The Sheikh's, could bring UEFA down completely. Imagine if City or PSG pursued for damages? What kind of sums we could be talking there?!?!

I wouldn't be surprised if this is part of some kind of off-the-record deal done in the summer. We took the little hit (£20m was it, and a 21 man Euro Squad) so UEFA could look like they've won, with a promise that that's the end of it and FFP is rewritten completely this season under the pretence of UEFA being the drivers, rather than them running scared.

Like you, I think the way is going to be cleared for us now.

 

[FanchesterCity]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

FFP has more or less stopped the influx of overseas investors into the British game, and the peak of Billionaires created by the privatisation of Eastern European state assets has also passed, so the drive to reinforce FFP has gone. But they'll keep some form of it in place to ward off new clubs. What's the incentive or the Champions League clubs to lift the barrier to their private club? There's none. City will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of FFP if the reports on the healthy state of City's finances are true.

I think there is an incentive to open up the membership of the 'elite':

1) An established 'elite' becomes stale and ultimately less exciting. So far, CL's done well, but in recent years, fans have complained about the general predictability of things. The group stages haven't had the massive appeal they were supposed to have.

2) Any elite group of business has to walk a fine line between fending off competitors and increasing profitability through to growing the market, or improving their product. Sometimes that means swapping out the dead wood of the elite and bringing in a new player. Any group of businesses will be open to another new business IF they can see a way of benefitting from it. The likes of City and PSG are overtaking some of the old guard, and bringing new interest to CL, and potentially new and more sponsorship.

3) Some of the investment that's happened at PSG and even more so at City might be wanted by some of the elite. Because of that, they can't hit City and PSG too hard, just in case they need some of the same magic dust in future.

 

[FanchesterCity]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Regarding Platini's claim of 'success' - it's may not only be a case of saving face, but of presenting the case for more fine tuning.
He will be able to argue that there have been some failures, but generally the implementation has been successful, but in order to continue with FFP, adjustments will need to be made.

Now, the public presentation of those adjustments will be to add more 'fairness' to the regulations and make FFP better for everybody, but behind the scenes it could well be an excuse to change the regulations to target specific clubs whilst allowing other clubs to be judged on a different set of parameters than those used with City and PSG et al. Basically he's setting the scene to say 'All in all, it's not perfect, but it's gone quite well - we just need to change the rules to make it better' (changing the rules = shifting the goal posts to suit specific clubs).

 

[Didsbury Dave]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

FFP has more or less stopped the influx of overseas investors into the British game, and the peak of Billionaires created by the privatisation of Eastern European state assets has also passed, so the drive to reinforce FFP has gone. But they'll keep some form of it in place to ward off new clubs. What's the incentive or the Champions League clubs to lift the barrier to their private club? There's none. City will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of FFP if the reports on the healthy state of City's finances are true.

I think there is an incentive to open up the membership of the 'elite':

1) An established 'elite' becomes stale and ultimately less exciting. So far, CL's done well, but in recent years, fans have complained about the general predictability of things. The group stages haven't had the massive appeal they were supposed to have.

2) Any elite group of business has to walk a fine line between fending off competitors and increasing profitability through to growing the market, or improving their product. Sometimes that means swapping out the dead wood of the elite and bringing in a new player. Any group of businesses will be open to another new business IF they can see a way of benefitting from it. The likes of City and PSG are overtaking some of the old guard, and bringing new interest to CL, and potentially new and more sponsorship.

3) Some of the investment that's happened at PSG and even more so at City might be wanted by some of the elite. Because of that, they can't hit City and PSG too hard, just in case they need some of the same magic dust in future.

And also, ultimately, the money invested by the billionaires filters down through football. The hypocracy of Arsene Wenger complaining g about our spending and then trousering £70m to pay off their stadium debt it astounding.

UEFA cannot be so stupid as to to not remember than it's only 25 years since the entire game was on it's arse, in terms of support and cash. It can happen again. Has there ever been another industry which was so cocksure that it turned away external investment?

 

[BillyShears]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

FFP has more or less stopped the influx of overseas investors into the British game, and the peak of Billionaires created by the privatisation of Eastern European state assets has also passed, so the drive to reinforce FFP has gone. But they'll keep some form of it in place to ward off new clubs. What's the incentive or the Champions League clubs to lift the barrier to their private club? There's none. City will be one of the biggest beneficiaries of FFP if the reports on the healthy state of City's finances are true.

I think there is an incentive to open up the membership of the 'elite':

1) An established 'elite' becomes stale and ultimately less exciting. So far, CL's done well, but in recent years, fans have complained about the general predictability of things. The group stages haven't had the massive appeal they were supposed to have.

2) Any elite group of business has to walk a fine line between fending off competitors and increasing profitability through to growing the market, or improving their product. Sometimes that means swapping out the dead wood of the elite and bringing in a new player. Any group of businesses will be open to another new business IF they can see a way of benefitting from it. The likes of City and PSG are overtaking some of the old guard, and bringing new interest to CL, and potentially new and more sponsorship.

3) Some of the investment that's happened at PSG and even more so at City might be wanted by some of the elite. Because of that, they can't hit City and PSG too hard, just in case they need some of the same magic dust in future.

And also, ultimately, the money invested by the billionaires filters down through football. The hypocracy of Arsene Wenger complaining g about our spending and then trousering £70m to pay off their stadium debt it astounding.

UEFA cannot be so stupid as to to not remember than it's only 25 years since the entire game was on it's arse, in terms of support and cash. It can happen again. Has there ever been another industry which was so cocksure that it turned away external investment?

That's always been my biggest hatred of Wenger and Arsenal. The fact they've pocketed more money from us than any other PL club, which has allowed them to be as financially strong as they are and pay off their stadium debts, and yet he still complains about our spending.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

I think there is an incentive to open up the membership of the 'elite':

1) An established 'elite' becomes stale and ultimately less exciting. So far, CL's done well, but in recent years, fans have complained about the general predictability of things. The group stages haven't had the massive appeal they were supposed to have.

2) Any elite group of business has to walk a fine line between fending off competitors and increasing profitability through to growing the market, or improving their product. Sometimes that means swapping out the dead wood of the elite and bringing in a new player. Any group of businesses will be open to another new business IF they can see a way of benefitting from it. The likes of City and PSG are overtaking some of the old guard, and bringing new interest to CL, and potentially new and more sponsorship.

3) Some of the investment that's happened at PSG and even more so at City might be wanted by some of the elite. Because of that, they can't hit City and PSG too hard, just in case they need some of the same magic dust in future.

And also, ultimately, the money invested by the billionaires filters down through football. The hypocracy of Arsene Wenger complaining g about our spending and then trousering £70m to pay off their stadium debt it astounding.

UEFA cannot be so stupid as to to not remember than it's only 25 years since the entire game was on it's arse, in terms of support and cash. It can happen again. Has there ever been another industry which was so cocksure that it turned away external investment?

That's always been my biggest hatred of Wenger and Arsenal. The fact they've pocketed more money from us than any other PL club, which has allowed them to be as financially strong as they are and pay off their stadium debts, and yet he still complains about our spending.

He complains about it because it suits his narrative, not because he actually believes it.

 

[OB1]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

I see what you did there ;-)

I'd be surprised - (a) it's not really their game and (b) they haven't got any money.

IBM were hinted at a few pages ago (it is their game and they do have the money) but that doesn't fit with the German comment.

Could be Software AG I suppose, but I don't think they are big enough?

Not sure I'd agree with (a). They already have pretty substantial deals with the NFL. I think they are a McClaren F1 sponsor as well as being involved in golf and tennis. As somebody pointed out, they recently signed a deal with Bayern Munich to provide sports analytics functionality (something they provided for the German World Cup winning team).

I thought they also already had something in place with regarding analytics with one of the other Bundesliga sides.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

And also, ultimately, the money invested by the billionaires filters down through football. The hypocracy of Arsene Wenger complaining g about our spending and then trousering £70m to pay off their stadium debt it astounding.

UEFA cannot be so stupid as to to not remember than it's only 25 years since the entire game was on it's arse, in terms of support and cash. It can happen again. Has there ever been another industry which was so cocksure that it turned away external investment?

That's always been my biggest hatred of Wenger and Arsenal. The fact they've pocketed more money from us than any other PL club, which has allowed them to be as financially strong as they are and pay off their stadium debts, and yet he still complains about our spending.

He complains about it because it suits his narrative, not because he actually believes it.

Not so sure about that. If you keep saying the same thing over and over eventually you start to convince yourself, even if you didn't believe it in the first place. He's become such a bitter old **** - in large part because of his being a "specialist in failure" - I don't think he can see the wood for the trees these days.

 

[BillyShears]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

He complains about it because it suits his narrative, not because he actually believes it.

I wonder what will shape the narrative when Arsenal supporters realise that even with "financial doping" they can't catch up to City because Wenger is long past his use by date.

 

[stony]

Re: City & FFP (continued)

Why do City want the monitoring period extended if we're going to be ok with this years figures ?