I'm no cynic said:I always believed that FFP should have been challenged in the courts rather than City to "take a pinch". Although the moral ground might have been captured by the action that the club took, all that has happened is for our critics in the media, other clubs and the ignorant majority of supporters of other clubs who use forums such as the Daily Fail to continue to slag our club off. By taking the FFP issue to court, at least we could have cleared the air and just got on with the job unmolested.
They couldn't ban us from the C/L immediately. This action would have been met with a court injunction and the club could have continued it's business until the outcome of the case.Exeter Blue I am here said:I'm no cynic said:I always believed that FFP should have been challenged in the courts rather than City to "take a pinch". Although the moral ground might have been captured by the action that the club took, all that has happened is for our critics in the media, other clubs and the ignorant majority of supporters of other clubs who use forums such as the Daily Fail to continue to slag our club off. By taking the FFP issue to court, at least we could have cleared the air and just got on with the job unmolested.
But we couldn't though could we?! It would have taken us 3 or 4 years to do that, and in the meantime they'd have had us out of the Chimps League, and Kun, Silva, Kompers, Ya Ya etc would all have left. And even if a decision had gone in our favour (something there was no guarantee of), we'd have been back to Year Zero. I'd far rather treasure the last 5 glorious years worth of memories, and take it as it comes re FFP in the future
but then we'd have been screwed 10 times more by the refI'm no cynic said:They couldn't ban us from the C/L immediately. This action would have been met with a court injunction and the club could have continued it's business until the outcome of the case.Exeter Blue I am here said:I'm no cynic said:I always believed that FFP should have been challenged in the courts rather than City to "take a pinch". Although the moral ground might have been captured by the action that the club took, all that has happened is for our critics in the media, other clubs and the ignorant majority of supporters of other clubs who use forums such as the Daily Fail to continue to slag our club off. By taking the FFP issue to court, at least we could have cleared the air and just got on with the job unmolested.
But we couldn't though could we?! It would have taken us 3 or 4 years to do that, and in the meantime they'd have had us out of the Chimps League, and Kun, Silva, Kompers, Ya Ya etc would all have left. And even if a decision had gone in our favour (something there was no guarantee of), we'd have been back to Year Zero. I'd far rather treasure the last 5 glorious years worth of memories, and take it as it comes re FFP in the future
FanchesterCity said:I think people are putting an awful lot of blind faith into the club, and just assuming 'everything will be ok'.
To my mind, this is a game of cat and mouse. UEFA lay out a set of rules (whatever we think of them) and we (City) 'creatively' try to find way to reduce costs, and increase profits.
Some of those 'creative' techniques are probably genuine attempts to improve the structure and capability of CFG. Some of them will undoubtedly be attempts to skirt FFP. But there's the rub; CFG's jewel in the crown is City, and so most of the accounting and structure is going to be optimised to best support City. That's inevitably going to result in City ditching any loss making aspects of City to other groups until they become profitable.
In one man's eyes, that's sensible. Why should City suffer at the hands of UEFA whilst parts of the business at in 'start-up mode'?
In another man's eyes, it's hiding losses in other parts of the business that are far from 'start-up' departments, but are for all intents and purposes critical City departments.
If there's one thing we can safely assume, it's that UEFA will interpret any creative restructuring in the worst possible way. The FFP regulations themselves are shockingly ambiguous, and UEFA are largely judge and jury too. And let's not forget, the vast majority of our peer clubs will be far from helpful in supporting our case. It's City (and to some extent PSG) against the rest. Worse still, PSG are not exactly helping our case. They (arguably) make us look worse, as their financial activities and exploits reflect on us too. The media tend to treat us partners in crime, which is entirely unacceptable.
We simply aren't safe from UEFA. It's madness to think otherwise. We are their FFP guinea pig, and they will experiment with us for quite some time.
I fear we'll have a rocky ride for a number of years.
Cobwebcat said:UEFA would be out of their mind to take any action against City right now. The court case which could well rule FFP illegal starts in only three months.
It might be my imagination, but whenever Pelle gives a press conference about transfers he always takes the opportunity to mention how City are constrained by FFP. I think the reasoning is twofold; first it reiterates that we are following UEFA's instructions and second it puts it out there that we are being affected by the ruling.
If the ruling is quashed then City will have many examples of how we were adversely affected by an unfair rule, which is a nice bargaining tool with UEFA for any future issues.