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

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

Marcotti's article was quite interesting though it assumes that the application of the FFP regulations is straightforward, but in the Adjudicatory Chamber the judges will almost certainly be required to rule on the rules themselves. I have not read an opinion by a bona fides commercial lawyer which rates them as any higher than "well worth a challenge", but the most interesting was by an American commercial lawyer who had been asked to mount the defence he would present in court if required to do so by UEFA.

His main argument would be that FFPR do try to protect competition and though some of their provisions may appear ant-competitive when taken in isolation, when taken as a whole their aim is clearly to increase it. Just as a ban for taking a banned substance in athletics reduces competition by removing one athlete from it, it is clear that the ban is justified because it protects healthy, fair competition. Thus a limit on the investment made by a super rich owner is a restriction on his rights, it is justified in that it protects the essential competition at the base of any sport. Related party deals are to be controlled to prevent such owners circumventing the restrictions on investment.

He did, however, confess that the FFPR are "exceptionally fragile legally", because he didn't know how such arguments could be maintained when the rules were subjected to detailed examination, as they inevitably would be in the Chamber. They could not really withstand assertions that restrictions may be acceptable if the regulations did protect competition, but these regulations never get anywhere near doing that. In fact the opposite is more probably true.

His real weakness is that UEFA starts from the assumption that football is perfectly competitive now and that this needs protection from certain very rich club owners. In fact, this is not true. Very few clubs are "competitive" in financial terms. Most clubs are not competitive at all in financial terms. They are not competitive for a variety of reasons, not simply because their owners cannot plough billions into their clubs. Yet that is exactly what those clubs at the pinnacle of the game have done - the briefest perusal of their books shows that they did spend more than their revenue, and some of them did it repeatedly as they established their position at the top. Many are carrying very high levels of debt, but UEFA has never found this to require action, and they will keep any benefits acquired from the excess spending and debt. This hardly enhances competition when debt is not allowed to other clubs.

Debt is symptomatic of other failings in FFPR. Shareholder investment is the ONLY element of the balance sheet on which FIFA takes action. Historic debt is ignored, the inequalities of sponsorship and commercial deals are ignored, and "football related income" is allowed, though it may mean running a hotel on the other side of the world. UEFA will have difficulty explaining why these are so much fairer than shareholder investment. In fact rather than enhancing competition FFPR will cement the position of those clubs presently at the pinnacle of the game. It will make it much more difficult for other teams to qualify for the CL so that the disproportionate rewards for CL teams will make fair competition even less likely.

Our "expert" would not be confident of success!

 

[mancity dan]

Have we been banned yet? ;o)

 

[cmdub]

I'll be curious to see how we handle whatever punishment we get if any

 

[oakiecokie]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2261817/Arsenal-Manchester-United-financial-fair-play-plot-ruin-Premier-League--Martin-Samuel.html

This is a good read

^^^^^^^^^ this.
They are all pissing in one filthy stinking pot, financial fair play........... My arse.

It is 12 months old for fucks sake.

 

[bigf42]

From Oliver Kay in the times today


Commentary
Driving to the Etihad Stadium last night, past the new sixth-form college and community sports centre, it was not easy to embrace the idea that Manchester City represent the dark side of European football.

Construction on the Etihad Campus, built around the existing stadium, is well advanced. From next season, all of City’s teams — the seniors, all the age-group teams, the newly formed women’s team who will play their first Super League fixture tonight — will be housed there.
Across the road, over a 60-metre footbridge, is Connell Sixth-Form College and the vast community sports and leisure hub that are joint ventures between the club and Manchester City Council.

There are those at City who will try to persuade you that, under Sheikh Mansour’s ownership, they are the model club. They tend to be a little too evangelical about it, given that the scale of the spending has some damaging knock-on effects and that nobody mistakes Abu Dhabi’s motives for pure altruism, but when they ask whether you would prefer this type of approach to that of the Glazers across the city at Manchester United, you are left with the unmistakable feeling that Uefa has picked the wrong targets.

City are about to fall foul of Uefa’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations. Well, of course they are. These regulations were drawn up precisely to rein in clubs, such as City, restricting external investment to a maximum of £37 million over the two seasons to May 2013. Under FFP, owners can take as much money out of football as they wish, but Uefa will come down like a ton of bricks on any investors seeking to use funds to transform a club for the better.
Uefa says that FFP is all about trying to protect clubs from themselves, to ensure that they are sustainable for the long term. This all sounds fair enough — we do not, after all, want another Portsmouth — until you consider that the first time the phrase “financial fair play” was initially mentioned in Uefa circles, in 2008, the foul play that it was aiming to combat was what David Taylor, the joint general secretary, called “a problem with clubs that secure debt . . . in order to compete at a higher level than their resources would allow”.

As it transpired, FFP ended up morphing into something totally different. That was inevitable once Michel Platini, the Uefa president, allowed the European Club Association (ECA) to have a huge input in setting out the policy. Ask the powers-that-be at Bayern Munich, Real Madrid, AC Milan, United and the rest what is the great financial peril in European football and they did not say debt; the elite, naturally, were far more interested in self-preservation, which meant reining in clubs such as City.
There is plenty to be said for that, plenty to be said for doing something to control the type of ownership model that has an inflationary impact on wages across the game (although no club have had such an inflationary impact on wages and transfer fees over the past decade as Real). The problem is that if FFP were really about financial fair play, it might also have sought to bring more equality not just between leagues but within leagues, such as in Spain, where broadcast revenue is dominated by two clubs.

FFP does some positive things, such as encouraging transparency and the settlement of fees owed to clubs, but there is a problem with a system that turns a blind eye to the type of ownership model that allows clubs to be bought by characters of dubious pedigree and intention or, closer to home, to be exploited by the worst kind of venture capitalists.

The Glazers effectively bought United in 2005 with the club’s own money. Since then, sustaining the Glazer regime has cost United approximately £585 million in interest payments, bond buybacks, management fees and so on.

The introduction of FFP gave Uefa an opportunity to address all manner of financial ills and disparities within the game, but it has ended up very different to the approach that was initially envisaged. Whereas the Football League’s financial regulations seem to be a very committed drive to saving clubs from themselves, the Uefa version appears to serve nobody more than the ECA elite who were so heavily involved in writing the rules in the first place.
If City, Paris Saint-Germain and others have breached regulations that they knew were in place, they have to punished, but whether FFP is about “fair play” is another matter entirely.

Manchester United
£51.6m: Manchester City’s loss for year ending May 2013
£148.6m: Manchester City’s combined losses for 2011-12 and 2012-13
£37m: Maximum permitted losses for 2011-12 and 2012-13, excluding investment in stadium, training facilities and youth development
£585m: Sum spent by Manchester United to enable and sustain the Glazers’ ownership since 2005

 

[Spursy22]

Spur supporter here. I'm reading through this thread and I really hope for your sake the owners take FFP more seriously than you guys do.

I think you guys will probably pass ffp this time coz you guys are showing improvement even tho you haven't fully met the requirements.

But I wonder if you guys are gonna start taking it to considerration from now on like Chelsea are. I know that most of you want another revamp in the summer, which might be neccessary as a lot of your players walk around thinking that City owe them and City are lucky to have them instead of the other way around.

If you guys do go on another spree from now on without considering ffp you can't complain about any reprecussions which might follow.

 

[mancity dan]

Well written by Oliver Kay

 

[SupermanUnderpants]

All this makes me think that there's some kind of old, out dated inner system of power in football, not UEFA and the official arms of controlling football but those within these organisations have their own corrupt inner circles.

It's Conspiracy time, like the illuminati of football. A new generation with new ideas comes along and firmly upsets the old establishment. This old inner circle of power are now literally scraping the barrel for reasons to make new rules so they can preserve the status quo. Thats the gist right, the established base of power in football are not happy so they're forcing hands.

UEFA really need to take a look at themselves (which is fucking laughable, since when do those with power ever do that). They themselves had over a decade to do something about over inflated transfer fees, wages and the influence of agents on the game and pricing, where were they? Nothing was done at any point to tackle these issues, which are the root problems of this FFP bullshit anyway.

I cant see any country, any market impose these kind of restrictions without breaking anti competition laws. Unless your UEFA or FIFA?? Fuck that, world markets cant get away with it so why should they.

Investment in football has the opposite affect to what Blatter is saying, if he needs proof, tell him to look at how much more competitive the Premier League has become since our takeover. Is that a coincidence? No, I call it rebalancing competition.

I challenge a journalist to do some proper journalism here, actual investigative journalism into inside corruption in the FIFA and UEFA.

The last thing is if this does go through, then we as fans need to act, and make sure no UEFA or FIFA rep can walk the streets feeling safe. Sometimes things are worth fighting for, and a readdressing of power in these corrupt establishments is worth just that.

 

[Balti]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2261817/Arsenal-Manchester-United-financial-fair-play-plot-ruin-Premier-League--Martin-Samuel.html

This is a good read

^^^^^^^^^ this.
They are all pissing in one filthy stinking pot, financial fair play........... My arse.

''Why would they vote to limit their possibilities simply to ensure the success of an established few? Why would any club with potential, from Aston Villa, to Sunderland or Southampton? Maybe it’s the Arsenal-headed paper reeling them in.

It always stood for something in the days when the club were the province of tradition, old Etonians and old money. Arsenal had class.

Arsenal had never been relegated. The chairman was posh and his name was hyphenated. When he talked, football listened.

This missive, however, is the work of an absentee American chairman and a chief executive whose grand plan would as good as hand the title to United each year, with his team coming an expensive second. Expensive for those watching, that is.

And who will preside over this, the world’s dullest league: why our old mate from Bank de Potless in Belgium. Thirty five quid a month on Sky, if you’re interested''

lol

spot on Martin

it's a self-serving wanabe cartel and FFP is designed to protect it

 

[moomba]

Re: City & FFP (updated)

Spur supporter here. I'm reading through this thread and I really hope for your sake the owners take FFP more seriously than you guys do.

I think you guys will probably pass ffp this time coz you guys are showing improvement even tho you haven't fully met the requirements.

But I wonder if you guys are gonna start taking it to considerration from now on like Chelsea are. I know that most of you want another revamp in the summer, which might be neccessary as a lot of your players walk around thinking that City owe them and City are lucky to have them instead of the other way around.

If you guys do go on another spree from now on without considering ffp you can't complain about any reprecussions which might follow.

I'll leave it to the people with a knowledge of our finances to determine our club policy.

I expect additions to the squad in the summer in line with all rules.

You might also be surprised to learn that Chelsea have outspent us in the transfer market over the past three seasons, earn less revenue than us, made a very similar loss to us and while our financial results arw improving year by year, theres is going the other way.