Martin Samuel: The plot to shackle City & Chelsea

[metalblue]

Re: The plot to shackle City & Chelsea

Private and confidential huh?

I wonder which of the "Chelsea, Manchester City, Fulham, West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa" who are against it accidentally leaked this.

What all these clubs shouldn't forget is when Chelsea came in to buy SWP it about kept us afloat....same when we got Lescott for Everton....Cruz from Blackburn...

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

The Barclay article is not quite as bad as I'd feared but, like so many others, it misses the crucial point. The top teams got the most cash, so could pay the biggest wages, attract the best players and therefore remain at the top. That's the situation those clubs engineered, encouraged and perpetuated through higher ticket prices, keeping all home ticket receipts, failure to cap wages or fees, etc.

The cartel of the rags, Arsenal, Liverpool & Chelsea complacently and patronisingly sailed along through the CL, taking the money and using it to maintain their dominance. Chelsea were seen as an annoyance but they'd been up there anyway so no one's nose was really pushed out of joint. Then we came along and Liverpool started to struggle. Spurs got their nose in as well so instead of 4 clubs comfortably sharing the top four places between them, it was now 4 from 6. Now it looks like Liverpool have dropped out of the race completely, at least for the time being. Nothing to do with shit owners who thought they could turn a fast buck or less shit owners who were generally pretty clueless. It was our fault for robbing them of their history and heritage.

Now Arsenal could be about to join them. Nothing to do with having a warring boardroom, a manager to whom spending money was somehow seen as classless and ambition limited to securing fourth place. No - it's all our fault again so let's stop City.

And then we have the rags, burdened with debt by another group of grasping owners, who only know one way of doing things, which is to spend as little of your own money as possible but borrow as much of anyone else's as you can, then secure it against the assets of the club you've bought. The debt restricts your ability to spend as much as youd like but so what, we'll just stop others doing it.

Spurs have a billionaire owner but no way is he going to risk his own money. So he's not bothered and is happy to join with the cartel. Despite the fact his club pioneered holding companies and flotation, which did so much to shape the modern football business. When it suited them to flout the rules, they did so deliberately & willingly.

No one was bothered about these things when John Wardle risked a large part of his fortune to keep us afloat. I'm all for fair play but it's got to be fair to all 20 clubs, not just a few.

 

[moomba]

This talk about our spending leading to inflation.

Arsenals top 6 wage % increases since 1996:

1997 - increased by 51.8%
2002 - increase by 51.1%
1999 - increased by 37.1%
2000 - increased by 28.2%
1998 - increased by 26.3%
2006 - increased by 25.6% (Abramovich era)

So their five biggest wage rises in % terms came before Roman. Their biggest since Sheikh Mansour is 15.2%, the 9th highest in the last 16 years.

Chelsea and us are a convenient excuse for clubs that would rather bank their money than spend it improving their team.

 

[inchy14]

Re: The plot to shackle City & Chelsea

Private and confidential huh?

I wonder which of the "Chelsea, Manchester City, Fulham, West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa" who are against it accidentally leaked this.

What all these clubs shouldn't forget is when Chelsea came in to buy SWP it about kept us afloat....same when we got Lescott for Everton....Cruz from Blackburn...

Should have let them go bust!!

 

[M18CTID]

Re: The plot to shackle City & Chelsea

Private and confidential huh?

I wonder which of the "Chelsea, Manchester City, Fulham, West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa" who are against it accidentally leaked this.

What all these clubs shouldn't forget is when Chelsea came in to buy SWP it about kept us afloat....same when we got Lescott for Everton....Cruz from Blackburn...

Despite all the bile spewed our way from Moyes et al, regarding the Lescott transfer, I remember reading an Everton fans' take on their accounts about 18 months ago and he readily admitted that the Lescott money pretty much stopped them going into administration.

As you say, the money we got from Chelsea for SWP helped prevent something similar happening at City.

 

[Anonymous]

Re: The plot to shackle City & Chelsea

Despite all the bile spewed our way from Moyes et al, regarding the Lescott transfer, I remember reading an Everton fans' take on their accounts about 18 months ago and he readily admitted that the Lescott money pretty much stopped them going into administration.

As you say, the money we got from Chelsea to SWP helped prevent something similar happening at City.

Lest we forget just how much money Arsenal have banked from us for their unwanted assets (i'm disregarding Nasri as they would've kept him if they could). We paid through the nose for Adebayor and Toure. They were happy to let Clichy go and with a year left on his contract the 7 million we paid was about right. But the fact is they were happy to see the colour of our money when it counted.

It's the same when you look at comments like the ones from the guy from Dortmund before we played them. He slagged us off to high heaven and back, but if we were to offer them 50 million euros for Goetze they'd snap our hands off and use the money to build two new teams!

The unrelenting hypocrisy of Arsenal and United in particular complaining about our spending and the wages we pay is as laughable as Samuel suggests it is.

 

[M18CTID]

The Barclay article is not quite as bad as I'd feared but, like so many others, it misses the crucial point. The top teams got the most cash, so could pay the biggest wages, attract the best players and therefore remain at the top. That's the situation those clubs engineered, encouraged and perpetuated through higher ticket prices, keeping all home ticket receipts, failure to cap wages or fees, etc.

The cartel of the rags, Arsenal, Liverpool & Chelsea complacently and patronisingly sailed along through the CL, taking the money and using it to maintain their dominance. Chelsea were seen as an annoyance but they'd been up there anyway so no one's nose was really pushed out of joint. Then we came along and Liverpool started to struggle. Spurs got their nose in as well so instead of 4 clubs comfortably sharing the top four places between them, it was now 4 from 6. Now it looks like Liverpool have dropped out of the race completely, at least for the time being. Nothing to do with shit owners who thought they could turn a fast buck or less shit owners who were generally pretty clueless. It was our fault for robbing them of their history and heritage.

Now Arsenal could be about to join them. Nothing to do with having a warring boardroom, a manager to whom spending money was somehow seen as classless and ambition limited to securing fourth place. No - it's all our fault again so let's stop City.

And then we have the rags, burdened with debt by another group of grasping owners, who only know one way of doing things, which is to spend as little of your own money as possible but borrow as much of anyone else's as you can, then secure it against the assets of the club you've bought. The debt restricts your ability to spend as much as youd like but so what, we'll just stop others doing it.

Spurs have a billionaire owner but no way is he going to risk his own money. So he's not bothered and is happy to join with the cartel. Despite the fact his club pioneered holding companies and flotation, which did so much to shape the modern football business. When it suited them to flout the rules, they did so deliberately & willingly.

No one was bothered about these things when John Wardle risked a large part of his fortune to keep us afloat. I'm all for fair play but it's got to be fair to all 20 clubs, not just a few.

Fantastically put.

 

[M18CTID]

Re: The plot to shackle City & Chelsea

Despite all the bile spewed our way from Moyes et al, regarding the Lescott transfer, I remember reading an Everton fans' take on their accounts about 18 months ago and he readily admitted that the Lescott money pretty much stopped them going into administration.

As you say, the money we got from Chelsea to SWP helped prevent something similar happening at City.

Lest we forget just how much money Arsenal have banked from us for their unwanted assets (i'm disregarding Nasri as they would've kept him if they could). We paid through the nose for Adebayor and Toure. They were happy to let Clichy go and with a year left on his contract the 7 million we paid was about right. But the fact is they were happy to see the colour of our money when it counted.

It's the same when you look at comments like the ones from the guy from Dortmund before we played them. He slagged us off to high heaven and back, but if we were to offer them 50 million euros for Goetze they'd snap our hands off and use the money to build two new teams!

The unrelenting hypocrisy of Arsenal and United in particular complaining about our spending and the wages we pay is as laughable as Samuel suggests it is.

I've often made the same point that Arsenal have happily trousered the thick end of £70 million from us for those 4 players, of which only 1 (Clichy) has justified the transfer fee we paid for him (Nasri may in time). Arsenal must've been pissing their sides laughing when we gave them £25 million for Adebayor, yet despite us helping to pay a sizeable chunk of their stadium debt off they still have the cheek to slate us.

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

Barclay makes a fool of himself again. He undermines his case by defending Bill Kenwright. Everton are one of the worst run clubs commercially and Kenwright is their equivalent of Peter Swales. They were winning titles in the 80s and have a strong fanbase but have done nothing to modernise their operation for decades. It is not the "market's fault" that Everton are in the mire...it's managerial incompetence.
Kenwright has been a total commercial failure and even clubs like Stoke City are run in a more professional way.
City's plans for the Academy were made clear from the first day of the takeover and are nothing to do with FFP... it's just that most media pundits chose to ignore them. It is an incredible situation when a few fat cats at the top of an induustry are allowed to run things in their naked self interest. No industry can operate without external investment and FFP will slowly lead to the death of football. The first impact will be a huge cut in TV money because no one will want to watch the same old Cartel winning things every season.

 

[OB1]

The Barclay article is not quite as bad as I'd feared but, like so many others, it misses the crucial point. The top teams got the most cash, so could pay the biggest wages, attract the best players and therefore remain at the top. That's the situation those clubs engineered, encouraged and perpetuated through higher ticket prices, keeping all home ticket receipts, failure to cap wages or fees, etc.

The cartel of the rags, Arsenal, Liverpool & Chelsea complacently and patronisingly sailed along through the CL, taking the money and using it to maintain their dominance. Chelsea were seen as an annoyance but they'd been up there anyway so no one's nose was really pushed out of joint. Then we came along and Liverpool started to struggle. Spurs got their nose in as well so instead of 4 clubs comfortably sharing the top four places between them, it was now 4 from 6. Now it looks like Liverpool have dropped out of the race completely, at least for the time being. Nothing to do with shit owners who thought they could turn a fast buck or less shit owners who were generally pretty clueless. It was our fault for robbing them of their history and heritage.

Now Arsenal could be about to join them. Nothing to do with having a warring boardroom, a manager to whom spending money was somehow seen as classless and ambition limited to securing fourth place. No - it's all our fault again so let's stop City.

And then we have the rags, burdened with debt by another group of grasping owners, who only know one way of doing things, which is to spend as little of your own money as possible but borrow as much of anyone else's as you can, then secure it against the assets of the club you've bought. The debt restricts your ability to spend as much as youd like but so what, we'll just stop others doing it.

Spurs have a billionaire owner but no way is he going to risk his own money. So he's not bothered and is happy to join with the cartel. Despite the fact his club pioneered holding companies and flotation, which did so much to shape the modern football business. When it suited them to flout the rules, they did so deliberately & willingly.

No one was bothered about these things when John Wardle risked a large part of his fortune to keep us afloat. I'm all for fair play but it's got to be fair to all 20 clubs, not just a few.

Fantastically put.

I don't have the time to rant about how Financial Fair Play is nothing of the sort but it isn't. Like PB, I'd accept proper FFP that was designed to make the league truly competitive - Samuel touches on U.S. style sports income distribution - but what these clubs want and what UEFA's rules serve to perpetuate is an elite group of clubs. Fortunately, as PB mentioned in another post, City are through the door and should be able to stay there. We have very smart people owning and running the club and I would hope that they are quietly assessing all their options and planning for various scenarios. The question I have is a what point do City need to get tough and make some noise about all this?