PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[domalino]

There's a more fundamental issue involved here. Getting back to basics, why can't an owner spend his/her/their own legally acquired money how they wish on their business?

Is there a popular professional team sport without financial controls?

There's a reason that football, cricket, rugby, baseball, basketball, fomula 1, NFL, Hockey etc. all have cost controls , and it's because sport isn't actually that fun to watch when it devolves into a competition of who spends the most. It's only a minority view on here only because we're one of the 5 highest spending clubs in the world and the assumption is that because of our owners we'd win any financial arms race.


If someone doesn't want to have limitations on the amount they invest, they can buy a football club in a league that has no restrictions, or a team in a sport without them. The argument was only slightly convincing when owners who had invested in clubs pre-2011 were made to sign up to financial controls, but that argument was pretty quickly lost whn they all agreed to it (for self serving purposes) instead of challenging the introduction of controls in the subsequent 15 years.

 

[Bluewonder]

Is there a popular professional team sport without financial controls?

Football 10 years ago?

 

[GornikDaze]

There's a more fundamental issue involved here. Getting back to basics, why can't an owner spend his/her/their own legally acquired money how they wish on their business?

Where the PL & UEFA should step in is if the owner loans money to the club & it's on the books as a repayable debt, or commercially borrows the money & levies the debt against the club, & it's at an unsustainable level which the club can't repay without the owner's wealth keeping the club afloat.

If the owner stands for this debt personally, what's the issue? What the PL & UEFA should also do is ensure annually that total club debt (outside of long-term infrastructure costs like a mortgage, but including repayment costs) shouldn't be more than 25% - 30% of the club's gross annual turnover.

This approach would encourage football investment & grow the brands involved, whilst protecting clubs against reckless, profligate owners willing to gamble a club's existence in pursuit of success.

What the PL & UEFA are doing isn't protecting the clubs from themselves or reckless owners, they're protecting the elite cartel clubs from outside competition, whilst stifling investment from ambitious, but responsible owners.

What flummoxes me is why the clubs in the chasing pack can't see the sense & nonsense in any of this? It's not like City haven't been warning them for the last decade...

Extra like for use of the word “flummoxes” :)

 

[waspish]

Is there a popular professional team sport without financial controls?

There's a reason that football, cricket, rugby, baseball, basketball, fomula 1, NFL, Hockey etc. all have cost controls, and it's because sport isn't actually that fun to watch when it devolves into a competition of who spends the most.

So football before the rules wasn't that much fun? Seems the media has changed the minds of the majority of people now?! Shame!?

 

[r.soleofsalford]

Well here's the thing... There was a time (not too far in distant memory) when football fans attended football matches, watched the game & had banter with fellow & opposition fans about what happened on the pitch.

Manchester City have changed this forever! Chelsea aren't skint, & can evidently afford the £Billions Bohely is happy to spend on turning his club into a Superpower.

In any other sphere of business, this would be seen as perfectly fine, but because of the FFP/PSR that UEFA/G14 & the PL have brought in to nobble City, other clubs are inadvertently being forced to pull all manner of accounting sophistry in order to remain compliant against the rules they approved purely to stop an opponent from competing with the elite cartel clubs, who had complete control & dominance over football.

Do UEFA or the PL REALLY think these constant financial battles are a good look for the beautiful game? When you step back & take a global overview of what modern football has become, it beggars belief that it's come to what we see today.

And I repeat, none of this was brought about to promote sustainability in football. It was all a mechanism to stop City, which is now crippling those who signed up to it.

Again, what about the football?

I`ve said it before. the Premier League are in the process of killing the golden goose, not intentionally, but as a result of trying to REGAIN and protect United, Liverpool and Arsenals position at the top of English footballs pyramid.
They cant do this by beating us on the field or by football management only by changing the rules retrospectively as most of them have been. What they have done in trying to damage us is damage themselves and the rest of the clubs and the Premier League itself.

CUNTS

 

[Sir Joe Aguero]

Apologies because it’s almost definitely been answered before but I can’t find it; what were we actually found guilty on in the CAS verdict in respect to the 2-1 vote? Was this for an aspect of the charges or the whole charge itself?

 

[r.soleofsalford]

There's a more fundamental issue involved here. Getting back to basics, why can't an owner spend his/her/their own legally acquired money how they wish on their business?

Where the PL & UEFA should step in is if the owner loans money to the club & it's on the books as a repayable debt, or commercially borrows the money & levies the debt against the club, & it's at an unsustainable level which the club can't repay without the owner's wealth keeping the club afloat.

If the owner stands for this debt personally, what's the issue? What the PL & UEFA should also do is ensure annually that total club debt (outside of long-term infrastructure costs like a mortgage, but including repayment costs) shouldn't be more than 25% - 30% of the club's gross annual turnover.

This approach would encourage football investment & grow the brands involved, whilst protecting clubs against reckless, profligate owners willing to gamble a club's existence in pursuit of success.

What the PL & UEFA are doing isn't protecting the clubs from themselves or reckless owners, they're protecting the elite cartel clubs from outside competition, whilst stifling investment from ambitious, but responsible owners.

What flummoxes me is why the clubs in the chasing pack can't see the sense & nonsense in any of this? It's not like City haven't been warning them for the last decade...

Absolutely. common sense

 

[domalino]

So football before the rules wasn't that much fun? Seems the media has changed the minds of the majority of people now?! Shame!?

Well Remember football had spending controls into the 60's.

Are you telling me you've not heard a million FOCs on here tell everyone how much better the football league was when teams came and went at the top of the table and United/Liverpool didn't dominate the top of the table for 40 years? It's not a coincidence that competitiveness decreased rapidly as soon as clubs' spending became unregulated.

We know from decades of data that the biggest predictor of league position at the end of the season is how much is spent. We all see for ourselves every year how the major compeititons boil down to 3/4 clubs in the world who can spend enough to compete, and the number is shrinking every decade.

There's only 4 relevant countries in European football these days because unless you're from a TV market with 30m+ people, you can't afford to compete.

Why is that better than a level playing field again? Because we're one of the lucky few? How quickly people forget...

 

[domalino]

Football 10 years ago?

That'd be a no then.

 

[Bluewonder]

That'd be a no then.

And it has done a lot of good since its introduction, hasn't it?

Not like we have:

Chelsea effectively asset stripped (sale of hotel) to meet arbitrary target;

Everton forced into a sale to 777 Partners and an increased chance of ultimate insolvency;

Clubs at the bottom threatening to sue one another for alleged rule-breaking;

A 6 year investigation into the audited accounts of a leading club and accusations of accounting fraud which appear to have limited evidential credibility; and

Continually changing rules to prevent aspirational clubs competing at the top.

Is there anything else I'm missing?