PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[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?

 

[domalino]

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;

Sorry, are you really pretending these things didn't happen betwee 1960 and 2011? They did.

As for the PL investigation "lacking credibility" - according to who? City fans. No one else thinks they lack credibility and more importantly no one fucking knows because no one has seen any of the evidence for or against the case.

So again I go back to the point that there is not a single popular team sport int he world without some sort of financial control, and that's for the very simple reason that sport is less entertaining when you make the financial bar to success so high that only 10% of the clubs competing can actually win.

 

[dadnlad]

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...

it'll be drummed into them in side room meetings that this only benifits state owned clubs (i Know were not but the narrative is state funded )

 

[BlueAnorak]

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?

Utd, Newcastle and 4 others (not City) under HMRC investigation (for Tax Evasion) due to their implentations of Image Rights Tax Avoidance schemes. - Fordham is a mere bagatelle in comparison!

 

[waspish]

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...

All well put but I remember before these rules any fans saying it's not fair that the usual clubs spend much more than other clubs, example when Blackburn spent a fortune Newcastle buying shearer.. you can't make rules to make it fair financially unless you go down the American rules.. why not give Every team the belief that if a very rich person buys there club they could just win the major trophies! Now there is no belief from fans.. don't kill the dream..

 

[Bluewonder]

Sorry, are you really pretending these things didn't happen betwee 1960 and 2011? They did.

As for the PL investigation "lacking credibility" - according to who? City fans. No one else thinks they lack credibility and more importantly no one fucking knows because no one has seen any of the evidence for or against the case.

So again I go back to the point that there is not a single popular team sport int he world without some sort of financial control, and that's for the very simple reason that sport is less entertaining when you make the financial bar to success so high that only 10% of the clubs competing can actually win.

The point re 1960-2011 is a straw man, the regulations have obviously not made things better.

I said lacking in evidential credibility; given the fastidious nature of statutory audit and the evidence in the public domain, as a chartered accountant I would describe the PL's allegations as extraordinary.

As for the last point: football has always been dominated by certain clubs and these regulations have exacerbated that, not alleviated it, and I suspect that was the intention all along.

 

[halfcenturyup]

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.

Not sure having some form of financial control is a minority opinion on here. The issue is balancing an owners' right to invest in a club against, firstly, putting the club at financial risk on the one hand and, secondly, increasing competition within, and the competitiveness of, the league.

Views on here are distorted, obviously, firstly by the way poor rules have been largely put in place either to stop City developing, or at least stopping another City-type project and, secondly by the perceived unfairness (to the fanbase) of the timing of the introduction of FFP following three decades of dominance by other clubs.

I am pretty sure most on here would welcome financial controls that ensure real sustainability whilst, at the same time, allowing clubs to develop should their owners wish to invest.

 

[cheekybids]

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.

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

To be fair …… the sheik did buy a football club where there was no limitations.

 

[Cotton Weave Blue]

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?

super league is the long term vision all along