Platini Warns City

[Deleted member 14625]

FFP will save the Sheikh a bundle, as he will not have to spend as much in future in order to compete.

However, if someone came in and paid off the Rags' huge debt, then they would be so far ahead of everyone else, forever, that it would be scary. It's lucky for competitive football that they are handicapped.

And that is the real problem with FFP. It sets things in stone. It's the most crazy, ludicrous idea ever conceived in a madhouse by an extremely mad inmate stoned on acid. The people behind it do not want a 'level playing field'. In fact, that's the very last thing they want. They want the wealthy to stay wealthy and the rest to make up the numbers. City jumped on the last train just as it left the station, banging the door behind us. Everton, Aston Villa, Spurs, and a whole lot more have been left on the platform, and the track is being lifted.

Indeed!

I would love to see clubs like West Ham and Sheffield Wednesday taken over by very wealthy owners and progress and challenge with us at the top and play Europe. For me there's nothing worse than having the same team winning all the time, it's bad for the sport.

In decades to come I can see crowd sizes dropping significantly at all clubs apart from those who can win and that will be the end of domestic football as it is now. The Champions League will be the only competition the top teams will be in. That will be on a weekend. Domestic league games will carry on for "smaller" clubs but it will be a side show, the media will pay a little more attention to it as they do the Championship now. It will be all about the Champions League. Football wont be recognisable in 25 years time.

 

[MCFCinUSA]

No,depressingly, it's a business. Football is merely the product. This notion of the Corinthian spirit is as dead as the dinosaurs.

They may well have salary caps, by agreement in the US, however, as I point out, the second you restrict an employees earnings in Europe, you leave yourself open to challenge in the courts based on EU legislation, hence there is no way a salary cap will be reintroduced (it was abolished following a challenge many, many years ago).

How do you go about justifying to Wayne Rooney who puts bums on seats at the swamp, who is a source of vast commercial revenue to the rags, that he is going to earn minimum wage from now on despite being the main reason out of the 11 that people turn up, buy the shirts, mugs, videos, dvds ad nauseum? They don't come to see the swamp. They don't come to see the Glazers. That's why there will not be a salary cap.

It's a business. It's cold, hard, cash.

The second the rags floated as a PLC, that was it, game over. They were up for sale at any point, 24x7 to the highest bidder. Add in Sky, inflated ticket prices, the Champions League and the pigs guzzled greedily at a trough overflowing with money.

The beautiful game ceased being a sport and became a business.

They were partly responsible for creating this monster. They opened Pandora's box and it is a tad rich (excuse the pun) for anyone to be bleating about not being able to get the lid back on.

We ALL sat idly by and let this happen. Tough shit; as you sow, so shall you reap.

I would love to see a league where Wigan could realistically be in with a chance of being champions. I would love to see it so competitive that anything and anyone could win. As it stands now, even a big club like Spurs, Newcastle or even Liverpool will realistically struggle to win it again without huge investment.

They changed it to make it harder for the have nots to compete and to keep it all for themselves. They tried to ring fence the money and the trophies. Is that sport? Is that fair? Is that competitive? Of course it isn't.

I agree on most points there - but it's taken one of the richest men in the world to put us in this position. Aston Villa's owner was a billionaire when he bought them and he couldn't even get them into the top four. The gap to the biggest clubs you'd need to be a multi-billionaire to even have a chance of catching them.

FFP isn't going to stop a rush of billionaires taking over football because there aren't that many mega-rich football fans out there. It's intended to try and bring a bit of sanity back into those teams chasing glory - and it's true benefit will be felt further down the league.

I don't think we'll have any problem with meeting FFP, simply because of the extended reach and influence of our owners in Abu Dhabi - and the genuine way we've helped raise the profile of many of them.


As for salary caps - I agree that it's probably pie in the sky. The stable door is open and the horse has bolted, but that's no reason to give up. Some European sports do have caps, and EU law is unlikely to be a problem. The wage caps that were abolished years ago were tiny - with clubs essentially exploiting players but keeping the money to themselves. In the US the caps in the popular sports are huge, and based on the income generated, so the mega stars can still get paid mega-salaries. While no team in the NFL will have a salary close to that of City or United, the average across all the clubs is likely higher than across the premiership, so players won't lose out. It's not about reducing salaries, but making sure a handful of teams don't dominate.

I'll say one thing in addition to the above, although having resources is essential and more important perhaps than ever before with regards to survival in the upper echelons of British football, I do believe it's possible, albeit more and more unlikely, for a team to do a Notts Forest (with an equivalent to a Clough) but it's getting harder and harder due to the ever increasing competitiveness and professionalism of our league.

Real Madrid adequately demonstrated that simply throwing money at the game and 'galacticos' doesn't necessarily translate into a winning team. At the other end of the spectrum, Premier League teams like Wigan and Swansea have claimed 'bigger' scalps in this season's fixtures, with Everton (spending next to nothing) sticking four goals away at Old Trafford, and I need not say any more about the significance of this and the richness of our domestic game and the results it throws up.

Where I'd criticise a lot of clubs would be the off-the-field activities and upside down economics of the game.. along with the historically inept and antiquated 'management' at the top of the game, both domestically and (for other reasons) internationally. Bernstein is a big improvement on what we've had, and the sooner Septic Bloater's succeeded (but sadly it looks like it'll be by Platini) the better.

 

[Mr Ed (The Stables)]

As we all know, our owners are not stupid and they are not leaving anytime soon.

Let Platini say what he wants whilst we go about our business like we always have. Then people wonder why we don't particularly like the French.

C.nt

We taught them a lesson though in 1815 with a little help from our German cousins mind...he is an absolute tosser of the first order, and like others have said not one word about PSG!!

 

[Aguero]

Not sure if anyone posted or mentioned this before but I think people should have a read of this...

http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/manchester-city-masterplan.html

 

[hgblue]

FFP will save the Sheikh a bundle, as he will not have to spend as much in future in order to compete.

However, if someone came in and paid off the Rags' huge debt, then they would be so far ahead of everyone else, forever, that it would be scary. It's lucky for competitive football that they are handicapped.

And that is the real problem with FFP. It sets things in stone. It's the most crazy, ludicrous idea ever conceived in a madhouse by an extremely mad inmate stoned on acid. The people behind it do not want a 'level playing field'. In fact, that's the very last thing they want. They want the wealthy to stay wealthy and the rest to make up the numbers. City jumped on the last train just as it left the station, banging the door behind us. Everton, Aston Villa, Spurs, and a whole lot more have been left on the platform, and the track is being lifted.

Indeed!

I would love to see clubs like West Ham and Sheffield Wednesday taken over by very wealthy owners and progress and challenge with us at the top and play Europe. For me there's nothing worse than having the same team winning all the time, it's bad for the sport.

In decades to come I can see crowd sizes dropping significantly at all clubs apart from those who can win and that will be the end of domestic football as it is now. The Champions League will be the only competition the top teams will be in. That will be on a weekend. Domestic league games will carry on for "smaller" clubs but it will be a side show, the media will pay a little more attention to it as they do the Championship now. It will be all about the Champions League. Football wont be recognisable in 25 years time.

Totally agree with you mate. I suppose we could adopt the attitude of 'I'm alright Jack', because these regs came in too late to seriously affect us, but football is all about having a dream. It sustained us all when we were at our lowest ebb. We knew it was highly unlikely, but we dreamt of the day when a rich benefactor would arrive and we'd challenge the big clubs for trophies again. Well we're living proof that if you stay loyal and keep believing, then footballing dreams can come true, but FFP ensures that this will never happen again. Fans of Villa, Everton, Newcastle, etc, can forget ever having a realistic chance of competing for titles. This may not directly be bad for us, but long term it is bad for football, because I can see the day arriving when people become disillusioned with the same teams winning things year after year. The top clubs won't care though, because by then they'll be competing in a European Super League, and sod the rest.

 

[Rammyblues]

We taught them a lesson though in 1815

Best thing we did was name a station after it for the Eurostar, pity it has gone to Paddington now.

 

[MCFCinUSA]

I agree on most points there - but it's taken one of the richest men in the world to put us in this position. Aston Villa's owner was a billionaire when he bought them and he couldn't even get them into the top four. The gap to the biggest clubs you'd need to be a multi-billionaire to even have a chance of catching them.

FFP isn't going to stop a rush of billionaires taking over football because there aren't that many mega-rich football fans out there. It's intended to try and bring a bit of sanity back into those teams chasing glory - and it's true benefit will be felt further down the league.

I don't think we'll have any problem with meeting FFP, simply because of the extended reach and influence of our owners in Abu Dhabi - and the genuine way we've helped raise the profile of many of them.


As for salary caps - I agree that it's probably pie in the sky. The stable door is open and the horse has bolted, but that's no reason to give up. Some European sports do have caps, and EU law is unlikely to be a problem. The wage caps that were abolished years ago were tiny - with clubs essentially exploiting players but keeping the money to themselves. In the US the caps in the popular sports are huge, and based on the income generated, so the mega stars can still get paid mega-salaries. While no team in the NFL will have a salary close to that of City or United, the average across all the clubs is likely higher than across the premiership, so players won't lose out. It's not about reducing salaries, but making sure a handful of teams don't dominate.

If FFP is truly about stopping clubs saddling themselves with debt whilst chasing the dream, then why isn't money freely invested by a rich benefactor allowed to be classed as income, until that club reaches the stage where it's become self financing?

And that's the money question (so to speak)

It's about the G-14, it's not about stopping clubs going broke, it's about them staying at the top

True Squirty, but it's also come in part from clubs wishing there was a way to reign in some of the crazier expenditure and insane business decisions they've been making, in part through an official mandate 'from above'.

It would be smart to allow more outside investment into the game (through wealthy benefactors coming in to buy and fund their clubs without restrictions) which then could filter down through transfers and economic activity - like the investment going into our infrastructure, without all this FFP rubbish, and some of the more questionable aspects behind it.. Platini et al comprising part of them, sadly.

If the model was more like ours, and not the Glazers (who have basically been raping that team who won nothing this year) then there wouldn't be any problems - but I'm guessing there are certain vested interests still at play here, and a whole lot of cumbersome political and legal considerations to work through.

Not sure if Platini and Blatter are best equipped to handle this, but with a little luck these figureheads will get some decent advice from their own teams of advisors and professionals and we'll get there in the end. After all, they've got the money to figure things out and make some decent decisions if they want to.

 

[Rammyblues]

Those teams left behind on the platform can still invest to win prem league. So the days of the sugar daddy are not over. Wouldn't put it past them if the worse were to happen and say a Sheff Wed were to become champions and then not to be allowed in CL they would challenge it and IMO they would win and the whole thing will fall like a pack of cards.

Conspiracy theory number 20001

WCs in Europe have recently gone to Germany, Italy, France and Spain wonder if there was a link up to enable government money to provide top facilities at the top teams so that the clubs could benefit from the grounds and comply with FFPR. Look at the Alliance two thirds of it paid for by German tax payers wonder if that is why WC never came to England?

 

[jrb]

No mention of erm.....AnzhI?

The players live in Moscow and 'fly a 1000 miles for the home games'. Lol!

You've got to see this. (the ground and area)

F***ing off platini!

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15583553" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15583553</a>

 

[MCFCinUSA]

Not sure if anyone posted or mentioned this before but I think people should have a read of this...

http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/manchester-city-masterplan.html

yeah I read this some time back, and there's no question we'll be growing our revenues seeking to comply with whatever's going on with FFP.

I'm not so concerned about City for a lot of reasons, but there are other clubs who may not fare so well.

FFP needs to be sorted out, because ultimately it needs to work and should be agenda-free and for the true benefit of enhancing the game, competition, and its overall economic viability (and not 'massaged' for the benefit of protecting those in an exclusive club who are looking for additional 'help' because they can't otherwise hack it)