UEFA FFP investigation - CAS decision to be announced Monday, 13th July 9.30am BST

[BAB.DAB]

Would that be from the hateful 8? Or EUFA?

City.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

So every club could agree on June 1st for a wage cap buy Preston get taken over by a billionaire on August 1st and suddenly something that was legal in July now becomes illegal in August because someone wants to go a spending spree?

I think you're comparing apples with oranges in your examples, you are using restrictions of trade and general employment laws from the past where we are speaking about agreements in advance of registering in a league or cup.

No-one is talking about "an agreement in advance of registering in a league or cup" because there is NO agreement, simply an acceptance of conditions laid down unilaterally. Either accept the terms or don't participate, but if you want to participate you have to allow us to do things the law forbids. That is NOT an agreement. Then you have to justify these unlawful actions and this is where you see the true weakness of financial regulation by football authorities, often self appointed. Why do UEFA want to limit the spending of clubs? This is where they have really struggled! First it was "to prevent rich men buying trophies". This, of course, was just after the takeover at City, but the trophies still went to the same rich men who'd bought them before, United, Barcelona, Munich, Madrid, the same who'd got into debt up to the eyeballs doing it. So then it was to "protect the financial stability" of the clubs. This one really is rich and takes the dog's whatsits. The first question they have to answer is why then do they reserve the biggest fines by far, the biggest fines in the sporting world, for the clubs whose financial stability is not and will probably never be under any threat at all?! And what I really look forward to is the reaction of those at UEFA as they twitch and squirm when City's QC reads out the following defence of our club on the question of the legality of FFP: The owner of Manchester City is Sheikh Mansour, a world statesman and businessman of international renown. His record of investing in companies and transforming their fortunes, turning them into market leaders is considerable and he is responsible for investing funds running into the many billions. In Britain many will remember him for his intervention in the crash of 2008 when he played a major part in recapitalising Barclays bank. His stewardship of Manchester City is maybe less spectacular, but he bought it for some £90 million and now sees it enjoying revenues of some half a billion pounds a year. It stands at the heart of the City Football Group, valued at more than £5 billion. What has been done at City is the transformation of the club from sick giant to football superpower.

But apparently the Sheikh is not up to the task, he cannot run his own business. He must rely on UEFA to do that for him. First Michel Platini - now banned for taking bribes for his votes - had to supervise the erection of a system to make sure Sheikh Mansour didn't spend too much. With the assistance of Mr Gill - who had helped turn his club into the most indebted club in the world - they devised a way of subjecting every aspect of City's finances to UEFA inspection and control - transfers, wages, squad size, while at the same time making sure that any other club would only have to wait a year before being able to do with impunity what City had been clobbered for doing. And all the time we had to accept that all those appointed by UEFA had the knowledge, experience AND INTEGRITY to measure up to such a task. It is a fair question : who is to be trusted to run City's affairs - it's owner or those appointed by UEFA, who will carry no responsability for the outcome? And now I would ask UEFA, who worry what City will do IF Sheikh Mansour walks away, won't they still have the ground, the £500 million pa revenue? And what will United have left if the Glaziers walk away? A dump of a stadium with a designer hole in the roof - and half a billion debt. Abramovitch?

But now we here from the likes of Sr Tebas that clubs shouldn't be allowed to use owner's money to buy a competitive advantage and inflate the market. So when City pay £50 million ( all from "allowed" revenues) for De Bruyne that is buying such an advantage and inflates the market: when Manchester United get Nike to shell out towards Pogba that isn't doing either and when Juventus double the value of their sponsorship deal with Fiat, owned by their owner, so they could spend £100 million on Ronaldo. That's UEFA's logical, business like plan for .... breaking every law on competition. Investment is encouraged in every other area of economic activity EXACTLY BECAUSE it makes companies more competitive and forces competitors to up their game.

Oh which of this actually deals with a club which seeks to gain a competitive edge by borrowing the thick end of £800 million over varying terms and then writes a letter calling for a rival to be deprived of its right to appeal a judgement handed down by a kangaroo court. That's the spirit of FFP.

As for your spending spree by Preston or whoever, what are you going to say when the owner of that club says "I put my money where my mouth is and my team isn't good enough to get me promotion. I'm going to spend to buy a better team to get us promoted and I will not accept that the rest of you can effectively decide my spending priorities because you don't want my team to become any better. If I don't get promotion it's because we aren't good enough : if I go bust I'm not going to let it be because you made all my club's decisions for me. After all, Ferguson spent like there was no tomorrow for seven years just to win the title - all shareholders' money, none of it earned - and then they decided he was the greatest manager ever!" Hard to give an answe a court would accept. When you let people by clubs, like any other firm, you have to let them run it within the law and football associations don't make laws.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

But they can invest in their own staff, it just has limits for entry to specific competitions. I'm not saying it's right or wrong just not illegal as bluesincehyderoad has claimed.

The clue is in the words limit and agreement. Any agreement to limit investment is prohibited

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

Why do we have more money than any other team?

£389m more reasons!

 

[Kazzydeyna]

That's essentially correct. I was told we sought and received assurances from UEFA that we were on the right lines as regards our accounting for these wages on three separate occasions and that we would not be sanctioned if we met the requirements of the then current rules.

UEFA didn't change the date however. They changed the basis of how to calculate if you'd met the relevant requirement, after the first set of relevant accounts had been published. Having just met the requirement under the original rules, in force at the year end in 2012 and still in force when we published the accounts, we then didn't meet the amended requirement. This particular one only applied to 2012's accounts so there was nothing we could do to amend anything.

This was done not long before we published the next year's accounts and having been given those assurances, we then thought we knew what level of loss we needed to show for that 2013 financial year. Undoubtedly we pulled a few tricks to meet that, as I've previously explained but what really tripped us up was the sacking of Mancini late in the 2013 financial year. Under the terms of hi revised contract, we had to pay 2 years' salary to him and his coaching team. The plan was to sack him anyway but after the end of the season, when the compensation would have gone into the next set of accounts. That cost us an unforeseen £30m I believe so we had to find the additional funds to cover that to ensure we were on course to hit our target loss figure. Hence the emails about bringing some sponsorship revenues forward.

Yet more reasons not to have sacked Mancini...


*Sits back and waits*

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

He thinks we will go for mbappe in the summer

Then he knows nowt!

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Yet more reasons not to have sacked Mancini...


*Sits back and waits*

That's an interesting one actually as it had unforseen consequnces financially. We put the £30m through as part of our wage bill, rather than as an extraordinary item, because it was contractual. When the PL introduced their own version of FFP, they offered two methods for measuring wage increases. One was based on an annual increase and the other used 2013 as a baseline. As we'd paid £30m more that year, because of the early sacking of Mancini, that basis suited us nicely and meant we never came close to breaching the PL's rules.

 

[SilvaisSkyBlue]

FFP doesn't limit owner investment, an owner can install gold plated toilet seats and have academies built on the moon if they want. The day to day part of the business must meet certain trading terms to qualify for entry to European competition. If you don't want to enter UEFA sanctioned competition you can spend what you. What is illegal about that?

Only yesterday Rick Parry was in front a government committe stressing the need for wage caps, he's hardly doing that if it's illegal?

You can’t see the irony in this if you think a system which allows owners to ‘install gold plated toilet seats and have academies built on the moon’ but cannot invest their own money in employing the best possible staff for their own business is acceptable?

The fúckwit you are replying to is a liverpool fan who pretends to be a Tottenham fan, and being a master of disguise chooses of all people Rick Parry to make his point...

 

[asahartford1]

That's an interesting one actually as it had unforseen consequnces financially. We put the £30m through as part of our wage bill, rather than as an extraordinary item, because it was contractual. When the PL introduced their own version of FFP, they offered two methods for measuring wage increases. One was based on an annual increase and the other used 2013 as a baseline. As we'd paid £30m more that year, because of the early sacking of Mancini, that basis suited us nicely and meant we never came close to breaching the PL's rules.

Are those Pl rules still in place?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Are those Pl rules still in place?

Yes and no. There's still a limit on losses (£105m) over 3 consecutive years but they abandoned the rules limiting wage increases. I'm sure it was a complete coincidence that the rags were in severe danger of breaching those.