Again, and I don’t know how many times I need to say it, I agree the impact on staff and jobs can’t factor into the decision making but it doesn’t mean there can’t be some compassion for those it will affect. And not just employees but also all those other businesses that’d be caught up too.
And yes, the punishment needs to be severe. I just can’t see why any football fan would hope for another club to disappear. I also don’t think there’s a remote possibility that happens so there’s a whole load of people here setting themselves up to be enraged by the punishment that is handed down because they’ve built this quite fanciful expectation up in their own heads.
Won’t ever happen so why even pretend this negates that.
Also, companies act unethically and illegally all the time. But just because it happens everyday doesn’t mean we turn a blind eye. Just as people losing jobs ever day doesn’t mean we should just shrug our shoulders in this instance.
I know. The person who called me that did so because I’m not on board with dishing out a death sentence. That’s where you joined the discussion to tell me I needed to remember what they’d done.
Yeah, Man City will continue to exist as an entity. They’ve been around long before Abu Dhabi came in so what you hear is everyone getting overly worked up over this. My main thing is, strip the titles, all of them from the start of their reign until now because they were all built on that massive cash dumping period. So that is the negation of their ill-gotten gains: zero gains.
Next is punishment for the actions and exemplary ones. The club itself wasn’t corrupt before. It was made corrupt by the new ownership. So that has to be kept in mind when doling out the punitive measures.
Would be good if they were suspended from every competition for 3yrs… and large financial fine.
Re-instate them in the PL on the 4th year with a points deduction of 50points…
This problem is not just about punishing them in the present, I feel there is a need to set them back from whence they come…
By suspending them (the club), the players, backroom staff might move on, ground staff, catering staff, maintenance etc could continue in a reduced capacity maybe…
This stain of a club needs to be re-built from the foundations up again, but obviously, within the rules of PL/Club ownership…
All existing titles etc to be made void as a strong reminder to all
Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano has issued a “𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐭” message to other club executives about the club being found guilty of a majority of Premier League charges, BBC Sport has been told.
He was speaking at a board meeting of European Football Clubs (formerly the ECA) in Copenhagen before its general assembly on Tuesday.
Soriano was said to have vowed to fight the charges and the process had a long way to run, reiterating what City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said in a letter to fans on Saturday.
Nobody’s chucking names around mate. But if City’s survival depends on PL and CL revenues how did they survive when they were in the toilet at Maine Road? Nobody is suggesting stopping fans going to their massive stadium. At most there might be some well-deserved lean years but the sheiks won’t let their fave sprotswashing business go bust. And anyway, who cares now?
It’s not the individual charges which is the problem, it’s that they have brought the entire game into disrepute. They have damaged the entire league and the value of it, by cheating over a prolonged period.
Honestly given the damage to reputation, the cost of lawyers to reach this point, and general acting in bad faith, if I was the PL I would not be looking at a points dedication. I would be considering full expulsion, forced sale as owners have not proven themselves fit and proper or some other punishment reflective of the level of damage done.
Agree and those concerned about the effect of PL sanctions on City’s survival as a club should bear in mind it will be small beer if the police and HMRC get involved now, as they should. Those guys have legal powers to demand full disclosure of every document and email in that club and will discover the full extent of their malfeasance. I think some folks aren’t quite getting how serious this stuff is. It’s corruption on a grand scale.
I can’t believe I have to explain this but when City were playing at Maine Road they didn’t have a modern PL ground, a huge training campus or £250m wage bill.
The sheiks can’t just fill the financial hole left by the loss of TV and commercial revenue. That’s kind of how this whole thing started.
The missed out on CL qualification two seasons in a row because of City. Would they be in League One now if they’d had two more years in Europes top comp?
It counts for nothing in the court of law (or arbitration), but their conduct throughout has evoked the famous legal aphorism
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell”
Throughout they have claimed incontrovertible evidence of their innocence they cannot wait for people to see and failed to present it across 3 different hearings. The have expressed a desire to see this wrapped up quickly and then obstructed and delayed at every turn, in one case to the point of getting away with it on a technicality. They have spoken about respecting the impartial process while repeatedly insinuating other have agendas and are bent, all while basing their defense on nothing more than outspending the prosecution.
This is not the playbook you follow when the facts are on your side.
The problems at Leicester go way deeper than just a loss of football revenue. The King Power group itself, a duty free company that makes all its money from the Chinese market, took a fucking tanking with Covid and never recovered.
It was definitely a perfect storm of stuff but they have concerns way beyond what is happening with their dad’s football club that the kids never had the same affinity for.
I mention Leicester because I have some understanding of their situation and the struggles two relegations has on a club who have been operating with PL budgets.
And sure, maybe they finish fourth in one of those seasons at the end of that period of City’s cheating. But their problems stem from the tragic passing of the chairman and the subsequent fall out and poor management of the club that followed.
Leicester are an interesting example because they overspent when getting out of the championship…and I think only escaped punishment from the league because they had made it into the premier league.
They’ve had a whole series of scrapes and near misses so Im likely forgetting one, but the most memorable one was after they over spent in an attempt to stay up, but eventually got caught in 23. The Prem then found them guilty of violating FFP for the period that had just ended, and Liecester were able to argue that as they had already been relegated they were no longer a premier league club for the end of the reporting period and so not under their jurisdiction.
But the problem with overspending as a football club is it isnt like you or I going on a spending binge and then being able to reign it in. These are often expenses you are committed to for years and are difficult to shift, and so they eventually got done for violating the EFL’s rules once down there
Indeed, they’re almost exactly the kind of mess these rules were brought in to help prevent. But the constant mismanagement and banking on a brighter tomorrow that never really came has really hurt them.
Then you get the poor spending of that money followed by appalling management hires and the host of external factors and it all just looks incredibly bleak.
People can try and say that without City’s cheating then Leicester might not be where they are. But I reckon they’d be on the same trajectory and a good way there even with an extra season in the CL.
So many worrying things I hear. The training ground alone costs them £20m a year to run which is more than 10% of their latest published revenue figures that covered their last season in the PL. They’re basically limiting club media presence at away games to one car load to save on mileage costs. Contractors not getting paid for months on end and then withholding payments because the turnover of staff is so high the people who approved the expense are long gone and now no one wants to pay it. They were ringing around local businesses and organisations desperately looking for sponsors. The organisation I work for was approached about being front of short sponsor next season which if you knew where I worked would tell you how desperate they are.