Now that I think about it, I remember reading around that time that the main reason prices had gone up wasn’t actually the Neymar ripple effect so much as the increased revenue from TV packages, that more than anything else giving clubs more money to splash, which ultimately doesn’t really matter when it’s such a closed market.
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Good post, i agree with a lot of what you say, but setting up a fair system is the issue.
I wish people would stop comparing what Everton and Forest got done for to what City are charged with, you aren’t comparing apples to apples you’re comparing apples to piece of coal.
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I had a similar conversation with a collegue who couldn’t underatand why Everton and Forrest got delt with so quickly compared to why it is taking so long to deal with City.
The easiest way I found to explain it was comparing the police arresting someone for shoplifting where there is CCTV and video footage of the person stealing, and then compare how difficult it would be to investigate a serial killer that has 115 victims. Maybe I was a bit extreme, but he hasn’t moaned to me since about why it is dragging so much.
So I guess that is a win for me 
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One is a case about how what is in the books shows an operation being out of compliance.
The other is about a set of books showing perfect compliance but with a collection of contradictory evidence suggesting a lack of compliance and fraud perpetrated to make the books look clean
They are not just different in the severity of the offense, but they are completely different in the type of offense and the measure necessary for regulators to demonstrate the malfeasance.
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Im reading stats about how well Haaland tends to start the season. After last weekend he has played 19 games in the month of August and now has 30 goals.
There has to be relevance to the fact he’s Norwegian and so tends to get a better summer break than most other top players, right?
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Interesting piece here from the Athletic about the City case, but less on the nuts and bolts and more on how people in the game are speaking about it. I know the idea that the Premier League doesnt care and is willing to go easy on them, but this is a really strong rejection of that idea.
Of course everyone quoted is off the record as an unnamed source, but that attitude of executive of both other clubs and the league itself is portrayed as believing the book needs to be thrown at them, not just for what they did, but the conduct in defending themselves.
Selected quotes…
One Premier League executive says there is a feeling within the league’s HQ that City have simply “taken the p***” since receiving their first letter from the Premier League on the matter in 2018. This person argues that if City accepted some fault from the outset, they may have taken a substantially smaller punishment than the one which could now be imposed. “They wouldn’t have been relegated, but they have now dug themselves into the massive hole. And it’s either a massive leap that gets them out scot-free or a massive sanction. It is a Hail Mary.”
As one Premier League club executive says: “The collective view I’ve heard is that an appropriate sanction would have to be a points deduction so substantial — we are talking here between 70 and 80 points — that it guarantees City a season in the Championship.” Another of the sport’s leading figures suggests the punishment ought to be more creative, that many points could be deducted from City in each of the next three seasons, meaning the club’s chance of Champions League qualification would be severely restricted.
I think the most encouraging point though is made by the head of the US broadcaster addressing the question of whether City disappearing would negative impact the value of the product they spent billions to acquire the rights for
Miller said: “It doesn’t question the value at all. What it says to me is that the people who are leading the Premier League very much are hands-on and they’re going to enforce their rules. It’s important that the league has got their hands around this and they’re not afraid to impose discipline where they think it’s needed.
“I actually applaud them for the stance they’re taking, even if it might move a team into a relegation zone or out of a Champions League or Europa League place. I would rather make sure the league is run on a fair basis, that everybody plays by the same rules.”
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The problem, of course, is that it sounds as though they will retain all the trophies they won while they were cheating.
Those trophies should all be stripped from them, even if they aren’t retrospectively awarded to those teams who finished runners-up.
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Is there really that much value in having a cheating team dominate the league? I’d argue that it’s indeed the opposite effect. No one wants to watch something like that.
It’s like the whole thing that I can’t remember who said during the whole Super League saga, the idea that football should just be shrunk to 20 minute games so it can be squeezed onto TikTok, or something like that. Who are these idiots?
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And relegation isn’t sufficient. They need to be dissolved, and anyone involved permanently banned from any involvement in football.
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Thing is it’s also a team that are still struggling to dominate kit sales say like Man Utd and Liverpool of the past. Their fan base for whatever they claim is still smaller than other clubs.
They wouldn’t be missed in the slightest.
I am of CG’s point of view on this, those titles should be stripped. I don’t much care if they remain null and void. But for them to have nothing in the official records would send a message.
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Domestically maybe, but I dont think that follows in a lot of the international markets, and especially not the US. Increasingly people have been watching as something close to a consumer than a fan, and with more of an interest in star players than teams. It means their interest and support is very fluid. And if City collapse Haaland will still be playing somewhere, and someone else will be winning the league golden boot.
So I think from the US stakeholder’s perspective, they are not that concerned about cheats at the top as long as it is done with marketable stars. But they also wont care about that team going away because there will still be marketable stars to focus on who their consumers will switch their attention to at the click of their fingers.
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Do City have any real star players apart from Haaland? I’m not sure they’re that all marketable…
Also, is the revenue from there that big?
What a lot of people tend to overlook with the relegation punishment, is that could kill Man City as a ‘big’ club.
The F/L and each of the leagues all have their own FFP and PSR rules, and generally are a lot tighter and more strictly enforced, so if they get relegated, they could see themselves kicked out of the Championship for failing their FFP, then have to face League One FFP and League Two FFP, which with their squad would mean one the total gutting of the first team and U/23 squads, especially if Abu Dabai pull out, which I imagine they would, so Man City playing Non-League football could end up beig a possibility…
I will try to find the video tonight, but there was a couple of guys a while back did a test running a heap of saves all involving City getting either kicked out of the Prem, or so heavy a points deduction they got relegated and in every simulation they failed the FFP tests in each league dropping out of the F/L all together
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Thing is Man Utd are for whatever we think of them still a very global club, they are a bit like the Yankees as I said.
Another team similar to that is Barca, I think you’ve seen the issue in France though, dominated by one club that bought all the stars up and effectively promoted itself on the back of Mbappe and Neymar and the like and yet now it’s all a bit of a mess with them having to show their own league via their own system in the UK.
PL has two marketable clubs and a couple of others around them. Spain has two.
Take Barca they continue to be a mess but around here in London they are probably one of the biggest merchandise I see.
Saying that Chelsea have dropped off in favour of Arsenal so make of that what you will. Chelsea seems mostly female now which makes sense with the women’s team around the corner.
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I think I’m turning all @Nikola on this, but I want them condemned so badly that no club ever tries that again. If that were us I’d be so ashamed of us as a club.
EDIT: The reference to @Nikola being that I fear that they will somehow manage to cheat the regulations somewhere and still survive as a viable club that can make it back to the Premier League within a few seasons.
The US is by a long way the second biggest market for the prem. And importantly, still appears to be growing with continued substantial room for more growth. The broadcast rights with NBC alone is bigger the cost of the domestic rights for La Liga in Spain.
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Guess the plastics there will just have to make do with Salah for star power…
Now I’m curious as to who makes the cut for superstardom powerful enough to be a draw on their own.
I am a vengeful soul.
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Sorry, I got distracted and forgot to add in the bit about pessimism. Be right back.
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