Yep
Thinking the same
If the UK had a competent Competition Authority, Im sure, there are also market distortion issues here to be investigated.
Theyve effectively distorted the entire EU transfer market.
which is why Citeh got into trouble with UEFA but UEFAās rules had time bars and had no legal powers to seize email correspondences.
Iāve not made any excuses not to punish them. Iāve said I canāt get excited about a punishment that would essentially kill them as a club but thatās it.
I think youāre conflating what Iāve said Iād like to happen and what Iāve said I think may happen or play a part in what happens.
If you think Iām over inflating their contribution to the commercial appeal of the PL in recent years thatās fine. Being the dominant force recently and the Pep Vs Klopp era itās not unreasonable to suggest theyāve become a big part of the commercial appeal and someone both the league and commercial partners have been more than happy to put front and centre despite the charges being leveled at them. I donāt really see how you could describe that as over-inflating anything.
And Iām not saying that whatever their role in the commercial aspects should be an excuse not to punish them incredibly harshly. In fact Iāve said explicitly I donāt believe it should be taken into account. But do I think it might happen anyway, well thatās a different matter. And based on some of the reports I think there are some fairly obvious concerns from other clubs about what financial implications there may be for them should City be gone for the foreseeable. And letās be fair, those clubs are closer to, more directly impacted and will have a far greater influence than any of us on here.
So thereās two conversations. What people want to see happen and what we think may happen. Those two things donāt have to be the same and shouldnāt be confused.
I havent seen the data, but across the various discussions Iāve heard recently (primarily the athletic and libero) there have been comments about the broadcasters viewing City as a surprisingly poor draw compared to what you might expect from their sporting status. The perspective is you replace them with any generic club competing at the top of the table and the viewing figures will be the same whereas the other clubs who tend to regularly compete - us, Utd, Arsenal - bring additional viewers based on who they are as clubs.
Remember, this is a club who routines sells out with a visibly quarter empty stadium and constantly offers promotions on ticket deals to get people in the door.
Letās face it without Klopp and Liverpool it would have been a cake walk for them for almost a decade.
People mock other leagues for that but it would almost have been a better France.
That is not, really, why he is voicing what he is. The problem he is facing, which is a problem of quite some proportions, is geopolitical and economical damage to the UK and the Greater City of Manchester (a very important economic hub, as we know).
That having been said, his statement is very unfortunate. But itās not really about football at all, but very, very big money.
Football is not very relevant when measured up against such grave matters. But itās the FA own fault this, they have allowed foreign ownership to this degree and welcomed the massive investment into clubs and local community. But such BIG money always, even when not stated, comes with bindings and make you vulnerable to blackmail. Rather catastrophical to let yourself be a country where the UAE and Saudi Arabia does sportswashing in such an obvious manner, but that is kind of besides the point and something someone should have thought about when the English Premier League was founded.
I would love it if English football found a way to fairly regulate the inflow of cash and ideally, there would not be billions in football. But as long as there is.
Anyway, I have several hundred posts to read and now I made the cardinal mistake of replying to one (I try to never do when I am so far behind) and now it will be beyond awful for me to get back and read the 700 posts since the one I replied too, due to lack of pages and the app taking you directly to ālast readā, which fucks up your reading to a catastrophical degree).
If only this forum had a navigation system that was not catastrophically obscenely awful.
Klopp was the draw. Kloppās last game had 70% more viewers than City who actually āwonā the league.
If managers canāt compete against a rigged league then top managers will be put off taking Premier League jobs, and that will ultimately hurt the bottom line.
Out of all the thousands of comments on social media regarding this subject, I havenāt read or seen that anyone else has read one single comment where any City fans are actually angry with their owners.
What a fucking odd breed they are
I know this is Daily Fail, butā¦
āAt the most traumatic point of my life, with my wife dying and worrying about our two teenage girls, my professional life was potentially endangering us all. When Helen died in December 2020, there was a surreal sense of relief that at least the worst elements of Cityās fanbase could no longer torment me over her illnessā
Stuff like this is the reason there should not be an outpouring of sympathy for Citeh fans. I for one will sneer at those Citeh fans if the appeal at the Board fails and the appeal to the High Court falls flat on their collective faces.
I will also be gloating at the man citeh fans when their sugar daddies fails the fit and proper test, and when the PL, FA, IFR tears the club apart and possibly the HMRC and the CPS filing charges against ADUG.
Klopp versus Pep was the draw. Tiki taka versus gengenpress. The orchestra versus heavy metal.
Sure, Kloppās last game is going to draw more attention. Itās a huge story, made all the bigger by the rivalry that emerged between us and City and him and Pep.
Managers will always want to come to the PL. Which manager has turned down and offered from a PL club because these charges have been hanging over Cityās head for the last 8 years? Carlo Ancelloti came here to manage fucking Everton of all clubs.
Iām having trouble understanding these worries tbh. More than enough people would still watch the Premier League without City and thereās more than enough money in the PL. The league would be absolutely fine imo.
I couldnāt read the Mail article, but I did find the details on his substack:
REVEALED: Manchester City legal letters where the main aim was to get me sacked REVEALED: Manchester City legal letters where the main aim was to get me sacked
This is actually what is known as Lawfare: using spurious legal action against journalists to silence them, knowing that they canāt afford to fight it.
The worldwide viewing figures really donāt back that up. If you go to the pre-covid seasons, it was Us, Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea who were the biggest draws. City came after that, but mainly because of their league position giving them more coverage than, for example, Everton.
There are a lot of other clubs who have a significant draw: Newcastle, Spurs, Villa etc.
Youāre trying to convince me of their status as if itāll make a difference to what I think might happen.
But thatās based on the fact some of the reporting very directly suggested there were some clubs who were expressing concerns. Anything that might negatively impact revenues for clubs will be met with opposition. Iād guess those clubs would have a better idea of what that impact may have than we as fans do. Iād also guess Liverpool wouldnāt be one of those clubs.
Ultimately right now no one has a clue whatās going to happen, how long itāll take and what impact itāll have. But I just donāt see how you remove a club as central to the story of the last 15-20 years of PL football overnight and everything just carries on as if it never happened. I fully accept I may be completely wrong.
Itās not the Scottish league with only two clubs that have a shout. Clubs have dominated and then fallen from grace: Leeds or Forest, for example.
The biggest disruption that the English league experienced is actually the creation of the Premier League itself.
No I am not. I simply countering the repeated assertion they are a big and critical commercial factor for the premier league. It has actually surprised me to learn how poorly their commercial performance has been viewed and I think some of the conversation about what will or wont happen may be influenced by a similar sense of over rating their actual commercial appeal that I had before being corrected on this. Whether that impacts your view on what will or should happen I dont know,
I dont think this is reasonable or relevant framing. The baseline has now changed with what has come out of the investigation. If someone was trying to assess the commercial impact of what happens next the framing is what happens to the prem if they essentially eliminate city from the picture with the punishment (with either handcuffs or expulsion) vs if they allow them to continue without what the public view as insufficient punishment. There is no continuing on as if nothing has happened now. The league is already meaningfully damaged now and nothing they do in response will change that. It is only now a case of making the least worst bad decision.