It won’t carry on as if nothing happened.
It will be a lesson to all clubs that cheating won’t be tolerated.
Football will be better for it.
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Another thing I had not realized until doing a deep dive into these findings is the initial account fuckery started before FFP compliance was even a thing. It appears they were initially motivated by not being seen to have broken Chelsea’s record annual loss figure even though there would have been no regulatory consequence for having done so. By the time FFP compliance came in they were already a couple of years into a book fudging scheme.
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https://x.com/eddiegibbs/status/2106685806173929529
Finish this Premier League season, but impose a points deduction sufficient to guarantee relegation and, subject to acceptance, allow the EFL to place them wherever they see fit.
Then:
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No parachute payments.
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30 point deduction the following season.
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20 points the season after that.
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10 points the season after that.
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Three years of severe transfer spending restrictions.
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Strip the domestic honours directly affected, including those after the initial investigatory period, and leave them vacant. No retrospective champions.
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Pay compensation where rival clubs can demonstrate genuine financial loss.
And finally, any owners, directors or senior executives implicated in the wrongdoing (potentially: Sheikh Mansour, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Ferran Soriano, Danny Wilson, Claire Catlin, Txiki Begiristain etc.) should face the regulator’s suitability process and, where they fail it, be banned from English football.
I don’t want Manchester City Football Club destroyed forever. City supporters, Liam Gallagher included, didn’t devise financial schemes or sit around boardroom tables constructing sham arrangements.
I want the competitive advantage gained through years of rule breaking destroyed, and those responsible held accountable.
One enormous points deduction followed by promotion and business as usual wouldn’t cut it.
The consequences should follow City for years.
Because if nine seasons of serious financial wrongdoing can ultimately be overcome with one bad season and a large cheque, what deterrent is there?
Make the punishment hurt. Make it last. Make sure nobody ever considers doing it again.
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Think I’ll just come back to this one once the punishment is published.
Maybe I’m just a cynic but I really don’t see this ending up being anything close to a lot of the ideas and suggestions floating around or even what I think should happen to them.
And for what it’s worth I think that suggestion above from Eddie Gibbs is pretty much on the nose with what I think should be the punishment. But I’m not sure you can put it in the hands of the EFL to decide if they place them in the Championship, L1 or L2. Do I expect that kind of punishment though, not really.
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Yeah. Like I said I’d be happy to see them in the Championship next season (a huge points deduction being the only punishment) I’d be happy with that but I think they will get away with everything.
They deserve much worse than that of course.
I dont think Eddie’s suggestions are viable.
For one, I dont think the EFL will be able to impose points penalties for things done when in the PL. Its not exactly the same thing, but it would be a simlar argument Leicester sucsessfully made twice.
The other big complication I havent seen anyone address is there is no way City get get into compliance with the EFL’s spending rules with the current squad. They would likely have to sell them all and start again, and even if done on a firesale it would give them such monumental legal revenue that they would be at an enormous financial advantage over the other Championship clubs even without parachute payments.
It just seems to me these sorts of multi pronged solutions become so convoluted trying to plug all the possible competitive advantages City might come away with that you probably get close to some sort of legal advantage for City to pursue some of Judicial Vindictiveness claim (dont know the position in UK law is on that). That’s why even though it seems harsher on the surface and more likely to result in push back, a simple expulsion and removal of the owners is a clearer outcome and you then just let what happens to City afterwards fall where ever it will.
Of course, that is not a prediction, just increasingly where I feel the just and cleanest outcome is
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Pretty much where I am.
The punishment they’ll end up with will be way less severe than the punishment they deserve and I want to see them get.
It’s a bit of a venting exercise calling them out and discussing how they should be dealt with.
But ultimately I believe we’re all going to experience feelings ranging from, feeling underwhelmed, to livid, to upset or depressed depending on who we are, when the final punishment is announced.
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It rather reinforces the point that City aren’t the EFL’s problem. At least, they shouldn’t be.
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From a marketing POV I think the Championship would jump at the chance to have Man City for a few years.
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I hope you’re talking about the Scottish Championship.
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You’d be surprised that even in their most successful periods, they were never the dominant team wrt commercial appeal.
That’s precisely why they’ve been cooking the books for a decade!
$830m worth of cookery…
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Fair: Upholding integrity, objectivity, trustworthiness, and competing fairly with a zero-tolerance approach to corruption or discrimination. [1, 2]
This is an AI summary of PL core values, this was line 4.
Problem for Citeh is, their persistent breach and obstruction to these core values, in any other membership, would warrant direct expulsion. Not rather a points deduction totting up remedy.
Soon we will get to see how deep corruption has penetrated the UK. Primarily, if they aren’t directly expelled and stripped of Titles then its another UK PLC farce.
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Hundreds of millions of pounds in investment into the UK economy (because the UK has put itself into the role of a luxury prostitute for extremely shady capital, don’t blame me for just noting the obvious negative consequences of that when you fall out badly with an extremely wealthy client), geopolitical retaliation elsewhere; including and not limited to, support of various groups and organisations.
But this is about money. A large lot of money that could be pulled out of the UK economy etc. But problematically, this is also about “face”. They stand to be humiliated in some serious public dirty laundry stuff here, and that unfortunately also counts and can trigger retaliation that may appear less rational if you remove emotions from the scenario.
They can do a lot to directly damage the UK, because your state is already some what beholden to them due to the massive money involved.
I mean, look at the debate over “Russian oligarch” money after 2022. It was rather unpopular to freeze them and remove all that juicy Russian capital from London. But that was forced, due to an overwhelming security threat and the invasion of Ukraine. There is no such critical reason here, just “sports”. So ofc, restricting the money flows from these awful regimes into the UK is going to be extremely unpopular and also economically damaging. One of the big minuses with wanting to be “the financial capital of the world” and etc.
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Idea City were only spending as others is
complete crap From 2009-18 over wages, transfer
amortisation and impairments, City spent: • £272m more than United (despite United
hiring far more staff)
• £301m more than Chelsea
• £802m more than Arsenal
• £840m more than Liverpool
And that was on,y declared accounts I assume?
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As for City, while the cases are not comparable, I think a similar fate to what happened to Rangers FC (as well as removal of league placements in this period), is justice, along with a massive fine ofc.
When it comes to the titles, I am ambivalent. I want City to lose them (they must), but I am leaning towards the best deterrent being those seasons being judged “Null and void”, rather than giving the medals to some other clubs like us and Manchester United. Because problematically, the City players were better. The problem is the composition of their team, as it had illegally “good” composition.
If the seasons they won were declared void, titles and medals withdrawn, it would go into the history books as a true era of shame. The EPL needs such cultural reinforcement in it’s memory, imo. Imo, the effect of giving their titles to someone else would arguably be less. I think the psychology of no one winning, because of them, is far more punitive and effective (as no one would ever f-ing forget that). After all, the City players cannot directly be blamed, their club must bear all the true blame (but sure, City playes will be culturally tainted by association, but they are not “guilty” of anything for real).
However, I am 600 posts behind everyone and I am not well read on what sanctions are actually logically feasable. I was speaking from my heart above, regarding what I think is right. But I don’t know the laws here like some of you do.
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Hence why a points deduction/relegation is not a fair pinishment.
Expulsion means Man City have to apply to be in the EFL, and they have said they would back the Premier League if they are expeled and not accept them meaning the would drop to National League or even lower if the N/L reject them.
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Much more polite than the phrase I would use. I worked in the department that dealt with inward investment at one point. When it was Japanese and Korean clients, you could tell that there was an integrity about them. But when it came to what my mother would describe as the “queer countries” I always suspected that things were not entirely above board. However, I didn’t really have an inkling about how depraved it could be.
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Catching up slowly lol
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Oh, I have read much about it in the regular media, of course. It’s just that when I saw this thread the day after the story burst, and saw how many unread posts there were. Well, for the same reason why I try not to respond to posts when I have a lot of unread in a thread, it makes me not want to read the thread without having a LOT of spare time (because of lack of pages and etc.). So I waited a week or so…
It’s simply because it’s such an awful hell to navigate from “read to unread” and get back again to where you were and so on.
Edit: Also, I have a problem with some of the stuff that is posted here, as it is a hassle to understand what “tweet” is from a relevant source and what is random Joe from the pub with no expert knowledge. People post too many opinions or statements from non-experts, and I don’t want to read those unless they are forum-members (in general). I want to learn, not become misinformed, haha !
So I suppose I try to read what Kopstar and Limiescouse writes here, since they seem to understand what they are talking about regarding the legal aspects and sanction possibilities. I do not have this knowledge and I have read so many different takes. And due to my lack of knowledge, it is hard for me to know which story is most authoritative without doing research I don’t care enough to do.
For instance, I have no fucking clue what is the most likely punishment City will get if found guilty. I have read and heard, everything from expulsion from the league to liquidation of the club to relegation to Liegue 2 in this thread and in the media. What is the most likely form of sanction ? I don’t know. Because 2-3 reputable newspapers have different takes and I don’t really know who is likely the closest to understanding the likely sanctions etc.
The problem with trying to predict sanctions is we are in uncharted waters. The UAE is pumping billions into the UK economy, so we can’t be sure, at all, that this will be a sporting matter that is not interfered with.
If it were, then titles stripped, and extrapolating, say, what happened to Everton, might be a good benchmark.
For reference, one charge, for a £20M overspend, saw a 10 point penalty reduced to 6 after appeal. And Burnley sued them for £35M.
Extrapolate that to 114 guilty charges, and all the non-cooperation, and the multiple clubs affected by their cheating, both at the top and the bottom (and everyone in the league I suppose, but most consequentially at the top and bottom) and…
Man City are, rightly, in an awful lot of trouble.
Factor in ownership issues and whether or not the Prem feels the current group can be trusted moving forward. And then factor in everything that happened after the investigated period, as the cheating continued, and whatever they ‘achieved’ in these years was on the back of established previous cheating…
You would have to think titles will be stripped, and the sanctions will, proportionately, be enough to see them fall out of the Prem, and not just for a one season ‘reset.’
Then beyond this, the likes of HMRC might get involved.
It looks very grave indeed, to me. And that is me trying to be restrained and proportionate.
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