UEFA Champions & Europa League Football Thread ** spoilers ** [16th - 18th May 2023]
- Thread starter explicit4u
- Start date
United did it before FFP and through commercial income and owners investing. City have received millions from sponsors setup with no offices, no staff and no discernible products or services as money was paid into their accounts and then transferred to City.
How are you proposing to change that? The cat is already out of the bag in Europe and none of you cared enough about Madrids finances when they were racking up titles and Champions leagues. I'd be all for zero state ownership of our clubs but the owners would just move to Europe and then the complaints would be not being able to compete for players and in Europe.
Fans only care about parity when it's not their team competing.
Caporegime
By actually charging clubs for breaking rules?
Your comparison with United is nonsense, we've been through it before on here and I think it was @BaZ87 who gave a very good breakdown of the differences.
This is before you even get on to the topic of the types of people you have owning 100+ year old institutions in our country.
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So then they were never going to be able to compete. Ever. Proving how pointless FFP was to any new ownership. City were lucky to have a couple of years before FFP, it would be even harder now if Elon Musk bought Coventry. There would never be a way they could compete, so what's the point. Just another farmers league.
Caporegime
They could have never competed over time with a more gradual process? Look at where the likes of Brentford and Brighton are with their model despite being much smaller clubs.
That's the issue, you're pretending it's black and white when there are levels to it and City went balls to the wall, likely breaking hundreds of rules in the process.
United are going to get battered...
Caporegime
Everyone had the opportunity to do what United did. Even Everton who were arguably bigger than United in the 80's. That was a whole different story. Man United just won in that respect. What City have done is nothing short of cheating. The squad and wage bill they have has been done by cheating revenue.
Also Newcastle will prove people wrong that you can become a successful club without cheating.
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So are Inter.
There is no gradual process. Brighton and Brentford are winning nothing. The only way to increase your revenue is to grow your fan base and you do that by winning in large enough numbers to capture a generation. You cannot compare the growth methods inn the same way as the 70 and 80's, or even pre premiership. Now kids can watch whatever team and game they want. They are not going to chose Brentford and Brighton even if they live in that Town/City. You cannot grow your revenue without success.
They will suffer the same fate as everyone else of their level that has gone before. Picked apart.
Firstly Everton were never a bigger club that United. Even when Everton had a brief 3 year window of success they were not spending or able to pay the wages the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal or United.
So how many titles do you think Newcastle are going to win in the next 10 years playing legit fair with finances? I can tell you, none. They have a brief respite because Ashley spent nothing. That's done them a favour. The second they have a world class player it would be taken away from them. They don't have the revenue to compete on wages or the transfer market. I'm sure they can consolidate themselves into a top 3-6 team but it's never going to be long term consistent success without creative accounting.
If they cheated I agree City deserve punishment, but lets not kid ourselves that your interest in FFP rules is little more than self interest to make sure no one can buy up the talent other than yourselves.
Caporegime
There's obviously a gradual process to making a club competitive again when you've got those kinds of funds. You're simply denying it because you believe what city has done is fine and want them to win a court battle that drags on for years due to your own position on FFP.
The part about revenue growth is pretty funny considering many of the supposed rule breaks involve falsifying revenue streams. While their organic revenue will have grown in the past 15 years due to their success, a huge part of that is due to them allegedly breaking rules to be able to buy and pay players and even managers inflated fees.
"Creative accounting" might be the biggest understatement I've seen in terms of the alleged breaches.
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I think people are kidding themselves if they believe that Brighton or similar could ever grow to the level of a Liverpool or Utd. It would take decades of success for their fan base to grow to a level in which they could monetise it in order for them to compete and they won't get the success without the money to begin with. What Brighton are doing is incredible but it's not sustainable, just look at Southampton - they were the Brighton of 10 years ago and now they're relegated. Brighton won't be able to replicate this level of recruitment forever and more and more clubs will start to copy the sort of model Brighton use to identify players, meaning it will come down to who has the most money again.
Bringing this back to the City situation. Yes City have cheated the rules and therefore should be punished but the rules are bs and designed to create a glass ceiling. City have broken the rules because they've been prevented from doing exactly what Utd done 30 years ago or Jack Walker and countless other clubs in decades gone. Now that's not to say that state ownership should be allowed, it shouldn't and neither should the crazy levels of spending be allowed by any clubs either.
Bringing this back to the City situation. Yes City have cheated the rules and therefore should be punished but the rules are bs and designed to create a glass ceiling. City have broken the rules because they've been prevented from doing exactly what Utd done 30 years ago or Jack Walker and countless other clubs in decades gone. Now that's not to say that state ownership should be allowed, it shouldn't and neither should the crazy levels of spending be allowed by any clubs either.
Caporegime
I've never stated that Brighton could grow to that level, that point is obvious. The point was if a club like that can get to say 5th or 6th in the PL with their model and much lower spending, a bigger club like City with obscene amounts of money could have built something over a longer period without all the rule breaking. That could have meant only the one title in 10-15 years but at least it wouldn't be tainted. It's almost embarrasing they've still not won the CL though that is likely to change within the next few weeks.
But how much money City's owners have is irrelevant if they were playing by the rules, which is the issue here. It would have been nigh on impossible for City to have won one PL title without breaking the rules that were in place because they could have only ever spent what they generated.
I actually wrote something about Brighton when this debate came up previously. If Brighton were in Europe over the past couple of years, they'd be charged by UEFA because even with their incredibly smart transfer business, they would have broken UEFA's FFP rules. And do you know how Brighton are going to comply with these rules from next season? They're going to have to continue to sell their best players and bank big profits from player trading in order to balance the losses they're making in their day to day activities.
Caporegime
Maybe they wouldn't have but there's still levels to this kind of thing and the scale of their revenue generation methods and number of breaches.
It sounds like there's no solution now and we're stuck with City at the top with the odd other team being able to compete every other season.
I still think it's strange why anyone other than a fan of that club or a one in a similar position would want this to be tied up in court for years on end if they have in fact cheated. That will likely be how it goes but to want it is another thing and where the original debate stemmed from.
Soldato
We're not stuck with City at the top, we are until Pep leaves. It's all him basically, and obviously having money when he wants. When he leaves, it'll be same as UTD, end of an era. Then a gap will be left for another team to swoop in. Maybe it's UTD, Chelsea with Poch...who knows.
Caporegime
This just shows how good arsenal have done this season to get anywhere near city for a title race
With your pitiful spending
Amazed you aren't fighting relegation with the pittance you have spent eh.
All joking aside, Arsenal have done well. Just a shame they ballsed it up at the end. Would have be nice to see City not do the treble and to have someone but City win the league.
Soldato
So is real Madrid no better than Arsenal? Lol
If City win their game in hand we'd still be behind them with the extra points from Southampton, Liverpool and West Ham if we would have won. Then we would have had to beat Brighton to be ahead. You just have to be perfect to beat them in the league and we are far from that. Bit depressing really.