City and Financial Doping | Charged by PL with 130 FFP breaches | Hearing begins 16th Sep 2024 | Concluded 9th Dec 2024 - Awaiting outcome

Man city owners and lawyers are like the turd that wont flush.

Fecking hell this is a farce now.
The fact they are going to be hated rather than just disregarded by the majority of the PL clubs and the EFL if they win just doesn't seem to register with them. The fact their players will end up as the easy target for the hate as well.
 
Every bit of what’s been written in this thread for years now is coming to pass. Spectacularly so.
It's amazing how it ever happened really but then it just felt inevitable when they cam in. You basically let them do what they want (which by the way, I don't think they've even done that well considering they've completely outspent everyone and now it looks the gap in spending is even more ridiculous than we already know) until something doesn't go their way and then they will throw all their toys out of the pram. In a way, the gov has no option but to back the PL because the alternative is so obviously going to turn the PL into some minor European league over time. Football is always working in cycles, Serie A was top, then La Liga, I couldn't really see how the PL would relinquish top spot given the money, but I guess this is it. Become some monopoly league of a team no one really cares about and have the colossal international fan base gradually move it's attention's elsewhere.
 
The fact they are going to be hated rather than just disregarded by the majority of the PL clubs and the EFL if they win just doesn't seem to register with them. The fact their players will end up as the easy target for the hate as well.

Except PSG and Newcastle fans, Most of the football world do not respect their club or the players "achivements" when everything is built on a foundation by sand and cheating on all aspects.

And what they are doing now mate, will only enhance the hate and lack of respect the rest of the world have for them. But like you say it does not seem to register with them.
 
City’s net spend since pep took over is 4th. At the end of the day given United’s net spend they should have done better.

Arsenal, Liverpool and United have all wrangled the FFP rules to their own advantage(amongst other things, e.g. cup rules) , whilst hiding behind sponsors from unethical companies with sweat shops / funding terrorists etc. Then cry foul because City have spent less(but more than you’d like) and dared to get into the self appointed elite. The only thing you lot care about is your position.

The teams in the league who are supporting City make sense to me. If you want the rest of the league on side introduce a wage cap and salary cap that is obtainable for everyone! or why shouldn’t we want to burn it down? the rest are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

Crying about your own position being taken whilst trying to pull up the draw bridge on everyone else is hilarious. Also Liverpool’s sponsor being linked to terrorism is a big deal, people cry about betting companies yet turn a blind eye to this it seems. Frankly, it’s all disgusting.

https://www.givemesport.com/every-p...et-spend-since-pep-guardiola-joined-man-city/
I'm all for contrasting opinions but I feel you're jumbling everything into one and also not really understanding the issue here.

Net spend is calculated on what comes in versus what goes out, so if a club is inflating what comes in (there isn't a grey area here, in 2011 they effectively valued themselves as the most valuable football club in the world with their £400m deal) so surely you see the issue with pointing out net spend as any kind of metric. That doesn't mean City have not sold academy players well, or reaped huge amount of money from winning things but then, again, that income is gained via cheating. So you have two huge factors, both under investigation, of building a successful team via cheating and also financing a team dishonestly.

That doesn't mean United should not have done better, we've been run appallingly but you can point to the very easy example of klopp/Pool of a club working well, finding a good manager and still having success with about a quarter, maybe even less, spend as City.

I get a lot of people have grown up hating United, I really don't get the idea of a cartel though as you can literally see our decline before your own eyes and we are the historical behemoths of the division. If you look through the facade of City trying to make this about 'us vs them' it's a country trying to buy a league, not a team, the UAE want to buy the league which is good for no one.

Re sponsors and terrorism/child labour, the PL has a duty to investigate all sponsors and maybe a bi-product of all this will be increased scrutiny and when things are found, they should be dealt with accordingly.

I don't get the point on FFP, it really doesn't stop other teams growing (I'd argue it handicaps the richer/bigger teams more), I don't understand your sentence on salary cap.
 
City’s net spend since pep took over is 4th. At the end of the day given United’s net spend they should have done better.

Arsenal, Liverpool and United have all wrangled the FFP rules to their own advantage(amongst other things, e.g. cup rules) , whilst hiding behind sponsors from unethical companies with sweat shops / funding terrorists etc. Then cry foul because City have spent less(but more than you’d like) and dared to get into the self appointed elite. The only thing you lot care about is your position.

The teams in the league who are supporting City make sense to me. If you want the rest of the league on side introduce a wage cap and salary cap that is obtainable for everyone! or why shouldn’t we want to burn it down? the rest are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

Crying about your own position being taken whilst trying to pull up the draw bridge on everyone else is hilarious. Also Liverpool’s sponsor being linked to terrorism is a big deal, people cry about betting companies yet turn a blind eye to this it seems. Frankly, it’s all disgusting.

https://www.givemesport.com/every-p...et-spend-since-pep-guardiola-joined-man-city/

Not the ridiculous net spend argument again, it means absolute feck all, especially if you're fudging your books to begin with
 
Chelsea and Newcastle backing City isn't surprising.

Incredible to think that if the takeover at United had gone the other way and the Qataris had won (as many on here hoped they would), United would almost certainly be on City's side in this battle.

Incidentally, in case anyone was wondering whether supporting the Qatari takeover at United last year and now condemning City for their flagrant rule breaches regarding related party transactions makes them a massive hypocritie, it does.
 
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City’s net spend since pep took over is 4th. At the end of the day given United’s net spend they should have done better.

Arsenal, Liverpool and United have all wrangled the FFP rules to their own advantage(amongst other things, e.g. cup rules) , whilst hiding behind sponsors from unethical companies with sweat shops / funding terrorists etc. Then cry foul because City have spent less(but more than you’d like) and dared to get into the self appointed elite. The only thing you lot care about is your position.

The teams in the league who are supporting City make sense to me. If you want the rest of the league on side introduce a wage cap and salary cap that is obtainable for everyone! or why shouldn’t we want to burn it down? the rest are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

Crying about your own position being taken whilst trying to pull up the draw bridge on everyone else is hilarious. Also Liverpool’s sponsor being linked to terrorism is a big deal, people cry about betting companies yet turn a blind eye to this it seems. Frankly, it’s all disgusting.

https://www.givemesport.com/every-p...et-spend-since-pep-guardiola-joined-man-city/
New member?

I for one am shocked!
 
Incredible to think that if the takeover at United had gone the other way and the Qataris had won (as many on here hoped they would), United would almost certainly be on City's side in this battle.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering whether supporting the Qatari takeover at United last year and now condemning City for their flagrant rule breaches regarding related party transactions makes you a massive hypocritie, it does.
The point has always been we don’t need a sugar daddy as such, more that we need someone to repay all the debt and sort the footballing side of the club out and then leave the club to run itself- we are in a very different position to City as we can finance everything from the clubs income alone without resorting to cheating. People were pro Qatar as they offered both sides of the equation whilst Ineos really only solve the footballing side.
 
New members popping up to defend City is hilariously blatant.

I must say after years of seeing this shite ignored, it's nice, albeit a bit bittersweet, to see it talked about in the mainstream, sadly its too late.
 
Not the ridiculous net spend argument again, it means absolute feck all, especially if you're fudging your books to begin with

Net spend is the metric if you want to compare how well clubs are investing their money on transfers, and there is no evidence of anything being wrong with those numbers from City.
 
The point has always been we don’t need a sugar daddy as such, more that we need someone to repay all the debt and sort the footballing side of the club out and then leave the club to run itself- we are in a very different position to City as we can finance everything from the clubs income alone without resorting to cheating. People were pro Qatar as they offered both sides of the equation whilst Ineos really only solve the footballing side.
That only works around the current competitive levels of spend though. With related party sponsor controls off, and the clubs we are competing with doubling / tripling or more the expenditure we can't compete with that so easily at all, even with our commercial strength. Any owner will, if they want to compete, have to resort to the same tactics around sponsorships eventually. For Qatar that would have been a lot easier than Ineos, but only if they were willing to do the same sponsorship dodginess.
 
The case that City have filed is an indirect admission of guilt based on current regulations.
 
The point has always been we don’t need a sugar daddy as such, more that we need someone to repay all the debt and sort the footballing side of the club out and then leave the club to run itself- we are in a very different position to City as we can finance everything from the clubs income alone without resorting to cheating. People were pro Qatar as they offered both sides of the equation whilst Ineos really only solve the footballing side.

The Qataris would have done exactly the same thing at United as they have done at PSG. We'd have had a raft of sponsorship deals from Qatari-based companies at way above market value within five minutes of them coming through the door. Everyone knew this, especially the Qatari takeover supporters, who were already dreaming of fantasy lineups of galacticos that United could never possibly have afforded without 'associated party transactions' (state sponsorship). These people are really in no position to criticise Man City (or City fans) if they want to avoid being labelled hypocrites.

If the Qataris had somehow won, today we would have been reading reports in the press that United were joining their neighbours in their battle against the scourge of the Premier League's financial sustainability rules.
 
The Qataris would have done exactly the same thing at United as they have done at PSG. We'd have had a raft of sponsorship deals from Qatari-based companies at way above market value within five minutes of them coming through the door. Everyone knew this, especially the Qatari takeover supporters, who were already dreaming of fantasy lineups of galacticos that United could never possibly have afforded without related party transactions (state sponsorship). These people are really in no position to criticise Man City (or City fans) if they want to avoid being labelled hypocrites.
We’ve outspent the likes of Barca and Real since Fergie retired, those two have had near galactico 11s at one point in the last decade, we’ve pissed away over £1bn in transfers even with the debt repayments, we could easily have built a super team without Qatari money but the debt is never getting repaid or the stadium properly remade without an owner like that, that’s why many people were pro Qatar, I’m not sure what they’re money could do that we already can’t without the debt, we can afford almost any player in the world even now.
 
Not the ridiculous net spend argument again, it means absolute feck all, especially if you're fudging your books to begin with

He’s also ignoring the stupid money they spent before Pep arrived, including some big buys just before he was unveiled.
 
I'm all for contrasting opinions but I feel you're jumbling everything into one and also not really understanding the issue here.

Net spend is calculated on what comes in versus what goes out, so if a club is inflating what comes in (there isn't a grey area here, in 2011 they effectively valued themselves as the most valuable football club in the world with their £400m deal) so surely you see the issue with pointing out net spend as any kind of metric. That doesn't mean City have not sold academy players well, or reaped huge amount of money from winning things but then, again, that income is gained via cheating. So you have two huge factors, both under investigation, of building a successful team via cheating and also financing a team dishonestly.

That doesn't mean United should not have done better, we've been run appallingly but you can point to the very easy example of klopp/Pool of a club working well, finding a good manager and still having success with about a quarter, maybe even less, spend as City.

I get a lot of people have grown up hating United, I really don't get the idea of a cartel though as you can literally see our decline before your own eyes and we are the historical behemoths of the division. If you look through the facade of City trying to make this about 'us vs them' it's a country trying to buy a league, not a team, the UAE want to buy the league which is good for no one.

Re sponsors and terrorism/child labour, the PL has a duty to investigate all sponsors and maybe a bi-product of all this will be increased scrutiny and when things are found, they should be dealt with accordingly.

I don't get the point on FFP, it really doesn't stop other teams growing (I'd argue it handicaps the richer/bigger teams more), I don't understand your sentence on salary cap.

Financial Fair Play, that stops spending and growing whilst keeping the turnover for the top 6 artificially high. My sentence on a wage cap and salary cap would be true FFP. For example, all teams can spend the same, or spend the turnover of the largest club turnover.

If you think FFP stops the bigger clubs, that’s madness, it locks their turnover in at 2/3 times the competition hence the one sided top 4 positions(only Everton Leicester Newcastle Villa been in sparingly) and the trophy wins of the last 30 years. FA Cup winners old top 4 clubs repeatedly + Everton(points deduction) Wigan(relegated) Portsmouth(relegated + points deduction) + Leicester(relegated+ 2 point deductions incoming + prior FFP fine) and City(huge investment 115 charges) see a pattern here!? pure protectionism.

Everton have had to sell their best players below market value, lost their position from 5th to 8th in and around Europe to fighting relegation. And then deducted 8 points to boot and now you want Branthwaite on the cheap to meet FFP. When the new stadium comes with increased turnover and with a rich benefactor we could be right up there, hence the coming after us.

I look at City’s case like this, if the current FFP rules protect position and turnover the only way round that is a rich owner which is not allowed. So the only way anyone can progress is a rich owner(based on last 30 years) if City win the case rich owners become a possibility. Hence support for them, unless a more equitable solution is put forward.

People saying Arsenal, Liverpool and United will protect the football pyramid whilst they are cancelling cup replays etc are frankly deluded. I don’t want a league where Nike sponsor determines the winner any more than a state owner club ploughing money in.

Also Net spend is just a measure of players brought in and out, however much City have “cheated” if they have, they still spent 4th on players in the last 8 years or so. Also factor in wages. In the end, net player spend + wages = final position and trophies, almost with a 1-1 correlation over time so it is very relevant. You could also argue rigging the rules in your favour via threats to leave is “cheating”
 
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They'll get a few boos for half a season and it will die down. What can the fans actually do? It has to be a mass revolt like the Super League, otherwise nothing will happen. I just don't see it.
But that's exactly what needs to happen. Or like another poster wrote, do like they did in the Bundesliga were fans threw tennis balls (or teddy bears or whatever soft non threatening device you can think of) on pitch and impeded games starting on time. Make it so embarrassing and notable that no one can ignore it and make a travesty of the competition
 
Net spend is the metric if you want to compare how well clubs are investing their money on transfers, and there is no evidence of anything being wrong with those numbers from City.

What absolute tosh! Transfer fees aren't just lump sums, they don't take into account agents fees and wages, not to mention a whole host of other things only accountants care about. Do you really think Haaland only cost City £50m? Because that's what it'll say on their accounts. Easily covered by selling two reserve GKs to championship clubs, which isn't suspicious at all.

All that really matters is revenue, and clubs can spend every penny of that if they want to. That's the whole point of this 115 farce. City didn't, and still don't, make enough money to match the ambitions of their nation state owners, so they've been inflating that through fake sponsorships.

Honestly, if all you care about is a clubs net spend and how well they do in the 'transfer balance book league', then you might as well support any old business. Go and support IKEA when they next have a match against B&Q or DFS.
 
We’ve outspent the likes of Barca and Real since Fergie retired, those two have had near galactico 11s at one point in the last decade, we’ve pissed away over £1bn in transfers even with the debt repayments, we could easily have built a super team without Qatari money but the debt is never getting repaid or the stadium properly remade without an owner like that, that’s why many people were pro Qatar, I’m not sure what they’re money could do that we already can’t without the debt, we can afford almost any player in the world even now.

I agree - United didn't need the Qatari's money to build a competitive team - indeed that was one of the strongest arguments against Qatari ownership. But the Qataris weren't coming in to build a competitive team - they were coming in to blow everyone else out of the water, which would have been achieved via state sponsorship. Everyone knew exactly what they would do - the people that supported their bid cannot now hope to condemn City (or their fans) with a straight face.
 
Surely this lawsuit is them getting scared about these charges? Will they argue the charges are more mute or is this too do with current APT? Rather than the historic rules there are charged under.

I tend to agree with this

Knowing that the day (s) of Judgment are getting ever nearer . I suspect that this latest action was planned and deliberately timed to make the PL re deploy resources from the 115 issue. If that’s right you have to wonder if they, City , having now having had sight of the papers and evidence if you like upon which the PL are basing their case , are spooked .
 
I really hope that Lord Guardiola's reputation finally starts to go down the shitter after all this.

He's a slimy, corrupt and scheming little prick. As soon as I saw him dancing around with glee after UEFALona robbed Chelsea of their place in the '09 CL final I knew there was something really off about him, and I've hated watching his "success" ever since. The endless media love-in for him has made it even worse.

He just wants to win at any cost and doesn't care if he does it illegally. There's no way he "didn't know" about any of this stuff. He's just as involved as what the owners are.
16 years of hate. What a sad life. Hopefully you will get some closure soon. Stay strong amigo
 
16 years of hate. What a sad life. Hopefully you will get some closure soon. Stay strong amigo
To be fair he's been a cheater for longer than 16 years. Doping king during his playing days.
 
Was always going to happen. The football regulator could possibly nuke the case.

From everything I read conducte of internal disciplinary matters weren’t within the remit of the regulator
 
The media should be all over this as this could impact British football forever. Nothing on the BBC yesterday. The journalist on Talksport this morning was suggesting that City wouldn't suddenly make their sponsorship unrealistic if they win the case. They are already inflating their sponsorship revenue now, and saying they have the largest revenue in the Premier League. What exactly does he think they'll do with FFP removed? So sick and tired of media being bought by these scumbags. At this point their owners should be forced to sell the club just like Abramovich had to. Remove all state ownership from football.