Quality.
City and Financial Doping | Charged by PL with 130 FFP breaches | Hearing begins 16th Sep 2024 | Concluded 9th Dec 2024 - Awaiting outcome
- Thread starter VanGaalEra
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Sorry I'm not sure about what you're alluding to here? City spent huge amounts from 2008 to 2013, unprecedented amounts on players like Robinho, Adebayor, Nasri, Silva, Dzeko, Aguero and the list goes on and on and on. The investment was even more outstanding in relative terms.
Madrid paid the same for Bale and Modric as Ronaldo and Alonso. That's totally true and a good point, and United were able to pick up the likes of RVP for only 25m (which was seen as expensive back then even!) with the backdrop of revenue growth being so strong.
So at what stage exactly does City spending start to drive this madness in transfer fees? Because what they were doing in those initial few years was truly unprecedented, but didn't impact much on Madrid's activity as you pointed out?
PSG buying Neymar is the one to me that broke the market, but even before that things were getting out of hand and clubs were paying obscene amounts year after year, and it was almost normalised by the time Pep started amassing a squad full of 50m benchwarmers.
The gross spend? City is accused of fabricating where they got their money from, not how much they spent.
And that doesn’t include infrastructure or things like academies. But they do t have to hide where the money comes from for those things … so it seems unlikely to be relevant.
Again though, my argument is they committed fraud, but we’re very stupid to do so because they could have challenged FFP.
And they should have. They have a ton of money and want to build a super team? So what? There will only be 5 or 6 teams that can bid against them; they may get 1st, 2nd or 3rd pick at players … and it could still all bottle. They didn’t win every league title and they still don’t have a CL trophy.
The players that aren’t deemed “targets” for the top spending teams will then get priced according to what teams can pay for them.
You can spend 600m and still not score a goal against Fulham …. at home ….True story.
Arsenal right now have put together an excellent, moderately priced team.
All it did was inject massive amounts of money into the PL and make it more exciting to watch, thus increasing the strength of the brand.
FFP was supposed to stop the “wayward, compulsive” directors from spending money a club doesn’t have. And THAT is still happening a lot more than teams injecting billions into squads.
Any time any extra, unpublicized fees were paid to a player or manager or whomever, that person would most likely ask their manager and their accountant what their legal liability is in regards to accepting undeclared money. It's tax evasion at minimum. So the leak probably came from someone in that chain thinking their boy just accepted a shady deal that could send them to prison too.I thought he dumped him because he became shit overnight
But jokes aside I reckon if there was an informer/whistleblower then it was probably one of the clubs accountants. I dont imagine a player having access to the kind of information other than locker room gossip.
Unless it was common knowledge internally in which case the gall of it is even more staggering.....
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City spent a fair bit but it wasn't out of sync with thr market, adebayor for 25m is comparable to drogba going to Chelsea, Drogba a better player but adebayor signed from a direct rival. Aguero was considered a generational talent and signed for similar amounts to what we got Rooney for but a decade later. It was when they started signing players that were somewhat average. 40m from Fernandinho, not average by any means but coming from the Ukrainian league, then mandala the following season for 45m from Portugal. Its things like this that started sending the market crazy, they started paying the "feck off" prices that clubs give when they want to hold onto a player. Normally the player would stay an extra season or two til the contract ran down, as Fernandinho and mandala would have done, but City started paying these obscene prices teams would quote and it radically shifted the market.
Psg did more to affect it, but City were increasing it, the same way Chelsea did from 04-06 they never quite broke what we spent in ferdinand or Rooney, but they started making 20m and 25m transfers commonplace. Its also not just how it affects the market, there's also the Andy Carroll effect, teams know the other team has money because they've just sold a player for big bucks, so they get charged more for the replacement than they ordinarily would
I don't necessarily agree with you here to be honest. Adebayor, Dzeko, Aguero, Negredo, Jovetic, Tevez, Balotelli, Robinho and probably more were bought than I've listed than I can remember. Santa Cruz and Benjani in the earlier days too for pretty chunky fees when United were buying Saha and Chicarito for much less (I think?). And that's just strikers in that timeframe.
The outlay for City in those early days was totally out of sync with the market, especially when you look at it on a relative terms. Like how much was initial half billion or whatever in the first few years worth in comparison to an outlay of similar relative size today? Probably on par with what Chelsea are doing now?
My feeling is that back then, smaller clubs across all leagues were still net sellers, and needed to be to survive. And this is the key change. Blackpool were getting promoted but weren't spending huge amounts on players to stay in the league. Not on the scale we're seeing the likes of Forest and other smaller clubs do.
If I was Silver Lake, I would be asking for City's books again TODAY. They certainly overpaid for their 10% share of the City then. Another lawsuit in the making.
Robinho was out of sync with the rest of the market though just a season or two prior you probably would have expected that fee. Jovetic and negredo were both summer 2013, which is when I felt it started to change. Balotelli was one of the highest rated talents in the world, aguero was worth 35m with or without city, he he'd been considered a superstar since he was a teenager, they were spending a lot on many players but very few of those deals were out of sync with the market. Dzeko was a bit overpriced, but he's a striker and it wasn't way over value, lescott was overpriced by a bit but English tax explains it, none of those transfers are as out of sync with the market as signing a defensive midfielder from the Ukrainian league for 40m, or a centre back from Portugal for 45m. That was a clear sign that things were changing, even robinho for 32m isn't in the same ballpark as either of them given he was signed from the Spanish champions. Negredo and jovetic for the same price as adebayor from a top 4 English club was hugely inflated,
If they lied about the source of their revenue, it's no wonder that they were paying their top players "under the table" too. This would explain why all the top players wanted to play for them, despite not having heard of them before.
And how they never lost a top player to real or Barca even though aguero and Silva would have seemed like prime targets for either of those sides.
It would be interesting to see something like net spend as % of revenue across clubs, if and how it has deviated. But that will have to wait till tomorrow for me to do some digging.
The only thing I'm certain of is the fact that there is too much money in the game today, and there are clearly more than one drivers. Middle East investment changed the landscape, but so did mega TV deals. Both can be true, I think we both agree on that, we just differ on the relative magnitude.
My argument is kind of based on the logic that 10 smaller clubs now able to spend 50- 100m per season has a bigger knock-on effect than one club splurging 250m a season. It would actually be a good study for a thesis or something.
One thing I do remember is that Zidanes transfer as percentage of real's revenue was absolutely insane, would have been something like 300m if it was the same percentage of today's revenues
Yeah the TV deals would have moved it in this direction, particularly the Premier league as it was more equitable, but nowhere near as quickly we'd probably be approaching the first 150m player, likely mbappe if there was no psg money, but I think we'd still be at a level where something like 70m was a rarity in the Premier league rather than several teams having multiple players of that valuation
I would be interested to see what you find. The rate of the inflation of Sky sports tv deal for the PL went from a 5 yr 304m deal ending in 95 to a nearly 5b deal at the last one in 2018.
I was looking at the spend spread of years back then, with Newcastle and Blackburn edging United out quite a bit.
Net sales figures are useless for FFP comparison because United could have made a LOT more money than some other teams then, and therefore if they also spent a lot more the net spend would be similar.
One thing you don’t see is the same trajectory in player spending (at least in transfers) as you do in the TV deals. This would seem odd to Americans because player associations get a percentage of league revenue; not team profit.
I think you may find though that the squad spend per window is possibly more evenly distributed now. There were teams spending 400g a window in the top flight then …
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Are certain fans on here really arguing about Man United’s spending as having anything to do with the topic at hand?
Deflecting to the very core, there are over 100 breaches cited and still somehow the topic discussed is how much United has spent over the years
Ffs.
Deflecting to the very core, there are over 100 breaches cited and still somehow the topic discussed is how much United has spent over the years
Ffs.
The title stripping just won’t happen. It’ll hurt the PL and ruin the last X seasons as a spectacle / story to sell and that’s not in the FAs interest.
Imagine having to release a multi season correction dvd. Editing all the bits about City.
Podcast discussion by the lawyer mentioned here earlier:
Are certain fans on here really arguing about Man United’s spending as having anything to do with the topic at hand?
Deflecting to the very core, there are over 100 breaches cited and still somehow the topic discussed is how much United has spent over the years
Ffs.
At least there is a tenuous link. The previous deflection on the Sabitzer thread went off into a Chinese language tangent.
Those things have already happened surely? Not stripping titles arguably hurts it more at this point?
you should probably read about the charges again as it definitely relates to how much they spent as well
or for the first time as it appears you haven’t yet
Don't see how it's avoidable. All clubs in the league will conference and add their two pennies worth and they can't be ignored or this has the potential to escalate further. The only clubs likely to keep schtum are those who profited from City's actions.
It doesn't matter what the powers that be would like the narrative to be or remain; it's gone far beyond that stage now. The cat's well and truly out of the bag.
I'm not going to get to worked up about this, until actual punishments are dished out. Still a long way to go before anything actually comes from it all, and plenty of time for City to manage to avoid any serious punishment.
If you guys get awarded a league title from this you break your own record for lowest points total winners.
I can't think of any club that would profit from City's action. In fact I can't think of anyone that would profit from City's action outside of City because even their sponsors are their owner's companies.
You’re right - Guillem Ballbag has been awfully quiet about this. Or maybe his head is lodged so far up Pep’s asshole that he has no idea what’s going on.
Are certain fans on here really arguing about Man United’s spending as having anything to do with the topic at hand?
Deflecting to the very core, there are over 100 breaches cited and still somehow the topic discussed is how much United has spent over the years
Ffs.
But they only spent 100m once on a player.
Embarrassing really from those "fans".
Nothing will come of this soon. City lawyers will tie this all up in the courts for another 4-5 years.
I agree, PL is just too big a cash cow to mess with. They will do a F1 (post abu dhabi 2021 fiasco) and make up some new rules to try to stop this level of doping happening again.
Probably but would or should the other clubs kick up a fuss?
The thing is that one of the main allegations is that City's Management/directors intentionally misled their accountants, the PL's audit team etc for 9 years.
That's some allegation! Not some one-off incident like what happened to Hamilton in that one race. It's saying that it's systemic and basically the City directors and the owners are liars. Very broad statement by the PL.
Not so easy to sweep that allegation under the carpet. The PL must have some damning evidence or they would be sued through the roof.
And?
I agree. Could open a whole can worms over this. I'm sure there are some relegated teams out there that might be getting thier lawyers in soon to have a look. Will have to wait and see what the allegations are and what the verdict will be?
What are the charges, laundering money, taking payments on offshore accounts from made up sponsors and such?
No surprise to see a Chelsea fan completely miss the point of the allegations, and instead go into defense mode on Citys behalf. No doubt you're only concern in all this it that it will bring your clubs ridiculous spending to a halt
Another for the records books
1 legal question...if the allegelation EPL raised is legit, why HMRC not involved?
Between 2012 and 2018 not providing full details of player remuneration, manager remuneration or accurate financial accounts. Then from 2018 onwards not providing anything at all.