City and Financial Doping | Charged by PL with numerous FFP breaches | Hearing begins 16th September 2024

"We want to create the legacy. We want two Trebles in a row," said Silva.

That's a nice bit of unnecessary self-induced pressure. Posted here as the only relevant thread for everything City is 115.
 
adexkola said:
Using the league cup as evidence of anything is silly. It was won by lesser clubs because bigger clubs led by Fergie's United didn't give a feck about it; if they did, they could have dominated it as well. Now they do.

Have they been of detriment to Arsenal and Liverpool? Yeah. Tottenham? To a lesser extent, yes. The others? They were fecked anyways.
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Nar, the likes of Spurs, Villa, Newcastle in the 90's, Everton under Moyes, Leicester, and hell, even Brighton now, have shown that organic growth with smart business and football decisions absolutely is possible.
The Abu Dhabi football project has just taken that Aston Villa (likely when they finish 5th) CL spot growth opportunity away from them, as they did to Leicester in 2019-2020 and again in 2020-2021. So instead of 2 years of CL football to grow the club into something really special, it was relegation that awaited them instead in 2023.

There are 4 CL spaces, and since the stadium move Arsenal have never been a shoe-in until last season, same for United post SAF, so City-less, that spot was open for a deserving proper club running as a football club to use for growth, but instead it goes every single SAF to the Abu Dhabi football project rather than a Leicester or a Villa.

Not sure how that convinces any aspring PL->CL club that having an oil state in the league isn't a massive disadvantage for them.

People forget that Spurs were often a nothing club, finishing plenty of seasons outside the top 10 all through the 90's and 00's, but some savvy decisions eventually got them a CL spot in 2010 and despite the oil state limiting their opportunities, they used that as a catalyst, and now just 14 years after that CL quarter final run, they've grown to a big Premier League club, with a cracking stadium, training ground and are now 8th in the Deloitte Football Money League, just €50m euros behind Liverpool and €114 behind United.
People backing City like to pretend that kind of growth isn't possible and that FFP is just some attempt at creating a monopoly for the big clubs, well Spurs for sure make a mockery of that.
 
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NicolaSacco said:
The problem with that analogy is that Utd’s net spend is considerably higher than City’s over the last decade. And in fact is comfortably the biggest in the Premiership.

So comparing Lance Armstrong’s physical doping to City’s financial doping seems a bit off. A better analogy would be a Tour de France where one team (Utd) has ‘earned’ the right to dope, and another team (City) hasn’t earned the right, but has done it anyway.

So whilst you could clearly still argue that anything won by City should have an asterisk next to it, they aren’t doing anything that Utd aren’t already doing. Utd are simply allowed to do it, and indeed have done it more than anyone else.
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Are you forgetting the off the books payments?
 
Mr Pigeon said:
I'll be surprised if you get a response from Nicola, who seems to be very selective with what they want to discuss.

@NicolaSacco I'm guessing you still haven't seen any evidence of City's wrongdoing?
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Try and find any time, literally any, where I’ve said I don’t think City broke some kind of financial rules. I’ve stated clearly that I think they have, just that I don’t know which exact ones, or to what exact extent. It’s astonishing that your takeaway from my posts is that I don’t think they’ve broken FFP.

I also think it’s glaringly obvious that the heartfelt moralising by a lot on here is just a facade. I’ll be kind and say I think there are a few with genuinely held principles.

If you want an indicator as to the morals of the average football fan I’d suggest looking back at the posts when it seemed to be likely that you’d be taken over by an oil funded Middle Eastern magnate. I seem to remember someone even started a thread where people could own up to having made throwaway statements about oil wealth and human rights when it concerned City, and then threw those objections out of the window when it looked like Utd might benefit.
 
NicolaSacco said:
. I seem to remember someone even started a thread where people could own up to having made throwaway statements about oil wealth and human rights when it concerned City, and then threw those objections out of the window when it looked like Utd might benefit.
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:lol: Please tell me this is true and you haven’t just made it up? Where can I find this thread?
 
NicolaSacco said:
Try and find any time, literally any, where I’ve said I don’t think City broke some kind of financial rules. I’ve stated clearly that I think they have, just that I don’t know which exact ones, or to what exact extent. It’s astonishing that your takeaway from my posts is that I don’t think they’ve broken FFP.

I also think it’s glaringly obvious that the heartfelt moralising by a lot on here is just a facade. I’ll be kind and say I think there are a few with genuinely held principles.

If you want an indicator as to the morals of the average football fan I’d suggest looking back at the posts when it seemed to be likely that you’d be taken over by an oil funded Middle Eastern magnate. I seem to remember someone even started a thread where people could own up to having made throwaway statements about oil wealth and human rights when it concerned City, and then threw those objections out of the window when it looked like Utd might benefit.
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Blah blah blah. Please keep track of your own whataboutism before going on some distracting rant attempt instead of actually addressing the points being made by your own good self.

Von Mistelroum said:
Except that much of what they are accused of is cooking the books to make it look like they're not spending as much, while in reality spending considerably more, but with much of that spend being 'off the books' with regards to wages, agents fees etc. This is on top of the fake sponsors and such.
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NicolaSacco said:
And that may be true- I’ve never seen any evidence for it other than on opposition fan sites, but I guess it’s not possible to disprove, is it?
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Mr Pigeon said:
Have you tried looking for evidence?

https://amp.theguardian.com/footbal...bu-dhabi-money-second-contract-sheikh-mansour

https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/manchester-citys-new-betting-partner-28161569

https://www.skysports.com/football/...ment-from-owners-was-disguised-as-sponsorship
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Mr Pigeon said:
Blah blah blah. Please keep track of your own whataboutism before going on some distracting rant attempt instead of actually addressing the points being made by your own good self.
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In the nicest possible way, I don’t think it’s worth really engaging in a post that begins ‘blah blah blah’!
 
tomaldinho1 said:
:lol: Please tell me this is true and you haven’t just made it up? Where can I find this thread?
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I sincerely hope I haven’t made it up, it will be very embarrassing if that’s the case!
It will be about the time that SJ emerged as a front runner to takeover Utd. There was a point where it seemed by far the most likely option.
 
NicolaSacco said:
In the nicest possible way, I don’t think it’s worth really engaging in a post that begins ‘blah blah blah’!
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In the nicest way possible, you avoid points that go against your agenda and do everything you can to deflect away from them.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
In the nicest way possible, you avoid points that go against your agenda and do everything you can to deflect away from them.
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Nope - as established I've already said I'm sure City have broken financial rules - I didn't think that was even up for debate.
 
NicolaSacco said:
Nope - as established I've already said I'm sure City have broken financial rules - I didn't think that was even up for debate.
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And we've also established that you don't see a problem with it because "United did it" or something, and it's somehow good for the league.

And that's before I bring up my main point again, which you've conveniently ignored, about you conveniently ignoring posts that challenge your agenda. There's two alone on this page, one with someone you were supposedly engaging in posts with, that you've failed to respond to. Instead you've decided to yet again to go for deflection, using my ones this time.

What will be the reply this time, instead of engaging with @Regulus Arcturus Black or @Fluctuation0161? To feign insult against what I've posted here? To find one singular sentence or word that you can find a flaw in, which somehow means all of my point is wrong? I can't wait to find out.

Actually I can, I'm off to bed. Feel free to use the time to reply to one of the half dozen conversations in this thread that you abruptly stopped when they started getting awkward for you.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Nar, the likes of Spurs, Villa, Newcastle in the 90's, Everton under Moyes, Leicester, and hell, even Brighton now, have shown that organic growth with smart business and football decisions absolutely is possible.
The Abu Dhabi football project has just taken that Aston Villa (likely when they finish 5th) CL spot growth opportunity away from them, as they did to Leicester in 2019-2020 and again in 2020-2021. So instead of 2 years of CL football to grow the club into something really special, it was relegation that awaited them instead in 2023.

There are 4 CL spaces, and since the stadium move Arsenal have never been a shoe-in until last season, same for United post SAF, so City-less, that spot was open for a deserving proper club running as a football club to use for growth, but instead it goes every single SAF to the Abu Dhabi football project rather than a Leicester or a Villa.

Not sure how that convinces any aspring PL->CL club that having an oil state in the league isn't a massive disadvantage for them.

People forget that Spurs were often a nothing club, finishing plenty of seasons outside the top 10 all through the 90's and 00's, but some savvy decisions eventually got them a CL spot in 2010 and despite the oil state limiting their opportunities, they used that as a catalyst, and now just 14 years after that CL quarter final run, they've grown to a big Premier League club, with a cracking stadium, training ground and are now 8th in the Deloitte Football Money League, just €50m euros behind Liverpool and €114 behind United.
People backing City like to pretend that kind of growth isn't possible and that FFP is just some attempt at creating a monopoly for the big clubs, well Spurs for sure make a mockery of that.
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I see what you're saying, but I think that in the absence of a City and City, it would have simply entrenched United and Arsenal and Liverpool at the top. Tottenham would have won 1 league possibly, but the historical and financial advantages of these 3 would have simply been too great for the rest of the league to even try and surmount.

We'll never know for sure, but IMO the PL without City and Chelsea isn't more egalitarian. How do I know? PL before Chelsea: United and Arsenal, with the occasional Blackburn title. With more money flooding into football, it would have been impossible for the rest.
 
adexkola said:
I see what you're saying, but I think that in the absence of a City and City, it would have simply entrenched United and Arsenal and Liverpool at the top. Tottenham would have won 1 league possibly, but the historical and financial advantages of these 3 would have simply been too great for the rest of the league to even try and surmount.

We'll never know for sure, but IMO the PL without City and Chelsea isn't more egalitarian. How do I know? PL before Chelsea: United and Arsenal, with the occasional Blackburn title. With more money flooding into football, it would have been impossible for the rest.
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I’ve just showed you how form a mid table club in the 90’s and 00’s, Spurs used the CL as a catalyst to now 14 years later be one of the richest clubs on the planet, not far off United and Liverpool.

The idea it’s impossible is daft. We’ll see what happens with Villa if they hopefully manage CL, but it can and will happen again.
Leeds were in the rich list top 10 around the 00’s, Newcastle absolutely could have done it organically.
They just need some poor years for the bigger clubs due to stadium building (Arsenal) or manager loss (United) to take the opportunity starting with CL qualification.
The Abu Dhabi football project guaranteeing one CL spot less forever makes it much harder though. I feel Villa will miss out this year.
 
Mr Pigeon said:
And we've also established that you don't see a problem with it because "United did it" or something, and it's somehow good for the league.

And that's before I bring up my main point again, which you've conveniently ignored, about you conveniently ignoring posts that challenge your agenda. There's two alone on this page, one with someone you were supposedly engaging in posts with, that you've failed to respond to. Instead you've decided to yet again to go for deflection, using my ones this time.

What will be the reply this time, instead of engaging with @Regulus Arcturus Black or @Fluctuation0161? To feign insult against what I've posted here? To find one singular sentence or word that you can find a flaw in, which somehow means all of my point is wrong? I can't wait to find out.

Actually I can, I'm off to bed. Feel free to use the time to reply to one of the half dozen conversations in this thread that you abruptly stopped when they started getting awkward for you.
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You're definitely giving me too much credit here. I've zero idea who I'm supposed to have ignored. I think what you see as me deliberately ignoring a person or post is more a result of there being a lot of replies than anything else.

If there's one thing that I agree with though, it's that it's time you went to bed. I'm happy tp discuss anything with anybody, but you seem to be taking this really personally.
 
Have been charged and feck over in court yet?
 
adexkola said:
I mean, if they can't be found guilty of the important Rules, why should they be punished? :angel:
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It's a lot like O.J. Simpson. He was acquitted, but it was so abundantly obvious that he was guilty that nobody in their right mind thought otherwise. Same goes for City. We've all seen the absurd spending and how their reported revenues don't remotely add up to the level of support the club has (if I recall, they didn't even feature in the top 20 clubs for shirt sales in Europe last year--their treble-winning season). We've seen their shady payment practices. We all witnessed UEFA find them guilty of the same sort of thing as the current charges, but City's lawyers managed to sandbag the case until the prosecution ran out of time and had to dismiss it. If they aren't punished this time around, they're innoccent only in the eyes of the law, but it will remain a self-evident and undeniable fact that they should be punished. Failure to do so will be an official declaration that the PL is a farce that ought not be taken seriously anymore.
 
adexkola said:
We'll never know for sure, but IMO the PL without City and Chelsea isn't more egalitarian. How do I know? PL before Chelsea: United and Arsenal, with the occasional Blackburn title.
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You’re putting that down soley to money though weirdly, when Liverpool were in fact the big spenders in the 90’s, Villa spent big too.

Money wasn’t the main reason, Wenger & SAF were, whilst Villa and Liverpool couldn't find managers that were their equals.
Newcastle should have managed one title though but bottled it.

Once Arsenal had to spend on their stadium, there was plenty of opportunity for others to step in. Instead it was Russian Chelsea and then the Abu Dhabi football project who stole in.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pag.../articles/deloitte-football-money-league.html

Spurs are incredibly just €120m behind the biggest club in the country, despite no state ownership. It's almost like they are single handedly proving you wrong, but then you see Liverpool just €63m behind and you realise it aint single handedly, there is two of them, with Arsenal also back in resurgence.



We were a plc then mate. But aside from that, we like everyone else made improvements to facilities etc, similar to Spurs now in an attempt to grow organically like any football business can and should. And typically when we did, even more clubs wage and transfer spending started to look similar. These infrastructure years are something that's always existed and given opportunities to other sides, like when Arsenal had to serious ease off the spending for some years when they moved the stadium. Unfortunately the big greedy Abu Dhabi football project took that space though.

And don't say "if you haven't" as you know fecking full well we didn't... we were always 2nd behind Liverpool or 3rd behind Liverpool and Blackburn until the treble in 99, and after that massive success we had earned the luxury of 3 "extravagant" spending season at the top. Around 2003 we then did a part stadium rebuild in the quads, Roman came to Chelsea, City came, and our spending turned solely to players and wages, the infrastructure was forced to go to shit if we wanted to spend like them.

And here we are now, because of the last 15 or so years, it looks likely we'll need to find 3 billion we don't have to get our stadium up to top club standards, and a tonne more on the training facilities and the academy. Most estimates find we're likely looking at a 4bn bill if we wanna equal other top clubs like Madrid or Barca.

"just like City".

And I'll ask you again, we know 100% that City have been trying to cheat FFP. So let's imagine it doesn't exist, how do you think City's spending looks then? FFP is the only reason City even keep up the charade of playing the game on a same level as others in the league, without it they'd have been like PSG, massively outspending absolutely everybody (which they likely do already with that Mancini wage system).

Spurs spending since the Prem started is 3,7bn and they have a brand new stadium and training ground.
Arsenal spending since the Prem started is 5bn and they also have a brand new stadium and training ground.
United's spending since the Prem started is 6.7bn and now have a desperate need for a new stadium and training ground to keep up with the rest.


Now reimagine our spending without City (and maybe Chelsea) had we not felt the need to keep up and instead built a new stadium and training ground after 2010. That plus SAF retiring is how football opens up opportunities.
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I agree with this but I think you’re also missing the fact we have terrible owners who don’t want to spend cash on capital projects like a new stadium. Massive debt put on us since 2005 which reduced cash flow and didn’t mean we invested properly in the squad from 2009 to 2013. This meant we lost a winning squad and didn’t invest. City were heavily investing during those season so caught up. Also dividends taken by the owners which no other club in the league has to deal with. We are the only club badly hamstrung by our owners.

In addition we haven’t followed the youth system model and making it a profit centre, with feeder clubs around the world. This model is precisely why City look so great with their transfer figures. Every season they sell 5 youth players for circa £80m combined. We don’t do that which makes our net spend look awful compared to all the other clubs in the league.
 
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NicolaSacco said:
The problem with that analogy is that Utd’s net spend is considerably higher than City’s over the last decade. And in fact is comfortably the biggest in the Premiership.

So comparing Lance Armstrong’s physical doping to City’s financial doping seems a bit off. A better analogy would be a Tour de France where one team (Utd) has ‘earned’ the right to dope, and another team (City) hasn’t earned the right, but has done it anyway.

So whilst you could clearly still argue that anything won by City should have an asterisk next to it, they aren’t doing anything that Utd aren’t already doing. Utd are simply allowed to do it, and indeed have done it more than anyone else.
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Completely brainless line of thought. We are allowed to do it becuase we have earned the right by building our revenue and wealth up. It’s like saying two teams both played the same sport whilst conveniently ignoring that one paid the ref or took performance enhancing drugs. City spent money they were allowed to - that’s really as simple as it is. If tomorrow Ipswich rob banks and spend 100bn right after, they’ll be penalised for being rotten cheats too. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp unless you’re trying very hard to be obtuse.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pag.../articles/deloitte-football-money-league.html

Spurs are incredibly just €120m behind the biggest club in the country, despite no state ownership. It's almost like they are single handedly proving you wrong, but then you see Liverpool just €63m behind and you realise it aint single handedly, there is two of them, with Arsenal also back in resurgence..
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I was just going to cite Spurs who have organically grown their revenue and earned their place on the money table. Whether they use that position to continue to remain trophyless is another matter - the point is that they’re in that position. The people that argue in favour of 115 fraud FC, which is a laughable thing to do in itself, appear to want overnight richness / success / stature to be possible, which obviously devalues every competition severely. Also, with City and / or Chelsea constantly occupying CL places, it keeps the likes of Spurs, Everton (in the past), WH, Leicester, Brighton, Villa out which I’m sure is terrific for their growth.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
Completely brainless line of thought. We are allowed to do it becuase we have earned the right by building our revenue and wealth up. It’s like saying two teams both played the same sport whilst conveniently ignoring that one paid the ref or took performance enhancing drugs. City spent money they were allowed to - that’s really as simple as it is. If tomorrow Ipswich rob banks and spend 100bn right after, they’ll be penalised for being rotten cheats too. It’s not a difficult concept to grasp unless you’re trying very hard to be obtuse.
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And you obviously want to keep that system whereby no one can challenge your spending power. Just be honest about it.
 
NicolaSacco said:
And you obviously want to keep that system whereby no one can challenge your spending power. Just be honest about it.
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So what do you want? Are you in favour of zero financial controls and clubs being able to spend what they like? Your posts just seem to be argumentative for the sake of it, without giving any kind of sense of your position.
 
adexkola said:
I see what you're saying, but I think that in the absence of a City and City, it would have simply entrenched United and Arsenal and Liverpool at the top. Tottenham would have won 1 league possibly, but the historical and financial advantages of these 3 would have simply been too great for the rest of the league to even try and surmount.

We'll never know for sure, but IMO the PL without City and Chelsea isn't more egalitarian. How do I know? PL before Chelsea: United and Arsenal, with the occasional Blackburn title. With more money flooding into football, it would have been impossible for the rest.
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Possible but pure conjecture - also, how is that worse than the current situation of uber-domination by a State-backed club that has cheated its way to get where it is?
 
Pickle85 said:
So what do you want? Are you in favour of zero financial controls and clubs being able to spend what they like? Your posts just seem to be argumentative for the sake of it, without giving any kind of sense of your position.
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There weren’t financial controls for the vast majority of the history of football. It’s a relatively new thing.
 
NicolaSacco said:
Strongly disagree.

Btw are you on commission for using the term ‘conveniently ignore’ or something?!
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I mean... you're disagreeing with easily verifiable facts.

As for the second part, you might be confusing me with Pidgy? But if several people are telling you that you're "conveniently ignoring" stuff - you probably are, and are posting disingenuously. Which seems to be the case here.
 
NicolaSacco said:
And you obviously want to keep that system whereby no one can challenge your spending power. Just be honest about it.
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It is absolutely possible to challenge with sustained growth. Leverkusen is a very good example of that. If your point was true then they should never be able to do what they have done this season.
United build their success naturally and effectively. City cooked the books and cheated.
In fact their cheating ways makes it much harder for clubs to gain success naturally and if you simply let this run rampant then soon the only way to compete will be via state ownership. Surely that is not a healthy state of football.
 
Lyng said:
It is absolutely possible to challenge with sustained growth. Leverkusen is a very good example of that. If your point was true then they should never be able to do what they have done this season.
United build their success naturally and effectively. City cooked the books and cheated.
In fact their cheating ways makes it much harder for clubs to gain success naturally and if you simply let this run rampant then soon the only way to compete will be via state ownership. Surely that is not a healthy state of football.
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Great post…but this poster only cares that it isn’t united.
 
Jeppers7 said:
Great post…but this poster only cares that it isn’t united.
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It's actually ironic that he used "red tinted specs" thing in his post when he himself admitted he hates ManUtd. He is one more ABU
 
Sunny Jim said:
They will win the treble of trebles and nothing will get done about their charges.
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I have very little faith too, as city simply have too much money in the real world to be properly punished.

However, in this case, something will happen either way. Even if they just get away with a fine again, I think other clubs would fight back this time. It's an unfair playing field when city are playing by different rules to every other club
 
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NicolaSacco said:
There weren’t financial controls for the vast majority of the history of football. It’s a relatively new thing.
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But I'll ask again, what do you suggest? Are you in favour of zero financial controls and clubs being able to spend what they like?
 
NicolaSacco said:
There weren’t financial controls for the vast majority of the history of football. It’s a relatively new thing.
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Remember when Nazi Germany owned an English football club? Or the Soviet Union? How about when Iraq under the Ba'ath party had one?

Yeah me neither.
 
Rooney in Paris said:
I mean... you're disagreeing with easily verifiable facts.

As for the second part, you might be confusing me with Pidgy? But if several people are telling you that you're "conveniently ignoring" stuff - you probably are, and are posting disingenuously. Which seems to be the case here.
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I think maybe I did get you confused with someone else. My fault.

I really don’t think it’s ‘easily verifiable’ that Man Utd can be caught under current restrictions. If you think that this is already verified then I don’t know what to say.

For the avoidance of doubt, IF that turned out to be true I’d immediately change my viewpoint. For me, having superrich peoples inserted wealth is a necessary evil to make the league competitive.
 
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