I sort of see your point. That United fortunately had their best period alongside the monetisation of football globally and commercially. But I’m unsure what deeper point you’re making. Are you comparing United having success at the inception of the premier league with a club like city breaking the rules to gain a significant advantage?
City and Financial Doping | Charged by PL with numerous FFP breaches | Hearing begins 16th September 2024
- Thread starter VanGaalEra
- Start date
The panel is selected by the independent chairman of the panel Murray Rosen KC
In a sense I am. Like obviously one is breaking the rules and one isn't. But my point is that the rules are just a list of things written down. An attempt to provide structure to something. Written down by people with differing agendas at different stages in the evolution of the league. Following them doesn't make the advantage fair, it just makes it within the rules.
One of my main gripes with state ownership is that unlimited wealth will disrupt the football ecosystem way beyond anything a club like United were ever capable of. If state owned clubs were permitted to spend without limits, it would be incredibly damaging for football generally, way beyond what a club like United would be capable of.
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This.
Give it another 10 years of state owned clubs being able to do as they please and the transfer market would break completely.
Average right backs would go for £250 million. Regular clubs would be forced to walk away. State owned clubs would say "I'll write you a cheque".
I understand what you're saying and where you're coming from but I don't think that's going to happen. Obviously, all markets boom and drop and, football in the last 10 years has gone through a period of a huge amount of FFP rules. It may not be perfect but I think what we've seen in the transfer window this summer, the majority of clubs so far have spent less money than last year. Clubs this year have felt the FFP rules the most and likely all because of City and their upcoming court case.
A player will be bought and sold for however much a club is willing to play - up until now because of City's allegations. Now is the best chance for the lawmakers to protect football's long term finances by assuring every club abides by the rules. This is why I think City's allegations are extremely important because it sets a benchmark for what happens if proven, the rules were broken.
We've also seen, it depends who you have doing business for you. Could you imagine how much United would have paid for the players we signed this season if it last year under previous structure? We would be lucky to have made two of those signings with god knows how much money they would have spent. De Ligt probably would have cost 70m. But now, because Bayern also had to abide by FFP, they sold at a lower price than what would have been paid last year.
Just my opinion.
Its a fair argument, it was a lesser level of distortion but a distortion of the competition all the same. I just think the idea that rules need to be followed is a pretty basic, low level rule that any structure you'd want to implement would be dependent on.
Arguing about the best way to implement FFP is just a seperate conversation to City refusing to cooperate with there being rules.
This league will be finished when that happens
I honestly don't know.
Neither do you, despite your readings.
You are clearly convinced of their guilt and no verdict will change it no matter what it is.
You have to be fairly deluded to think City are innocent.
I think it's very clear that City have comprehensively cheated, and have since used every tactic available to delay and/or obstruct the PL's investigations. I don't think any unbiased person could look at the evidence and think otherwise.
What punishment eventually gets handed out (if any) is the big question. I'll be honest and say that if it were my club who'd be taken over by these people and used as a vehicle to do this I'd be devastated and would want to see the book thrown at them. Afterall what is the point of any of this if someone can dominate through dodgy financial maneuvers & expensive lawyers?
Eh. Overall I'm just sad that football has become so, so murky and complicated.
I sort of agree. There's still a distinction because City contravene rules while we didnt, but as you pointed out, that has nothing to do with the central point - fairness.
It's also true in Spain as Real Madrid and Barcelona regularly had access to funding that smaller clubs didn't. Fairness has never been an issue for some people, as long as traditionallying "big clubs" did it.
That is certainly true and why you'll find my few posts in non football threads these days but occasionally I'll try to add a bit of balance to the pile-ons on threads like these.
It is like pissing in the wind though.
Here we go again.
Not even guilty til proven innocent.
Guilty even if proven innocent in your Kangaroo Court.
Your stance, which is to take this sort of position of fake ignorance and pretending to be "open minded", is a lot more disingenuous than you are pretending to be and only stems from strong bias and a hope somehow they'll avoid punishment.
It's like standing in front of a house on fire with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ear repeating "until I've seen this reported in the news I'm not sure whether this house is on fire".
As 2 posters have alluded to since your post, and as every single piece of information that is out in the public domain and is easily accessible for anyone interested shows, City very clearly put in place a scheme to ensure systemic corruption of the rules and ensure their rise would be faster than it would take to organically grow. This isn't an opinion, there are articles (too few sadly, due to the complicit silence of most mainstream media) that go through this in enough depth to understand what was done.
Ah ok, you're one of those. Carry on then.
You do realise the evidence in the UEFA case is public record and you were not acquitted, but merely your legal team argued the legality of how the evidence was obtained.
Everyone knows you're guilty, pull the other one.
I think admitting the emails were valid to CAS doesn’t help their case. And despite lots of blue tickers and “journalists” repeatedly saying CAS found them not guilty, they didn’t.
On top of other things, I don’t see how anyone can think they’re innocent… and the PL definitely wont
Everyone knows they're guilty. Maybe not of all 115 charges but they've been taking the piss. They were already found guilty but there was a poxy time-bar on the charges.
Your wrong-headed indignation is hilarious
I think my post was reasonable, and think you're struggling to look at this from a logical point of view - which is fair enough. The football team you support is a tough bias to overcome.
If I see evidence that all of this was a huge misunderstanding I'll be the first to say I was wrong. I wonder if you'll do the same should the opposite prove to be the case.
I'd also say that this "Utd were in the right place at the right time" argument is somewhat true but blown out of proportion - we were the strongest team at the time but we weren't the only strong team either, other teams were winning things as well. What the club was great at was recognising the opportunity that presented itself in terms of marketing and global branding and running with it - with other teams acting a bit later. The fact they were less savvy business-people at that time isn't something that is "unfair" or remotely close to the City situation, and it's not even semantics - it's just plain disingenuous.
They could just do like Barca did and have the wages deferred for a season
Fact of the matter is that City is guilty in the court of public opinion. They have brazenly spent their way to success and their only arguments against injecting billions into a club for geo-political reasons and for a seal of respectability within elite European circles.
Whether “rules” were broken or not is almost irrelevant. Look at their first 3/4 summer transfer windows post takeover. Absolute insanity, effectively new teams purchased each summer.
They have then been forced to find loopholes to counter rules enforced to prevent this happening again - because what City have done is undermine the fabric of a historic and competitive competition.
Fact of the matter is that dynasties come and go within football. Money is at the top of the game, because that is the most competitive part of the process. “Oh no the big cartel want to keep all the power and hate that little ol’ City upset the apple cart”. No you doughnuts, you (and Chelsea, who lest we forget started this wave of corruption) have manipulated a league through financial doping. It’s like playing poker, losing all your chips and then instead of buying back in by the table limit you purchase every single chip. Now you can bully everyone else.
Personally think they will be found very much guilty. Who knows what the punishment will be, but it will not be enough.
Whether “rules” were broken or not is almost irrelevant. Look at their first 3/4 summer transfer windows post takeover. Absolute insanity, effectively new teams purchased each summer.
They have then been forced to find loopholes to counter rules enforced to prevent this happening again - because what City have done is undermine the fabric of a historic and competitive competition.
Fact of the matter is that dynasties come and go within football. Money is at the top of the game, because that is the most competitive part of the process. “Oh no the big cartel want to keep all the power and hate that little ol’ City upset the apple cart”. No you doughnuts, you (and Chelsea, who lest we forget started this wave of corruption) have manipulated a league through financial doping. It’s like playing poker, losing all your chips and then instead of buying back in by the table limit you purchase every single chip. Now you can bully everyone else.
Personally think they will be found very much guilty. Who knows what the punishment will be, but it will not be enough.
But then wouldn't they be paying more in the coming years, with no European football, less revenue, so the budget for wages would be down.
To be honest, there is so much that could come from this, it's impossible to get your head around it.
Teams losing out on European football, relegation, cup finals, league titles. It's actually a minefield waiting to explode if they do throw down the hammer
My point is, if they’re found not guilty - which they might be (unlikely though) it won’t end the matter.
It’ll lead to a breach in the game, ultimately fecking them over anyway.
In 2018 they started refusing to co-operate and provide information. A lot of the 115 charges are related to that. If they refuse to hand over their accounts form that period then it's obvious the cheating continued. I hope this is taken into account when their punishment is being decided.
And the seasons being left with no winner in the history books actually adds to City's shame as people will always sonder why there was no winner that year then discver City cheated to win. In the future it would be more easily forgotten if United and Liverpool were declared winners for those seasons.
They were awarded one, the season that had just ended but not the previous ones before that.
C’mon, there’s every reason to suspect their guilt. If City were innocent they wouldn’t withhold the documentation requested by the FA. In principle you make a decent point, and I would expect courts to abide by that principle, but to people having a casual conversation it’s well above board to say City seem guilty without you charging in with kangaroo court claims.
And yet United's success wasn't based upon outspending their rivals year after year.
The claims that United always outspent everyone and had some kind on monopoly on the transfer market are nonsence, we were only top spenders in 5 of Sir Alex's 21 seasons with only 3 of those 5 being title winning seasons and the first time we were top spenders was 98/99 (due to signing Stam and Yorke for 12 and 12.8m respectively) so we won our first 4 Premier League titles while being outpent by other teams.
Honestly, football is really tiresome, the media spin so many false narratives, and football fans can't even be bothered to do their research, so they just continue to spout the same nonsense.
The hate for Man United in the media and with other clubs fans is huge, they would rather create a false narrative to make the club look bad, even if it is a load of rubbish. Happens all the time.
Whoever edits the skysports website is a massive ABU. Headlines are hysterical and over dramatic - where as with Liverpool its always a positive slant
Indeed, and yet we still have posters like @Eboue trying to equate United's dominance under Ferguson to Man City's which has been based on cheating.
United dominated through very fair means. We had the best manager, we had the best academy and we spent smartly. All while spending less on transfer fees and wages than our rivals most years.
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Ah right, fair enough. I'd like to share your optimism but I sadly don't.
Mike Sumerbee and Curly Watts
Wasn’t expecting this in the replies 
Strange precedent?
By showing that if you are involved in state sponsored corruption, money laundering and financial doping over almost two decades then you will have a proportionate consequence?
5 years expulsion for 17 years of the biggest sporting corruption scandal in living memory is very, very light.