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

The FA doesn’t just have to fight City. They will have to fight a whole country on this. Abu Dhabi will just throw resources at this, until it’s gone.
The FA don't have anything to do with it, it's the PL making the charges
 
Fraudulent financial and accounting practices and corruption are not the same thing. It stinks, and I hope they get as harsh a punishment as possible, but all I'm saying is that stripping of titles is beyond anything we'll likely see here because you can't equate this to match-fixing or anything like that.

They’ve been lying about sponsorships and wages to prop up revenues and cook the books to circumvent FFP for well over a decade which gave them an unfair advantage on the pitch which is the very definition of cheating and blatant corruption.
 
At first I was hoping if City gets stripped off their cheated titles, the 2nd teams like us can benefit and become the Champion instead.
On second thoughts, I prefer to leave that void on the Premier League trophy so that future generations will see this obvious void and always remember City being the cheat that disrupted the league for those years.
 
But which players helped them win? Which players did they buy with earned money and which ones with doped dosh, and which ones had the most impact on the pitch? It would be near impossible to prove unfortunately.

You don’t have to prove it on an individual basis. They spent money that they shouldn’t - against the rules - in seasons that they won titles for. They then cooked up books, made up sponsors etc to cover it up. They won said titles by cheating. I’m not saying they will be stripped of the titles, but it doesn’t get more “blatant cheating” than this - which is the point I was addressing in that reply.
 
Apparently if only half of the allegations are proven they’re getting thrown out of the league
 
Really think a lot of people are missing the mark here.

This isn’t a slap on your wrist thing this is 10+ years of cheating. Keeping players by essentially bribery backhand payments the lot.

The premier league would not take it lightly to prosecute currently their best team in the past x amount of years.

This has to be dealt with seriously or the integrity of the league is done.
 
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The FA doesn’t just have to fight City. They will have to fight a whole country on this. Abu Dhabi will just throw resources at this, until it’s gone.

This has nothing to do with the FA, this is the Premier League and their rules which City agreed to, if they're found guilty by the independent review.

The FA may impose their own sanctions on City but that's a different matter, if City were to be kicked out the Premier League there maybe a case for the EFL and it's members to say nah we don't want you either and that could see them booted down to non League football.

The ramifications are massive, I don't see titles and cups being handed to the runners up but the minimum City must serve is a points deduction and transfer window suspensions.
 
This might explain why Newcastle have been surprisingly restrained in their spending - perhaps they had knowledge of this investigation.

As for City, the news is about as surprising as learning as to which Christian denomination the Pope belongs. I expect a severe punishment. City may be able to afford expensive lawyers but, if the PL dodges this issue, they set an awful precedent for Newcastle and potentially Liverpool and United down the line. Also, the PL would risk facing problems with the owners of the other clubs who have missed out on trophies and revenues over the years (and who also have deep pockets for these purposes).
 
At first I was hoping if City gets stripped off their cheated titles, the 2nd teams like us can benefit and become the Champion instead.
On second thoughts, I prefer to leave that void on the Premier League trophy so that future generations will see this obvious void and always remember City being the cheat that disrupted the league for those years.

Agreed.

They're hollow trophies for City and they will be hollow trophies for us now. Let them keep the trophies and deduct 100 points this season. That'll be enough for me.
 
Can only really see them getting a points deduction for this season (which, while they're in with a chance of winning it's not as likely as Arsenal winning anyway) and a transfer ban which they'll appeal long enough to sign loads of players in the summer. And feck all else will happen if we're being honest.
It won't be this season, this will drag on for years I suspect
 
The FA doesn’t just have to fight City. They will have to fight a whole country on this. Abu Dhabi will just throw resources at this, until it’s gone.
All the money in the world will mean squat if the PL have rock-solid evidence. They may just succeed in kicking the can down the road Trump-style but it doesn't go away.
 
This has nothing to do with the FA, this is the Premier League and their rules which City agreed to, if they're found guilty by the independent review.

The FA may impose their own sanctions on City but that's a different matter, if City were to be kicked out the Premier League there maybe a case for the EFL and it's members to say nah we don't want you either and that could see them booted down to non League football.

The ramifications are massive, I don't see titles and cups being handed to the runners up but the minimum City must serve is a points deduction and transfer window suspensions.

Thanks for the correction.
But does it change much? They are a smalltime operation compared to the gigantic sportswashing operation they are up against. I just don’t see how an organisation like that could ever „win“ a fight like that.
 
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Oh well - naive people think that something will happen. Nothing, nada, zero...
Owners will fill a few more suitcases with cash and distribute to the right people. In return they will be told to be a little more discreet next time.
 
Juventus was punished for one transfer. In City's case, we're talking about 100 breaches of FFP regulations, if they get the same punishment it will be laughable.
Of course it'll be laughable. The regulatory bodies have been a laughing stock for years now. City are way too rich to be made an example of. I'll be shocked if something anywhere close to Juventus happens here.
 
There may be a silver lining to this in the long run, State backed takeovers will now know that they are going to be under intense scrutiny, at least in the PL, in United's case that may deter a bid, in Newcastle's case the Geordie's might not get all the money they thought was coming
 
Ahah city stripped of titles, that means we'll get a couple of...

oh :(
 
So is this. Financially doping is still betraying the Premier Leagues idea of competition.

Yeah but let's not pretend Juve had a little blip, a bit of an oopsy.

The FA could institute a hard salary cap to completely nullify (okay not completely, I'm sure) financial doping but obviously if the rest of the leagues don't follow suit English football might get left in the dust so I know that's basically a non-starter
 
I'd completely forgot about this after reading about it a couple of years ago.

It's obviously very serious and I doubt after 4 years of investigating the PL wouldn't issue charges unless they had something concrete.
I wouldn't want to be awarded titles(not that I think it'll happen) but relegation should definitely be an option.
Be interesting to see how City's slick PR operation handles this.
 
You don’t class this as blatant cheating? The scope of the unfair advantages they’ve gained and the opportunities missed by other clubs is damn near unprecedented
No, I wouldn't class this the same as bribery or match-fixing.

If the Glazers employed questionable accounting practices and shady financial deals to clear our debt and allow us to spend mountains of cash each summer, you'd think we should be relegated, titles stripped and long term bans from European competitions?
 
I see lots of mention Chelsea will be next to be investigated, but why?

We've never been suspected of cooking the books like City have. Sure the club have posted financial losses, and sure Abramovich injected a lot of money into the club over the years but unlike City's owner spending masked as dodgy sponsorship deals the Abramovich investment was always done completely out in the open and there were never any rules preventing him from doing so, as long as the club still stayed within the boundaries of the FFP rules which we always did because for starters the FFP rules allow for a ton of deductibles and even after all that they still allow for clubs to post a fixed amount of losses over the monitoring period as long as they are covered by the club owner. Maybe the rules are/were flawed that he was allowed to do it but you can't change the rules for past seasons.

In City's case the charge is that they cooked the books and would have failed FFP if they hadn't so it's all very different to what's been going on at Chelsea. Nobody would have prevented City from doing things the same way we have but if they did they just wouldn't have been able to spend as much money because when the FFP rules became a thing their starting point was much lower than ours. The timing is key here. When Abramovich bought Chelsea and made all those huge money investments in 2003-2010 there was no FFP yet, which allowed us to openly post massive losses and gain higher revenues through legit sponsorships etc. due to already being competitive over a multitude of years. When FFP rules were implemented we were already in a better position where the club still wasn't profitable but could continue to operate within the rules and using owner money to cover the allowed losses.

As for Chelsea's spending since the ownership change, it's again all out in the open and the club are not trying to hide anything. It's a shit load of money invested in new players but I don't think there's anyone claiming we're boosting our revenues with fake sponsorships and/or making off the books payments to clubs/agents/players to hide the costs. There's every chance this high-risk strategy causes the club to fail FFP monitoring and leads to some sanctions down the line if we fail to make CL in the coming seasons and also fail to increase other revenues, but as for right now we haven't fallen foul of any rule yet and if the high-risk strategy works out in our favor we might never do so. If we do fail FFP, there will be immediate sanctions that don't need this kind of further investigating because the accounts will already show how much losses the club have made. This all remains to be seen over the next few years.

There is a little wish fulfillment at the moment going on here and RAWK. Chelsea I think will be fine. RA did most of his spending before there were any rules, then pulled back when they were applied. What City did, was ignore the rules when in place and tried to cover it all up. Chelsea were able to take advantage of RA being the first Oil Baron to distort the market at a time with no rules on this sort of thing as no-one foresaw that kind of money being pumped in prior to him.

Where Chelsea are in trouble is with Boehly's spending. If they don't get CL they'll be restricted and with the new five year rule coming in, they're stuck with a lot of their current squad for a long time, which is very risky.

Another element that shows wish fulfilment is the stripping of titles. Personally, I cannot see it. People are comparing this City issue with Marsailles and Juventus. However, those cases involved bribing refs. Unless City were bribing people in the FA/EPL to avoid dealing with them at the time, I think they will get to keep the titles.

My money is on a 30pt deduction like the EFL give teams when they enter administration. On top of that, I suspect a very heavy fine. This can be seen with the outline of the case against them in The Times. There is no mention of stripping titles. This I suspect is due to the EPL's rules not covering stripping of accolades if teams get caught of financial irregularities. If there were such rules, you can be sure The Times and Skysports etc would be shouting from the rooftops about the possibility.
 
Yeah but let's not pretend Juve had a little blip, a bit of an oopsy.

The FA could institute a hard salary cap to completely nullify (okay not completely, I'm sure) financial doping but obviously if the rest of the leagues don't follow suit English football might get left in the dust so I know that's basically a non-starter

Salary caps are asinine. And yes it would be suicide for one league to institute it. They would be willingly handicapping themselves.
 
They were fixing results with refs, people were arrested, it was an utter betrayal of the concept of competition

That was the 2006 case, the OP I quoted was referring to the 2022 case which was far less serious.
 
Fundamentally they've damaged the product. The PL should be coming down very hard on City.
 
Thanks for the correction.
But does it change much? They are a smalltime operation compared to the gigantic sportswashing operation they are up against. I just don’t see how an organisation like that could ever „win“ a fight like that.

I'm sure City's legal team will take this all the way and try and drag it out as long as they can, over 100 breaches though there'll surely be enough to make some if not most of it stick.

City irrespective of it's legal challenge will not come out of this clean.