Man City - From another planet

The problem is how do you decide which 'Sugar Daddy' has the right intentions? You say City won't go bust but that only based on the premise that the owner keeps bankrolling them. You can believe that they won't cut off funding but you simply don't know just as you don't know. Just as if Bill Gates bought a club you wouldn't have any way to guarantee that he would stick around. And you certainly can't decide that person A is more committed to sticking around than person B just because person A has more money as it hasn't worked like that. The only way you can be sure the clubs in a good position is if it's being run in a manner where it doesn't really need the handouts. It should simply be that they are allowed to use whatever money they wish on infrastructure as long it belongs to the club and doesn't need the owner to cover the upkeep. The Chelsea effect saw alot of oil money come into football (and in turn money from other industries) but most of these clubs that got an influx aren't now in City or Chelsea's situation as their owners didn't want to stick around and that's the problem with just going 'hey spend whatever you want' because these clubs end up with massive wage bills and no-one to pay them with their revenues (and wages which also make offloading the players hard)

 

They can but not to the on the pitch side. You could buy a club and pay for a whole new stadium out of your own pocket or you can overhaul the youth setup out of your own pocket. You just can't turn around and go 'here's £100mill to buy a player'

 

There was dodgy things going on in other countries, for example in Spain the Spanish Banks under pressure from government and the king of Spain would give Real Intrest free loans to fund player purchases, the season they bought Ronaldo, Kaka and Benzema that was all done thanks to Santander lending them the money. Most of these loans would later be written off again through pressure. Then you had things like the local government doing things like buying the training ground for well over market value while Real built a new one on land they got cheap where the whole thing was much less than the amount they got for the old training ground.

Since FFP though they have cut such things out (or at least been better at hiding it). City aren't the only ones caught out doing things to try and play the system though, its just they are more high profile than some of the others caught out and banned from European competitions such as FC Twente

 

Based on other leagues such as in Italy most likely those titles wouldn't be awarded to 2nd place.

I think his point is though that it's going to look really bad if City now win the CL. It will have been won off the back of what UEFA have deemed to be cheating and it kind of sends the message to owners who are just after winning certain titles that its worth cheating

 

Makes sense simply because while the Etihad deal is not as overpriced in the years after 2016 they still have those dodgy deals for things like image rights where the money the 3rd party is using to buy the rights comes from Citys owners. They only made profits of £1.1m, £10.2m and £10.1mill so are certainly going to be making losses without those as image rights alone were sold for £24m a year and other branding £22mill so thats them failing by year 2 of the FPP period let alone year 3

 

One thing is for certain if they do get found guilty for a second breach your lot had better hope they get out of League 2 this season. There is already talk based on punishments in other countries that they may be kicked down to League 2 and a second breach I would say that has to be almost certain. As even teams getting relegated from the PL struggle offload all their overpaid players I imagine while alot would go in the first window there would be a decent chunk who miss out right away as they aren't willing to take a pay cut to go elsewhere

 

Personally I feel Salford get a lot of bad press about their spending when in reality how they do it is much more sustainable. They will spend big on one or two players who are too good for the league but the rest of their squad are just solid players on wages that are around the norm for the league. It’s why they aren’t just dominating the league (especially as some of the player bought for big money aren’t really doing it, Adam Rooney for his pedigree and price paid should be doing better than he has been. Salford benefit more from the PR of having the class of 92 which has allowed them to grow the commercial side in a way clubs like them usually can’t and hence plateau

 

That's the problem with the Middle East in general. Rather than actually clean up their acts and drag themselves out of the 1st century they would rather try and use their money to sports wash their rep. And when things don't go the way they want they will just use their money to try and force things to go their way.

A lot of Man Utd fans want the Saudis to buy the club and I just don't get it personally, you can have issues with the Glazers but wanting a club owned by someone who doesn't care about legacy, tradition and values and just wants to use it as a play thing to throw money at to mask what a corrupt, backwards and despicable stain on humanity that their countries are is worse