Manchester City (perennial cheats)

The thing is though it's not even as if it's the owners deciding to throw their money into the club that's the problem, it's the way they have gone about it so as to hide it. It would be so much more honourable if they had just been open about it and if they think FFP is wrong used their vast wealth to fight FFP but what they have done includes

• The owners having companies they own overpay for Sponsorship
• Paid 3rd Party companies to pay City either for various rights including image rights or simply to sponsor City
• Have 3rd party companies pay both Manchni and also some of the player's ontop of what City pay so they can report a lower wage total
• We have seen at least two of their sponsors be found out to not even Exist in the last 12 months with people listed on these companies' websites being models who either did photo shoots or sold their likenesses on Stock Image sites.
• Breaches in Youth recruitment which as part of this means illegal payments
• Refusing to provide the required documents both to the FPP panel but also to this inquiry.

City fans often claim FPP simply exists to stop clubs like them from challenging the established elite clubs but do you know which two clubs have been most impacted by FPP are? It's Real and Barca who along with Man Utd, Liverpool, Bayern and Juve are probably the top 6 clubs in the world when talking about the traditional elite clubs. Real and Barca have both relied on Financial doping for decades, their thing was always their presidential candidates would promise things and when one gets voted in they would then go to the Banks, secure interest-free loans to buy these players and then down the road the government and spainish royal family would pressure the banks to write it off. While the Spanish Economic issues also played a part even if the banks were happy to keep doing this under FFP they can't which is why their transfer spending has got relatively lower and why Barca are in such a state.

One of the big points of FFP is to ensure that should for some reason the owner stop funding the club the club can survive on its own. It's why owners can spend their own money on infrastructure and the community as this is long term spending with the aim of helping make the club more self-sustaining. The chance of Citys owners ever pulling out may be small but as we saw with Abramovich anything can happen (Although Boehly seems to be even worse, he seems to think he is Arab royalty or a Russian Oligarch without being so, either that or he thinks he is playing Football Manager). I have to say that while I'm not a fan of letting the Saudi Royal family buy an English Football Club they at least at this point seem to be doing it in more of the correct manner and that's with a club that had both a large local fan base and more international recognition than City had which makes them easier to grow revenues without cooking the books. I also think that the likes of Salford and Wrexham, not to mention Hashtag United are growing clubs in better more sustainable ways, they may all be willing to use their money to splash out on a player above their level but they aren't buying two teams worth of these players, the rest of their squad are generally just good solid players for the level they play at and all of them are doing well building the foundations and looking to find fan bases that clubs their level and even at the very top aren't looking at to ready themselves for the higher levels (Although Salford need to find a way to sort the match day support numbers, its not a problem right now as revenues in other areas, especially international broadcasting and merch offsets it but they need to start getting more people in the Greater Manchester region through the gate, which will be tough as there are a lot of clubs to pick from in the area most of which have more heritage and hence natural draw for many in the region)

The other thing with FFP is a team living beyond their means inflates the market which often means all clubs have to exceed where they would like to be from a financial pov. In many ways the bigger problem isn't even at the higher-end players, its those middle-ground players who find their values get inflated most. And you are more likely to see owners take a risk as Leeds did previously, Everton seems to have now and Chelsea seem like they may have that if it doesn't get them where they aimed to be to make it work out then they have real issues.

Ultimately with 100 breaches of regulation over such a long time its really not minor. Anything but kicking them out and voiding any title they won during that time seems like the only thing that might act as a deterrent otherwise they will just continue and Newcastle might just say sod it we will do the same (and any other club who gets a State-backed arab owner of other such persons as owner). It'ts just been over too long a period so its compounded so much that such a high level of breaching regulations can't just be ignored (and remember this doesn't include recent seasons, that periods reporting hasn't been done yet, and this includes the last years reporting that saw City have a higher revenue than anyone but Real which doesn't make sense, who is sponsoring them at such rates when they can't sell out their stadium and are now here near the top watched clubs both on UK TV and international TV; Man Utd and Liverpool attract the most eyes by far and have more local and international fans than City and have better brand awareness around the world and hence appeal. They are almost certainly in trouble for those when they are finalised, be it because they are finally honest so fail FFP or because they are still hiding the truth as those revenue figures suggest)

 

I see the EFL has said they are under no obligation to accept City if the PL kicks them out. I look forward to seeing Haaland banging in goals in the Northern Premier League Division One West next season

 

What people forget is they only won their appeal against UEFA kicking them out of the Champions League because they hindered the investigation so much (as they have with the PL, 30 of the over 100 charges are from them refusing to hand over the requested information for 2018 to 2022) that by the time UEFA were able to take action the offences were outside the window that UEFA's regulation allows which is why CAS threw all the charges but those relating to them hindering the investigation which they were fined €10mill for but CAS simply didn't find them innocent they got away with it on a technicality. The PL doesn't have that time limit in their regulations so they are toast as it seems the PL found even more issues than UEFA did .

I saw this good Twitter thread just detailing some of the evidence them

 

Apparently I can't embed 11 tweets in a single post