City and Financial Doping | Charged by PL with numerous FFP breaches

Rnd898 said:
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. This all remains to be seen over the next few years.
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Scram. No one cares about you right now.

Or ever, really.
 
I’m not interested in litigating Ole’s tenure here or even if we’re retrospectively awarded trophies City “won” at the time, but City need to punished for what they have done to bring disgrace to the game. And guardrails need to be put into place to make no ever gets away with this again.
 
Rnd898 said:
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. This all remains to be seen over the next few years.
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Couldn't be bothered to read your thesis but I doubt Chelsea will get into trouble beyond some FFP violations.
 
Irrational. said:
The PL will be sent packing with their tails between their legs, just like UEFA were. The legal representation that City can afford makes them invincible. They can hire Sepp Blatter as their new chairman and no one will bat an eyelid.

One of, if not the most corrupt team in the world.
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There are certain levels of culpability where no amount of lawyers and money will save you. Depending on how solid the PL's proof is, and how determined they are to make the charges stick, they could do it. Lawyers and money can only do so much, and only if there are potential holes in the case or people on the prosecuting side who can be persuaded to waive the consequences. If there are none of those, the only other salvation for City would be to challenge the case in the Court of Arbitration for Sports, and last time they did that, they only got off because the case had exceeded the time limitations. There is no such statute in the PL's case.

This all comes off the back of talk of an independent regulator entering English football, and it may just be that the FA is sufficiently averse to having an outsider calling the shots that they've finally decided to do what clearly needs to be done. Prior to this, it might have seemed easier and safer to just look the other way and preserve the league's image, but with an independent regulator, that would not be possible; and then the PL would rather police itself than have someone else do it.

That's not to say that anyone ought to feel 100% confident that anything comes of it, but the possibility is very much there.
 
I'd rather see City heavily punished in the present over restrospective stuff.

By all means exclude them from previous years and void their titles. But the best outcome is relegation (or exclusion) > lose Pep > lose players > lose owners.
 
Is it in city's best interest for this to be solved quickly? What players would want to sign for a side who could get relegated any moment.
 
Gandalf Greyhame said:
Pep's brother myseteriously ended up owning 44.3% of Girona, I wonder how that came about.
https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...nchester-city-pep-guardiola-brother-questions
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City paid single digit millions for their share of Girona 44% iirc.
Pere Guardiola could well afford 44.3% on his own if thats the case, this is the man who was agent to Luis Suarez, and is now one of the top dogs at Sports Entertainment Group (agents) and represents both Pep and Ten Hag. Not to mention guys like RVP etc... were all signed on with them. A few million to own a club is not a huge deal for him. He's a wealthy, wealthy individual, regardless of his connections to City.
 
Rnd898 said:
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.
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Not everything is about you mate. Typical Chelsea fan
 
cyberman said:
Ole was only shit because City cheated. He could have been the only man to win the league as a player and a manager.
He would have been a legend with a league title and the many deep cup runs we had. it’s basically Klopps domestic career if he won an FA cup in that time
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You cannot possibly believe this?
 
What a beautiful day.
 
hobbers said:
I'd rather see City heavily punished in the present over restrospective stuff.

By all means exclude them from previous years and void their titles. But the best outcome is relegation (or exclusion) > lose Pep > lose players > lose owners.
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For real. Stripping them off past titles means feck all. Ban them from the PL and CL for the next 10 years.

I doubt it’ll be more than a slap on the wrist though, the money and power City have are enough to bend every and any rule.
 
SuperiorXI said:
Arsenal fans and reasonable, sensible verdicts do not go hand in hand. If it was United under fire it wouldn't be fair if it was being chaired by a diehard scouser for example.
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Are you saying City and Arsenal are rivals or something ? Is that why Baldy helped Lego Pep to the title with those chummy summer transfer dealings ?
 
SuperiorXI said:
It's the delusions of grandeur brought about following them winning the lottery. They've tried to convince themselves they're a genuine club and everyone is against them.
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Always reminded me of the Slobbs winning the lottery.



Hopefully they end up worse off in the end than they were to start with.
 
If guilty, I think their owners would no longer pass the requirement to remain owners.
 
It’s coming home.

C_71_article_1420898_image_list_image_list_item_0_image.jpg
 
Can anyone give a honest & fair tltr avout it all - is it anything more severe the FFP cases so far have been or?
 
Just had a quick look on Blue Moon, this was the first post I saw

When they throw 100+ charges at you its basically the same tactic as the the tax office use when they audit a company. They already know what the end result of the "investigation" will be even before it started, and just throw as many vague accusations against us as possible knowing it will be impossible for us to fully clear our name in all of them. We all know the only purpose of all this is to take City down, not make an unbiased investigation. This was always going to be the case in a racist and xenophobic country as England, zero chance any of this would have happened if our owners last name was "Smith". How many other clubs have they spent 4 years investigating until they find something? None.
Lets see what the end result is, but I guess we will see a massive point reduction taking us out of all European competitions for the next season. The massive damage to our brand is already done. Really hope City plan their revenge and sue everyone.


Love to see it
 
JuriM said:
Can anyone give a honest & fair tltr avout it all - is it anything more severe the FFP cases so far have been or?
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It's more severe because it's not just about breaching the financial rules, it's about knowingly misrepresenting the club's finances. It's basically fraud. They've falsified their records in order to circumvent the rules, and they've done it again and again.

Think of it like perjury. If you commit a crime, you can be punished for it. If you lie about it under oath and are found guilty of perjury, you're also punished for that on top, and it's generally more severe than the majority of crimes are on their own.

In football, purely financial breaches are generally punished by financial means (i.e. fines) while other breaches can have more severe consequences. Defrauding the governing body of English football is a much bigger deal than spending more money than you were allowed to spend. There's a very real possibility of points deductions, revoking prior titles, and even relegation. For years now, City have falsified their records and swindled their way to success in a manner that goes beyond simple over-spending, and their unapologetic threats of using lawyers to drag the prosecution indefinitely makes them all the more deserving of punishment.
 
It would be hilarious after the years and years of 'Corrupt Rags' chat, they get relegated to league 2 due to corruption
 
OneReligion said:
Just had a quick look on Blue Moon, this was the first post I saw

When they throw 100+ charges at you its basically the same tactic as the the tax office use when they audit a company. They already know what the end result of the "investigation" will be even before it started, and just throw as many vague accusations against us as possible knowing it will be impossible for us to fully clear our name in all of them. We all know the only purpose of all this is to take City down, not make an unbiased investigation. This was always going to be the case in a racist and xenophobic country as England, zero chance any of this would have happened if our owners last name was "Smith". How many other clubs have they spent 4 years investigating until they find something? None.
Lets see what the end result is, but I guess we will see a massive point reduction taking us out of all European competitions for the next season. The massive damage to our brand is already done. Really hope City plan their revenge and sue everyone.


Love to see it
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Surely if they cannot clear all of them means that they are guilty of something then? Moot point.
 
cyberman said:
If he took over Jose’s team and took us from 5th to a title where am I wrong?
Or was Ole magically not cheated but everyone else was? Am I imagining him coming second here?
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There's no knowing how that season would have panned out under different circumstances. It just doesn't work like that.

Ole was clearly an extremely limited manager that thrived on a feelgood factor for a while, but collapsed completely when it came coaching the sides and making some of the tough decisions that were needed.
 
This is a massive relief. I was beginning to think that cheating just didn’t matter anymore.

I hope @adexkola is ok
 
off-topic. Imagine FA decides to strip City of their titles. That means that in certain seasons clubs like ourselves missed on bonus payments from our sponsors, TV money etc. Would all that start a series of civil cases for damages against City? I would love it that happend.
 
Rnd898 said:
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.
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Didn’t you get a transfer ban for breaking various rules?
 
calodo2003 said:
Just wading into this thread for the first time. When will punishment be handed out?
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Hopefully soon because I'm absolutely throbbing and not sure I can keep it up for too long.
 
All other clubs should be united on this.
I hope all supporters of other teams will jeer city when the team comes out if the tunnel in their away games.
Give public pressure and show what they have done was unacceptable and disgraceful to the league.
 
In these 10 years; we were behind City (as 2nd) twice or three times? And Pool 3 times?
Jose was 2nd, Fergie was second and Ole? Right?
 
Sunny Jim said:
off-topic. Imagine FA decides to strip City of their titles. That means that in certain seasons clubs like ourselves missed on bonus payments from our sponsors, TV money etc. Would all that start a series of civil cases for damages against City? I would love it that happend.
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That's why it won't happen. What happened to teams who lost PL status because of a loss to City ? They will just open the Pandora box , going by that route.

It will be a relegation (worst case ) best case is a point deduction and a hefty pocket change to Fa.
 
OneReligion said:
Just had a quick look on Blue Moon, this was the first post I saw

When they throw 100+ charges at you its basically the same tactic as the the tax office use when they audit a company. They already know what the end result of the "investigation" will be even before it started, and just throw as many vague accusations against us as possible knowing it will be impossible for us to fully clear our name in all of them. We all know the only purpose of all this is to take City down, not make an unbiased investigation. This was always going to be the case in a racist and xenophobic country as England, zero chance any of this would have happened if our owners last name was "Smith". How many other clubs have they spent 4 years investigating until they find something? None.
Lets see what the end result is, but I guess we will see a massive point reduction taking us out of all European competitions for the next season. The massive damage to our brand is already done. Really hope City plan their revenge and sue everyone.


Love to see it
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Nice user name!
 
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