Do people who want Man City to be punished care if they are guilty? Also, both sides of the Everton argument since FFP is the main topic.
It’s another day, another fix.
That’s right, Man City DID not help with the UEFA investigation and were fined for it. But what no one seems to care about is that City were fully cooperating with the CFCB investigation until that group leaked private business information about Man City to the press. That’s when they stopped because they couldn’t trust UEFA not to share files that were supposed to be private but were actually very interesting to rival clubs looking for sponsorships.
This was even talked about by CAS, so feel free to use this the next time you all say you read the judgment.
There is a failure to cooperate charge against City in the PL case, and it’s safe to say that the reporters who were following them were pretty shocked when this came up. In their first statement, they even said something about this.
Mailboxers go on and on about how corrupt UEFA, the Big Four, the ECA, the PL, and the rest are, but when it comes to Man City, they’re all perfect, and it’s not a plot, even though the 115 charges were released the day before the Independent Football Regulator vote and the press release was written so quickly that they had to be edited because they used the wrong regulations (which is against the law).
The people who are arguing about the Etisalat deal don’t understand how small it is or how clear it will be, like everything else.
Do you know why 115 charges have been brought against City? Because they want to fish. The PL spent 6 years looking into City’s finances (with City’s help, by the way) and found a bunch of stuff that was easy to dismiss (“paying people off the books”, etc.), a bunch of stuff that other people had already looked into and for which they have no new evidence (sponsorship deals), and a vague charge that doesn’t really mean anything and is judged subjectively (failing to cooperate).
If the PL REALLY thought they had enough proof to charge City, their case would be small and strong. Instead, they’ve made it as broad as possible.
28,000 pieces of evidence were brought forward in the Everton case to support a single charge. What number do you think the PL will get for 115 charges? Do you think it would take a lot of people to go through it all and cross-reference everything?
To be honest, none of this matters because none of you care about this case from a law point of view.
You’ve already decided that City is guilty, so it doesn’t matter if there are NO MORE financial problems found. You all know more than any court in the country, even though you have no experience in law, accounting, marketing, or sports business.
Stop acting like you’re on a moral mission to find the truth and admit that you really just want City to fail for other reasons. You’re hoping that the financial irregularities that have still not been proven will bring them down because your clubs can’t compete on the field because of terrible management. Hey, guys who said “there’s no smoke without fire” or “just because it hasn’t been proven doesn’t mean it isn’t true” the other day, please don’t serve on a panel because you’re a danger to everyone.
I am sure that the PL will find a way to save face by giving this a huge and funny sentence that takes away 5 billion points and taking away every title they’ve ever won, even though they know that it won’t matter because it will be thrown out sixteen seconds into the appeals process. But for a few months, they get good press, City gets dragged through the press as usual, and the fact that it all gets thrown out on appeal won’t matter to anyone. Everyone wins, except those of us who’d rather governing bodies not try to fix people on purpose because they’re taking money away from clubs they’d rather it go to.
No, you still don’t get how the time barring worked.
St. Paul, Manchester
Man City are like the old ones.
Lee said that Liverpool might be spending within their means right now.
That’s the problem with FFP: it doesn’t go far enough back to a time when both Liverpool and Manchester United had endless footballing funds (for a while), which helped them become what they are today.
As for City, it doesn’t look like they will be punished. The PL needs the club that is currently the biggest to rate them. Any paid site that shows football has more views on Man City than any other. The Premier League will only hurt themselves by moving.
La Liga didn’t do anything because they were afraid Barcelona would leave, and if City get punished and join La Liga (most likely the league), the PL bosses will punish themselves. We all know that the people in charge don’t care about the fans as much as the clubs do.
Will Reily
Why not punish Man City for what they did in the past?
As a Liverpool fan, I should find it funny that Everton got punished this week, but I can’t.
Reading Holster’s email about how these rules have been applied to lower-league teams was very interesting and opened my eyes to something I didn’t know was going on. I believe that two wrongs don’t make a right, and this still seems wrong to me. Not least because the fine was given in the middle of the season, when it could have been put off until the beginning of next season, giving Everton time to file an appeal.
It looks like the idea behind this is that teams should be punished during the season where the sin happened. It makes sense, but it also makes it worse that Man City won’t work together. They don’t even have to be found innocent. As long as the process takes too long, they can keep getting prizes. There is a way to solve that problem: punish people in the past. That being honest by Everton should be seen as a benefit, not a bad thing. Also, watch how City reacts when they know that all of their wins will be lost.
For example, Man City’s offenses seem to go back ten years. To show this, here are the champions from those ten years, starting from the end:
Man City
Man City
Man City
Liverpool
Man City
Man City
Chelsea
Leicester
Chelsea
Man City
If you fine them 3 points for each season they missed, the list is:
Man City
Liverpool
Man City
Liverpool
Liverpool
Man City
Chelsea
Leicester
Chelsea
Liverpool
Six titles are cut down to three with a small points fine. If you give them all 10 points, they lose another title and Arsenal wins it. In two of those years, City beat United and Arsenal to the last two spots in the Champions League by just three points and one goal difference. The chance to play in those events will never come around again, but City could take the money they made and give it to the other clubs as payment.
Suddenly, City’s refusal to give in doesn’t look so smart. Maybe they’ll start to see how valuable it is to work together. This would support Everton’s honest approach and encourage other clubs to be more honest in the future.
Someone will say that I’m biased as a Liverpool fan because I think our team will benefit the most from this method. But if we stand to benefit the most from the correction, it’s because we lost the most from the offense.
Barry, AFC, and Chippenham
The Premier League is being weak.
I had to say what I thought about the FFP mess and how the Premier League seemed to be handling it all with such cowardice. Let’s say that Everton broke the rules. That’s fine. Taking away ten points from them in the middle of the season seems crazy. I think it would have been better to take away the points for next season, with the penalty not being applied if they were sent back to the Championship. If Everton lose this season, they will say it was wrong to do it now.
It’s also bad manners for the Premier League to not move the case against Man City forward. They may have the best boss, the most money, and the most famous players in the Premier League, but they need to be seen to be fair in how they run the sport. It’s clear that this is not true.
One hundred and fifteen charges is a serious charge, and not giving this the attention it needs seems either weak or, worse, not able to do the job. There are also doubts about Chelsea because of the news story about their money problems. The Man City mess needs to be fixed quickly. It is their problem if their government can’t or won’t put together a defense.
The sport will be called into question more and more as the wait goes on. Let’s act like we have the best league in the world.
Sterling Burke
Everton retorts
Mike, WHU just proved once more that stories can really lead you astray if you can’t think for yourself. The least amount of money Everton spends is among the teams. For a few years now, we haven’t spent much money on stars.
We’re getting slammed for building a new stadium to boost our Profit and Sustainability, which once again shows that FFP is a ring fence for the select few.
It’s funny that a West fan would speak out when they’ve been given a free venue. Their chances of being in the Championship now are good if they were still at Upton Park.
Fans who aren’t part of the ESL breakaway mob should be worried that a mere 19.5m overspend led to a 10 point penalty. You can be pretty sure that they’ll be coming after a few others soon.
Come on Sunday, we’ll show the Premier League how we feel about their dishonesty.
Ian, UTFT
But I couldn’t ignore this letter because it was an answer to one I had already written.
Mike from WHU says it has to do with how much they spend on players. Mike missed this. He’s right that we’ve wasted a lot of money on players who haven’t done anything useful (over 500M in the last six or seven years), but that’s not quite the point. The problem is how we’re keeping track of money for the stadium and COVID. Accounts clerk mate.
There is a big difference between that and “spending too much on players.” We’ve been talking to the league about this exact thing for the past two years since they were made aware of it. Were we trying to hide it? Nope. Did we use powerful lawyers to try to stop this? Nope. It’s likely that we made it too easy for the league to “speed up” the penalties.
You also won’t find a single Evertonian who says we didn’t earn some kind of punishment, even if our problems weren’t done on purpose (they weren’t). Instead, EVERY Evertonian says the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. This is being said by more than just Everton fans. There are commentators on almost every station in your country, and most of them, if not all of them, have said they don’t get how harsh it is.
This week, I’ve heard the word “excessive” used more times than in the five years before. And they have every right to be mad at our current boss (an accountant—you couldn’t make that up!) and our former chairman for putting us in this mess in the first place.
Take on management roles? That takes away nine points. We thought what we thought was right (based on accounting standards) was different from what the league thought was right. That’s ten points all together.
That’s why, Mike, we’re not looking for pity from fans of other teams. As a fan, you should have felt sorry for the FA diving panel because the only other player punished besides Niasse was Lanzini. We haven’t gotten any after how badly VAR has treated us over the last two years, and we won’t get any here either. Do not need your pity. But I do think you should know the difference between “leaving players with too much money” and the accounting problems we’ve brought up. It’s the truth, even though I know you don’t want to hear it.
This time it’s Everton.
_____________________ tomorrow?
I hope it’s not your club.
TX Bill (You know what’s going to happen? We’ll appeal, they’ll turn it down, and they’ll add two more points because Everton.) EFC
Not feeling sorry for Everton
Supporters, pundits, analysts, and even Everton management all defend the team in a way that makes you roll your eyes. The club’s own comment is enough to make coming up with new comedy skits.
Think about the people. It’s like they’re kids who need to be watched over. Some of what they did with the club may not have been right because they were trying to “appease” the fans’ wish for better. It’s true that Everton fans don’t win many games, though. Of late, their only real claim to fame has been staying in the top flight for a long time. However, they have barely held on to that title.
Now it’s too late; the mistake happened in previous years, and if reductions were supposed to happen, they should have happened back then. Building on the first point, they would have been sent down in that case. I’m sure the teams that were relegated are thinking about that. Think about their friends!
City or Chelsea have already done it, but we’re not as big of a club. That’s right, they haven’t done it yet. That doesn’t change the fact that you did something wrong, though. Because Everton is a big club (see point about how long in the top division), fans always think they deserve more. It’s funny that they now say that not being a top club is a reason for a smaller penalty.
We’re being used as an easy target, which has never happened before. Teams in other leagues have been dropped or fined much more. It’s not entirely clear what the points system is based on, but it has happened before. We’re excited to see what City and Chelsea, two teams that cheat all the time, will get.
It was Covid, though. This one makes me laugh so hard, because no one else had to go through Covid. Also, the PL let everyone off the hook for Sone’s Covid by going over 4 years instead of the normal 3.
But there was a war between Russia and Ukraine. How could we have known that borrowing money from sketchy people and investing in the club would have bad results in the future? I don’t think we need to talk about this one more.
Because of the first reason, the new stadium naming rights fell through. Most of the same people would say that any money from naming a stadium that wasn’t built yet and wasn’t going to be built during that time frame should have been used to offset other money that was already spent.
As part of the big plan, Everton tried to fight for a consistent eighth-place finish, but they got too close to the sun. They’ve been badly led for a long time and have been told many times, which disproves their claim that they should be punished less for cooperating. Going against the rules even after being told not to is the exact opposite of “cooperating.” Even more so when their professional accountants told them it was their job to pay for ways to “workaround” the rules, even when they were being looked into.
It’s hard to feel sorry for teams that do things other than running the club well to get an edge.
Can’t wait for the teams that have been promoted in the last few years to sue Everton.
But it’s been great for laughs, so I hope this one lasts a while.
I’m Paul McDevitt
Get ready for the Euros!
That’s the end of the best Scotland qualification showing I’ve ever seen. We slowed down a bit near the end, but only after we were sure of qualifying. It’s amazing that they won their first five games. The wins against Spain and Norway will stick with them for a long time.
I started playing football right before Euro 96 and the World Cup in 1998. It seemed like Scotland only played in big events after those two. I had no idea it would be 23 years before we played at Euro 2020(21). But even back then, that didn’t feel quite “right.” It could have been the way we got in through the back door, the effect of the covid, or the way the event was set up. Two of the games were at Hampden Park, and the third one was at Wembley. With the chance that tens of thousands of Scots will follow the team around Germany, this seems more real.
It also really feels like a chance to do something special. It’s not about winning; it’s just about getting out of the group. We’ve been to the Euros more times than anyone else and never made it out of the group stage. We’ve been to more World Cups than anyone else and never made it out of the group stage. With all the great players Scotland has had in the past, it’s really funny that they have never played in a knockout game. You can’t compare this team to the ones we’ve had in the past, but it is the best we’ve had in a very long time. If we get lucky, we might even win.
If that’s not enough to worry about, the defense that got us qualified has been looking weak lately. We gave up one goal in the first five games of the season, but now we’ve given up 14 goals in our last five games. Even so, England, Spain, and France were in those games, and only one of them was a real game with something at stake. Also, a lot of players have been hurt, and our team isn’t very deep. We hope that everyone will be healthy and ready to go for the Euros.
We are excited for December 2nd and hope that the draw gods play along with us and give us a chance to make history.
Mike and LFC in London
