Platini: No Ban For Failing FFP This Time Around

[Ted Hughes]

IF, they are allowing 80 odd mil for PSG, then they have no grounds to declare our deal as being worth less & penalise us.

i can't see any possible way they could do that & get away with it, even in their own court of choice. I don't even understand why they would try, as it's so obviously wrong & brings the whole thing into disrepute straight away, even open to corruption accusations due to Platini's connections to PSG & Gill's to Utd.

I'm calling definite bullshit on that part of the story.

I can imagine that they could have found a problem with our 'intellectual' rights & image rights deals, perhaps if we have backdated them. IF, the 50 mil fine is genuine, I would bet that is the contested area, not the Etihad deal.

But I don't believe the 50 mil either.

The latest I'm hearing - and reading between the lines - is that it's being forced on UEFA by the same 'cosy cartel' that forced FFP on them in the first place.
And that they'd be quite happy not to penalise City and other 'nouveau riche' clubs, but they'd prefer some outside arbiter to prevent them from doing it.

FFP is a busted flush - even Hoeness, Rummenigge and the most pigheaded of Arsenal supporters realise it was a dumb idea to begin with - but they need a dignified exit

I've read similar stuff to that, suggestions that the version of ffp we have now, is not the one UEFA actually planned & that it really needs legal challenges in order to arrive at a final workable version that stands up to legal scrutiny.

I still find Wenger's recent quotes about the size of fines very very suspect indeed, as if it was him who put it forward.

This whole thing really makes my blood boil. I'm confident we will work away around this without it making one iota of difference (one season at the absolute worst) but I can't be doing with the fact that it is corruption. It's being sanctioned by clubs & cheered on by some of those clubs' fans, but it is obvious corruption & it's right out in the open.

It's bigger than just City imo. I want to see individuals targeted & made to explain their actions & their exact reasons for setting the legislation in this particular way. I don't see any logical argument for it, other than that they are directly trying to engineer the outcome of their competition & which clubs should be involved.

Somehow, somewhere I want people to be accountable for their actions, then if it's all fair & above board; no problem.

But we all KNOW it fucking isn't.

[patrickblue]

IF, they are allowing 80 odd mil for PSG, then they have no grounds to declare our deal as being worth less & penalise us.

i can't see any possible way they could do that & get away with it, even in their own court of choice. I don't even understand why they would try, as it's so obviously wrong & brings the whole thing into disrepute straight away, even open to corruption accusations due to Platini's connections to PSG & Gill's to Utd.

I'm calling definite bullshit on that part of the story.

I can imagine that they could have found a problem with our 'intellectual' rights & image rights deals, perhaps if we have backdated them. IF, the 50 mil fine is genuine, I would bet that is the contested area, not the Etihad deal.

But I don't believe the 50 mil either.

The latest I'm hearing - and reading between the lines - is that it's being forced on UEFA by the same 'cosy cartel' that forced FFP on them in the first place.
And that they'd be quite happy not to penalise City and other 'nouveau riche' clubs, but they'd prefer some outside arbiter to prevent them from doing it.

FFP is a busted flush - even Hoeness, Rummenigge and the most pigheaded of Arsenal supporters realise it was a dumb idea to begin with - but they need a dignified exit

I've no doubt that what you are hearing is correct. All the old G14 lot are going to keep pushing, and UEFA are squirming.

[Lee_R]

Seriously think that whatever happens it will be contested and dragged out. This whats come out is a big bluff threat at best and IMO is the absolute worst that would happen. Also IF it was to stick it would have to be over time etc otherwise it in itself is non-fair play.

[sidSmith]

Fuck them. The whole lot of it is bollox. Liverpool can lose £90m but because they haven't been in Europe, they don't get assessed until next autumn. What a fucking joke. For some teams those few months could be enough to sink them.

I say we qualify each year and play the kids. Let them limit us to a squad of 18 and we'll just treat the whole thing with contempt. When you have a team qualifying every year who simply occupy one of your precious places it kind of detracts from your competition as a spectacle.

It's a load of fucking shit anyway. We're always in pot 4 and are banned from tackling.

[Ted Hughes]

Fuck them. The whole lot of it is bollox. Liverpool can lose £90m but because they haven't been in Europe, they don't get assessed until next autumn. What a fucking joke. For some teams those few months could be enough to sink them.

I say we qualify each year and play the kids. Let them limit us to a squad of 18 and we'll just treat the whole thing with contempt. When you have a team qualifying every year who simply occupy one of your precious places it kind of detracts from your competition as a spectacle.

It's a load of fucking shit anyway. We're always in pot 4 and are banned from tackling.

The problem is the players. They won't sign for or stay at City if we are not in the Champions League. So we have to find a way of dealing with it that suits us.

[Beefymcfc]

Ha ha ha, what a story.

[pepsi_dave]

Great Article from the telegraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/footba ... -City.html

Uefa missing the real targets with their £50 million fine for Manchester City
European body is just grandstanding when they should be concentrating on stopping speculators who ram-raid clubs

By Paul Hayward, Chief Sports Writer


When Abu Dhabi’s rulers first decided to build a bonfire of hundreds of millions of pounds at Manchester City they would have laughed at the idea that blowing money was a crime punishable by Uefa sanctions. Imagine that: a sport where they throw a £50 million penalty at you for excessive generosity.
Strictly, Financial Fair Play (FFP) is an anti-subsidy initiative by a game that prostrates itself to foreign billionaires and then ticks them off for investing too much. It defiles the World Cup by awarding it to Qatar, then disapproves of Qatari spending at Paris St-Germain.

It says little about rampant ticket price inflation, the huge sums extracted by agents or grotesque individual player salaries. Whichever way you turn it, Uefa’s clumsy lunge at “fairness” has ended up being about two gulf states who jumped into football as an act of future-proofing because their oil was running out.

No torch is being held here for sovereign wealth. But the distortion of the London house market by foreign speculators, for example, is a far more serious issue than City paying Sergio Agüero’s wages via a so-called sweetheart deal with Etihad Airways.

Uefa-ologists might have spotted that president Michel Platini enjoys a cosy relationship with Qatar, who chose Paris as their investment outlet, and that it might have been somewhat awkward for Europe’s governing body to punish PSG without also directing their disapproval at City.

The clubs hit hardest by these arbitrary actions are those who had to spend heavily to raise underperforming clubs into the elite. City and PSG both fit this profile.
It was no surprise, then, to find Roman Abramovich broadly supportive of the FFP principle. Chelsea’s owner had already torched the kind of cash City and PSG have burned in the last three years. By endorsing the move to have such extravagance cast as a crime, Abramovich was simply blocking the way to new tycoons and therefore protecting his competitive advantage.

From Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s viewpoint, a £50 million fine doubtless leaves a kind of moral stain. It implies financial doping, or even cheating, with its suggestion that the £35 million-a-year Etihad deal was really a polite way to cook the books.

As with PSG and the Qatari tourist board (£167 million), Uefa clearly believe that the deal was inflated to allow one part of an oil-rich state to subsidise another. And they might be right.

Yet the people who struck those deals are unlikely to appreciate being singled out in an industry that is synonymous with creative accounting. If in doubt, consider the mess Barcelona got themselves into over Neymar.

Nobody wants an unregulated free for all, or illegality, or the crushing of the poor by the rich. But Uefa’s punishment of City takes no account of the direction in which the club is heading or the socially constructive investment in the Etihad Campus in a deprived part of Manchester. Shiekh Mansour and his entourage are not philanthropists, but nor does their spending fit the template of outright decadence.

So far all that expenditure has bought them one Premier League title and not much headway in Europe. There is no wholesale buying of trophies because the Premier League is too competitive to allow it. This season City have had to fight Liverpool and Chelsea for the championship. The seductive allure of FFP is that helps the poorer against the richer. All it might do in this case is to make Abu Dhabi resent being stigmatised and cause them to question Uefa’s motives. You can see the speech bubble now: “They take our money and then fine us for giving it to them?”

A much greater problem, certainly in England, is clubs being ram-raided by speculators who seek to suck money out, not put it in. Portsmouth and Birmingham City are just two examples of clubs that have been treated like lumps of meat on an “investment” menu.

Many of us would like to see regulation attack that issue before the Uefa bureaucracy drives through arbitrary penalties against a club (City) who are putting money in, rather than taking it out, however vulgar it might sometimes seem.

Where is the £50 million fine for the Glazers for servicing their debts from Manchester United’s revenues? On this evidence, FFP is mere grandstanding.

[lets all have a disco]

Cant help but slam a cheeky build a bonfire with hundreds of millions dig in though eh?

Apart from that it's a good article.

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

Scratch this analysis.

[Beefymcfc]

Only just getting to have a read of this. So, who has brought this out, UEFA or us?

[gillie]

What the football world needs is a FIFA/UEFA Edward Snowden to blow the corruption apart.

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

Bollocks, this could go legal, or maybe not....

[patrickblue]

Bollocks, this could go legal, or maybe not....

I reckon the courts is where it's going to end up.

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

Bollocks, this could go legal, or maybe not....

I reckon the courts is where it's going to end up.

Truth is, this could be the end of the club's pursuit of trophies if the worst case scenario comes true. Then again, it could all be bollocks. So I guess the courts is the only logical place for this to be decided.

[Beefymcfc]

We will not be painted as cheats, I know that for certain.

[gillie]

We will not be painted as cheats, I know that for certain.

I think the Shiekh will be fuming personally over this as the Arab people do not like being called cheats especially when told one thing then being told something completely different.UEFA "If clubs can show a willingness to compliance with FFP rules leniency will be shown".

[Ted Hughes]

Bollocks, this could go legal, or maybe not....

I reckon the courts is where it's going to end up.

Truth is, this could be the end of the club's pursuit of trophies if the worst case scenario comes true. Then again, it could all be bollocks. So I guess the courts is the only logical place for this to be decided.

Nah.

Even in the worst case it would just make it more difficult to compete in the Champions League for a season whilst we adjust.

If w were desperate to really 'cheat' this, there are loads of ways we could get money in.

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

Bollocks, this could go legal, or maybe not....

I reckon the courts is where it's going to end up.

Truth is, this could be the end of the club's pursuit of trophies if the worst case scenario comes true. Then again, it could all be bollocks. So I guess the courts is the only logical place for this to be decided.

Nah.

Even in the worst case it would just make it more difficult to compete in the Champions League for a season whilst we adjust.

If w were desperate to really 'cheat' this, there are loads of ways we could get money in.

We've been mugged. What's to stop them mugging us again and again once we have accepted that they are entitled to mug us?

[Ted Hughes]

Bollocks, this could go legal, or maybe not....

I reckon the courts is where it's going to end up.

Truth is, this could be the end of the club's pursuit of trophies if the worst case scenario comes true. Then again, it could all be bollocks. So I guess the courts is the only logical place for this to be decided.

Nah.

Even in the worst case it would just make it more difficult to compete in the Champions League for a season whilst we adjust.

If w were desperate to really 'cheat' this, there are loads of ways we could get money in.

We've been mugged. What's to stop them mugging us again and again once we have accepted that they are entitled to mug us?

We don't know that we have been mugged yet, it is all speculation.

But if they want to get bent on us, we can do the same. Just fund a couple of deals indirectly. We scratch someone's back, they scratch ours with some sponsorship. 20 smaller ones at fair markt value would do it.

I don't believe they have flagged the Etihad deal anyway, I don't see how they can, it is not a related party deal & it's not overpriced.

[Peter Doherty (AGAIG)]

We don't know that we have been mugged yet, it is all speculation.

But if they want to get bent on us, we can do the same. Just fund a couple of deals indirectly. We scratch someone's back, they scratch ours with some sponsorship. 20 smaller ones at fair markt value would do it.

I don't believe they have flagged the Etihad deal anyway, I don't see how they can, it is not a related party deal & it's not overpriced.

I hope you're right, obviously. But there's a funny smell around all this and its not just that emanating from Platini's armpits.