Wonderful news! Hopefully the punishment will be no less than relegation from the football league, to the National league or lower, with lifetime bans for all the owners, directors and managers. Fairness must be restored, and that can only happen if serious infringements have serious ramifications.
Its pretty incredible, however its gonna drag on for while yet, first they actually have to decide punishment, then they will appeal, who knows how long that may take, then loads of other cubs will be sueing for compensation etc etc....
It is pretty sensational news though. I'm not sure there can be enough punishment to fully balance out the long term gains the club will have had from this level of financial doping
It is pretty sensational news though. I'm not sure there can be enough punishment to fully balance out the long term gains the club will have had from this level of financial doping
I think the punishment will be severe but i hope proportionately so.
Relegation wise - i dont see this but points deduction very possible with a huge fine.
The magnitude of this case and Citys ongoing denial of guilt (which will again by extended by an appeal) wont help their cause.
I think the most complex part here will centre around compensation claims currently tabled by 4 clubs and increasingly likely to rise.
Would i relegate them? No
Strip titles - hmm thats a tough one but no.
Points deduction? Yes - minimum of 10.
Fine - Huge.
Lets see...
Relegation wise - i dont see this but points deduction very possible with a huge fine.
The magnitude of this case and Citys ongoing denial of guilt (which will again by extended by an appeal) wont help their cause.
I think the most complex part here will centre around compensation claims currently tabled by 4 clubs and increasingly likely to rise.
Would i relegate them? No
Strip titles - hmm thats a tough one but no.
Points deduction? Yes - minimum of 10.
Fine - Huge.
Lets see...
pirateglenn said:
I respect the balanced and fair minded posts you make in this forum, and this would be in keeping with that spirit, but I nonetheless disagree with almost statement you make here.
pirateglenn said:
I assume from the rest of the post that you mean that hope the punishment is not too severe? Why exactly? you think what they did isn't too much of a big deal, or some other concern?
pirateglenn said:
Here's the one bit I do agree with - I also don't think they'll be relegated, but I certainly think they should be.
pirateglenn said:
On the contrary, it has helped their cause a great deal, and will continue to do so. These charges date back to late 2010's and a decade has passed since , in which time those earlier successes have raised their profile to an extent that any punishment that's limited to , say, the 27/28 season, would be a mere speedbump to a club that has already profited from many years of speeding. The nature of FFP rules means that a club is limited principally by how much revenue they can generate and the existing asset base (squad + facilities) ; the revenue is limited heavily to the success of the team on the field in previous years, and of course of the facilities are already built. It's a perverse twist on the "fake it till you make it" mentally - cheat your way to success and buy a fanbase & brand equity that will sustain you for decades.
The reality is that even if Man City were relegated, fined and given a season's transfer ban, they'd be back to the very top in a couple years, likely even quicker than Juventus were in Italy because of the competitive edge they've bought for themselves via FFP, on the back of cheating and then dragging it out long enough to consolidate their gains.
It's likely also given an incentive to the EPL to try and settle the case in a way that City find favourable (or at least gives them fewer things to plausibly challenge), because it's the league that looks worse from the delays, and they already look thoroughly impotent.
pirateglenn said:
Calculating the compensation may be tricky, but the principle is very simple ; they should be compensated.
pirateglenn said:
Again I'd love to understand why. It's now well established that teams committing financial irregularities usually get points deductions, which can be substantial enough to make relegation inevitable (as happened to my own hometown club), and in some cases direct relegations were ordered (Swindon, Darlington). I think what Manchester City have done is far worse than those cases, because it took places over many years, and they didn't just cheat, but orchestrated a sophisticated scheme to conceal it , so they could spend years lying about having cheated.
pirateglenn said:
If those titles were won in seasons where cheating is found to have occurred, why leave them to stand? In almost all other sporting examples I can think of, titles won by cheating are nullified. It's long gone now and does little, but records do still matter to fans.
pirateglenn said:
Again, this hurts them for a single season, and while it might cost them a title (probably not European qualification) , it will do virtually nothing to offset what they've gained.
pirateglenn said:
And this does absolutely nothing, which makes me wonder if you've even grasped the nature of the problem. The problem wasn't ever that city didn't have enough money, but that they had an excess of money yet limits to how much of it they could spend it within the rules. A fine does little to hurt their owners who will gladly pay it, unless it affects what they can spend on players under the rules, but under the new squad cost system, non football expenses like this will not have any impact on what they can spend. Should a fine bear the brunt of the punishment that City receive , it will have effectively enabled this cheating, serving as mechanism through which owners can transfer additional wealth into their clubs beyond what the rules allow.
The above is of course another way in which City stringing out the case will have helped them, because a huge fine might have been more a problem before the aforementioned change.
~
For me, adherence to rules is sacrosanct in sport (and competitive games in general), and cheating of any type is a reprehensible action that must be deterred by all means possible. When a player or team gains an unfair advantage by breaking the rules, that sport often because uninteresting not just to the other competitors, but to spectators. For this reason, I believe that that infringements need to be deterred by sanctions that exceed the benefits that are derived from non adherence. In City's case, you have a 10 year period in which they transformed a 2nd tier club into an infinitely more famous one which was the dominating force in domestic and European football, and this was only possible because they spent more money than their real underlying finances would have allowed. So when I hear fans say something along the lines of (I paraphrase) "yeah, dock them a dozen points and give them a fine, then let's move on" it truly makes me despair. How is that remotely equivalent to what they gained over the decade in question?
If football fans have a fault, I think it's that they are too tolerant (emphasis on too, because tolerance is a laudable virtue), and it's led to an industry that exploits it. It's not just Man City, but VAR, ticket prices, excessive televising of games and other developments that have sacrificed the fan experience to the altar of money. The only thing I can recall Football fans ever really pushing on back on was the Superleague, and while that was an odious proposal I saw the backlash as counterproductive, since it did the bidding of organisations like UEFA, FA, PL etc (organisations that did all those aforementioned bad things) for them.
I've personally lost a lot of interest in Football because of all those things, but especially Manchester City. When I was a teenager I was a season ticket holder for my hometown club, and used to keenly watch the premier league as a neutral. I remember going on holidays to the states over a Christmas/NY period and being excited every time my dad called home, because we were going for promotion, and he'd get the football scores. For better or worse, it meant something to me. Not anymore - it's now close to a decade since I've been to a live game, and I cancelled my sky subscription a few years meaning I'm lucky to see one live Premier league game a season. My interest is there in theory, I've always loved the sport, but it's too predictable and anticlimactic to motivate me to watch.
So for me, anything less than suite of measures that removes the illegitimate titles, imposes sanctions on the individuals responsible, and constrains the competitiveness of the club (whose entire asset base by now is derived from ill gotten gains) for the best part of a decade, falls short of what is necessary.
Note that none of this is about punishing City fans, players, and other uninvolved stakeholders. It is impossible to shield any of these groups from the consequences brought about by the schemes of their owners entirely, but if a fine was levied, the proceeds could first go to mitigating those effects. And no doubt City fans would not love seeing their club relegated, facing transfer bans and the like, but I actually wonder if that might not be a blessing in disguise. Sport (real sport, not the plastic sort we've become accustomed to) is about ups and down, and it's experiencing the heartache of the downs that make the successes so much sweeter. Modern City haven't had that, so reconnecting to this reality would be a good thing for them in the long run.
Apologies that this post is so long, and thank you if you read it all!
Read every sentence and disagreeing is absolutely fine - i see the whole arguement regardless of what i infer or suggest as an opinion - your counters are all valid - lets see what the outcome here will be.Oxinthewater said:
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G0930
Captain Fathermucker, Satty Aficionado
Platinum Level
They are talking about excluding them from the Premier LeagueRENEY444 said:
The scale of what they have done is incredible really. I think they need consistent punishement across a number of seasons, to reflect the benefits they have had over a number of seasons, and and continue to have due to the gains they made and titles they won from that wrong doing.
I don't think its fair on the EFL to relegate them, as this will effectively reduce the EFL that can gain promotion.
I would give them large, I'm talking minimum of 20-25 points for a number of seasons, a max could be 9 seasons, which would equate to the number of seasons they have cheated for, but could be for only 3-5 season as a more balanced punishment.
I believe this is the only way to attempt to balance out the long term gains they have recieved from the massive extent of the financial doping they have made. They would then not qualify for the Champions League for a few seasons, likely lose players, and have to start at a much lower level after the punishment ends. Other teams would be able to then more easily win things and qualify for European competetions, instead of City, as they have potentially take titles cups etc from other teams across the seasons of cheating and since then too
Its extreme I know, but so is the level of cheating
I don't think its fair on the EFL to relegate them, as this will effectively reduce the EFL that can gain promotion.
I would give them large, I'm talking minimum of 20-25 points for a number of seasons, a max could be 9 seasons, which would equate to the number of seasons they have cheated for, but could be for only 3-5 season as a more balanced punishment.
I believe this is the only way to attempt to balance out the long term gains they have recieved from the massive extent of the financial doping they have made. They would then not qualify for the Champions League for a few seasons, likely lose players, and have to start at a much lower level after the punishment ends. Other teams would be able to then more easily win things and qualify for European competetions, instead of City, as they have potentially take titles cups etc from other teams across the seasons of cheating and since then too
Its extreme I know, but so is the level of cheating
I like the idea of a 50 point penalty for the next 6 years they are in the premier league. This will potentially lead to relegation, but should keep them out of Europe. See how loyal their players are when there is no champions league.
