Sportswash! - Let’s oil stare at Manchester City!

[MrBlack]

31 minutes ago, Zatman said:

I think its hard to strip them not just because it's complicated but it makes the Premier League look a farce. Could argue Serie A prestige never really recovered from Calciopoli and this has a lot bigger reach

Let's face it, it is. Dullest competition with City the most likely winners, badged as the best in the world. It's far less of a farce if they kick them out. That won't happen though, and you're probably right about the wider perception.

[VillaJ100]

We need to go treaty of Versailles style on them

Fine should be equivalent to the commercial gain they've got through cheating, around a billion quid fine should be a good start. 

-60 points for every season they have cheated

Transfer embargo for 10 windows

Transfer budget of £30 mil a season for 5 windows after that

In return they get to stay in the league

 

[delboy54]

6 hours ago, Genie said:

I have no issues with this, even if it meant sha got a title out of it. 

That's a step too far, have you been drinking?

[delboy54]

6 hours ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Assuming that they’re found ‘guilty’ of at least some of the 115 charges, I think a 100 point deduction (effectively relegating them this season) and a 3+ years transfer embargo should suffice, just about.

Unsure how I feel about stripping them of past titles.

No point in stripping them of their past titles, just an official statement that an asterix against everything they won. E.g.       * = cheated

Agree with all the other points you raised, but I cannot see it happening. Likely to be a slap on the wrist and a small token fine...

[Tommo_b]

Give them all the punishments! They have earned them.

Relegate them to non league, transfer ban for 5 seasons and a £300m fine.

And strip the titles.

The fine won’t mean anything but least with the rest we wouldn’t have to worry about seeing that horrible club at the top table for awhile. 

[mikeyp102]

How many points deducted do we think they could get and still stay up? 
I reckon even a 60 point deduction and they would stay up.

[MessiWillSignForVilla]

7 hours ago, Avfc96 said:

I was just pointing out what may happen if they were stripped. 

But the closest thing I can recall to this, was the Calciopoli scandal in Serie A. Juventus 'won' the title in 05-06, but were stripped of it and Inter, who initially finished 15 points behind Juve, were awarded the title as AC Milan who had finished 2nd, were docked 30 points.

That was because the Calciopoli scandal broke just before the end of the 05-06 season, so the teams involved had their punishment handed out for the current season. The relevant part for City's potential punishment would be 04-05 season which was stripped from Juventus and left officially unawarded.

[MrBlack]

1 hour ago, MessiWillSignForVilla said:

That was because the Calciopoli scandal broke just before the end of the 05-06 season, so the teams involved had their punishment handed out for the current season. The relevant part for City's potential punishment would be 04-05 season which was stripped from Juventus and left officially unawarded.

Yup. They strip them of the titles, and noone wins it for those years. I don't even think the other clubs would want to win it by default.

I sure would as a villa fan, but if it's just another trophy to add to the pile, and it's won by default I don't think I would. But whatever, it's not their call to make.

Consign then to the bin and move on. Preferably without Man City. I could see the football league being happy to welcome them with open arms though, maybe even accommodating them in the Championship. Sadly, I don't think the relegation will happen.

[Zatman]

6 hours ago, MrBlack said:

Let's face it, it is. Dullest competition with City the most likely winners, badged as the best in the world. It's far less of a farce if they kick them out. That won't happen though, and you're probably right about the wider perception.

I fumly agree its already a farce. A scandal will kill it

[TreeVillan]

I forget how heavy handed football fans can be.

I think we should put an asterix next to their name on Wikipedia.

**** me. 

[delboy54]

If man city are not given what is perceived as a suitable punishment then that will be an open invitation for the rest of the premier league teams to copy them. The punishment must be severe enough to act as a deterrent.

The FA or whatever organisation that are prosecuting/accusing city of cooking the books are in a very difficult place, they cannot compete with the very well paid oily lawyers acting for city. Yet if the FA lose the case then I fear that the way that football is funded will be changed for the worse.

My prediction is both sides will attempt a compromise, city deducted 12 points and fined a few million. Whether that's enough punishment to placate the FA and the general footballing world etc, probably not, but city would see that as a result and carry on fiddling.

Or, this whole case will drag on for years with appeal after appeal, people will get bored of it and it will be eventually "swept under the carpet".

[MrBlack]

It annoys me how City point to the failed Uefa case as proof of their innocence. Yet, the Uefa case found they had breached the rules. It was just deemed by CAS that the charges were being brought too late, not that they were actually innocent.  It was an administrative **** up by Uefa, not the innocence of City that got them off. 

They claim the hacked emails are being read "out of context". I'm not sure how the following don't clearly indicate they made up deals to meet the rules... (courtesy of https://www.spiegel.de/international/manchester-city-exposed-bending-the-rules-to-the-tune-of-millions-a-1236346.html)

Quote

"We will have a shortfall of 9.9m pounds in order to comply with UEFA FFP this season," Man City's Chief Financial Officer Jorge Chumillas wrote in an internal email. "The deficit is due to RM (eds: a reference to Roberto Mancini) termination. I think that the only solution left would be an additional amount of AD (eds: Abu Dhabi) sponsorship revenues that covers this gap."

Quote

Chapter 1: Bending the Rules to the Tune of Millions

For years now, the Manchester City football club has vehemently denied that its owner, the sheikh of Abu Dhabi, broke financial rules. But internal emails tell a different story, providing evidence of backdated contracts, illusory sponsoring payments and cavalier, "We can do what we want," business practices. By DER SPIEGEL Staff

Even as far back as 1880, when Anna Connell, the daughter of a vicar, founded a football club in Manchester to keep the unemployed and common laborers away from alcohol, the Al Nahyan family ruled Abu Dhabi. The clan of camel herders and pearl fishers lived in mudbrick homes beneath palm fronds -- and one can assume that for several ensuing decades, the idea of sky blue-clad football players was just as foreign to them as desert heat was to the Mancunians. But 128 years later, in September 2008, England's "Capital of the North" and the Al Nahyans, who had become a multibillion-dollar oil dynasty in the ensuing years, found their way to each other. And the consequences have been dramatic.

 

 

The once-mediocre club from East Manchester is currently the best team in the Premier League, a glitzy product that has become a fantastic advertisement for Abu Dhabi. Refined strategists like Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gündogan play for the team, along with the electric Leroy Sané, all under the leadership of perhaps the best trainer in the world, Pep Guardiola. It's a one-of-a-kind success story.

 

 

Now, though, documents made available by the whistleblower platform Football Leaks expose the dirty tricks behind the team's success.

 

The club owners from Abu Dhabi have introduced a new era of Manchester Capitalism. The term originally refers to that period of the industrial revolution when companies were ruthless and accepted no regulations whatsoever. But it can also be applied to the world of football: Since its purchase by the sheikh of Abu Dhabi, Manchester City has managed to cheat its way into the top echelon of European football and create a global, immensely profitable football empire, ignoring rules along the way. The club's newfound glory is rooted in lies.

 

 

The true story of City's climb is one of political influence and economic callousness. And it affects everyone who wants to understand the business of modern-day football.

 

Chapter 1: The Cheating Sheikh

 

"Aguueeerrooooooo!" A name, a drawn-out shriek. An icon. Every Manchester City fan is intimately familiar with this scream, blurted out by announcer Martin Tyler on May 13, 2012. Every "Cityzen" knows where they were at that precise moment, 93 minutes and 20 seconds after the match had begun, during the final seconds of the game, the final seconds of the season. Man City needed a victory to win the Premier League for the first time in 44 years.

 

 

But their opponent, the relegation-candidate Queens Park Rangers, had taken the lead. It looked as though the season would end as so many had before, with Manchester City's crosstown rivals Manchester United once again winning the championship. Then Edin Dzeko headed in the ball after 91 minutes and 14 seconds, tying the match. Just two minutes later, Aguueeerrooooooo hammered the ball into the back of the net, delivering his team the championship.

 

Those 126 seconds of injury time are part of the club's emotional founding myth, a team owned by sheikhs from Abu Dhabi that was to no longer treat championships as the electrifying exception, but as a satisfyingly regular occurrence. For Man City fans, the championship was a football miracle, but for the club's critics, it was merely a matter of time. Those detractors have long felt that Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan's investment in the club, and the transfer-sum records that he has since pulverized, represents a distortion of the principles of competition. A state made rich by oil stands behind the team, they say, adding that its sponsoring contracts are nothing but a surreptitious path for Abu Dhabi money to flow into the club. Manchester City executives have consistently rejected such claims.

 

 

Man City plays in Etihad Stadium and the team's jerseys are likewise sponsored by Etihad. The Abu Dhabi airline is led by Mansour's half-brother. The Abu Dhabi telecommunications company Etisalat and the Abu Dhabi tourism authority also advertise with the club. So too does the Abu Dhabi investment firm Aabar, which owns stakes in UniCredit and Virgin Galactic.

 

English football has never seen investments of this size. And the true numbers in an internal analysis compiled by club leadership are explosive. They come from a document titled "Summary of Owner Investment" dated May 10, 2012, three days before Sergio Agüero's decisive goal. By this time, the management installed by Mansour had been with the club for just three years and eight months -- and they calculated that the owner from Abu Dhabi had already invested 1.1 billion pounds, around 1.3 billion euros, in the club. One section of the document is particularly consequential. It bears the heading: "Supplement to Abu Dhabi partnership deals."

 

 

"Supplement to Abu Dhabi partnership deals": This internal document lists how much money the club owner had invested in City in the period up to May 2012.

Bild vergrößern

"Supplement to Abu Dhabi partnership deals": This internal document lists how much money the club owner had invested in City in the period up to May 2012.

To explain what that is, we have to return to "Aguueeerrooooooo," to the team's rebirth. In the stands, grown men shed tears, while the players on the field piled into a sky-blue heap. On the sideline, a 47-year-old man in a suit cheered along with them, later draping an Italian flag across his shoulders: trainer Roberto Mancini, who had won the Italian league championship three times, the Italian league cup four times and introduced four new multimillion-pound acquisitions into Manchester City's team at the start of the championship season. One of them was Agüero.

 

Mancini had brought City its first title in almost half a century. But he would soon fall victim to his boss' ambition: Just one year later, Mancini was fired because the team proved unable to defend its title. That, apparently, is the logic adhered to by the owner: If it doesn't work, it must be replaced. But there was also a new problem: the recently introduced Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules established by UEFA, a set of budgetary statutes that came into force just a few weeks after Mancini was shown the door. First and foremost, the European football association wanted to ensure clubs didn't take on too much debt and slide into bankruptcy. Secondly, UEFA was concerned about competition in the European football leagues. They wanted to forbid clubs from spending more than they brought in.

City, though, was in danger of violating exactly that stipulation. "We will have a shortfall of 9.9m pounds in order to comply with UEFA FFP this season," Man City's Chief Financial Officer Jorge Chumillas wrote in an internal email. "The deficit is due to RM (eds: a reference to Roberto Mancini) termination. I think that the only solution left would be an additional amount of AD (eds: Abu Dhabi) sponsorship revenues that covers this gap."

 

In that email, Chumillas essentially revealed that his club does business a bit differently than regular football clubs. Normally, the business of football looks like this: The players play successful football, attract a growing audience, the team's games are televised, and potential sponsors take an interest. These sponsors sign contracts with the team obligating them to pay a fixed amount for the privilege of advertising with the club. This money becomes part of the team's budget for the season and can be used to sign players, pay agent fees or maintain the grass on the pitch. When the team's planning is off, or it suddenly has to spend more than called for in the business plan, the club shows a loss at the end of the season and has to cut Costs.

 

 

But Manchester City is no normal club. Costs and debt? None of that matters. And should a shortfall emerge, sponsors from the owner's home country simply send more money over. Penalties are only for those who get caught. To dodge UEFA sanctions, Man City management came up with a few creative proposals. "We could do a backdated deal for the next two years (...) paid up front," suggested club executive Simon Pearce. CEO Ferran Soriano, meanwhile, suggested having sponsors pay the team the contractually obligated bonus for winning the FA cup -- even though Man City hadn't won.

Ten days after the end of the season, Chumillas presented the results of the deliberations and declared that the details of the sponsoring contracts would be adjusted -- for the just finished season! Etihad was to suddenly pay 1.5 million pounds more, Aabar 0.5 million extra and the tourism authority a surplus of fully 5.5 million pounds. And they were all supposed to act as though that had been the deal agreed to at the beginning of the season.

The emails reveal decades of made up sponsorships from "independent" companies, that clearly are not independent. 

If they don't get found guilty it's way beyond a joke. 

If they avoid a reasonable punishment, I hope our owners copy them and start making up our own sponsors to fund our position so we're not forces to sell another Luiz next summer.

Edited Saturday at 13:36 by MrBlack

[mykeyb]

The problem the FA / Premier League have is the handed out punishments last season to clubs which has sevthe bar. There needs to be a points deduction and it needs to be enough that as a minimum they finish in the bottom half of the table and a transfer embargo is put in place so they cannot just bounce back next season. A fine would be pointless unless they are put into some kind of special measures where every penny that comes in is checked 

[Genie]

6 hours ago, TreeVillan said:

I forget how heavy handed football fans can be.

I think we should put an asterix next to their name on Wikipedia.

**** me. 

Yep. Some people would prefer that City keep the titles but put a little star next to their names than let the team finishing second (first non-cheating team) be promoted. 

[The_Steve]

**** off Pep

"All the Premier League teams want us to be sanctioned, that is for sure. But that's why I say to Mr Tebas and the Premier League teams, wait for the independent panel.

"Justice is there in a modern democracy. It's not more complicated than that.

"I don't know if he is a lawyer or the rest of the Premier League teams are lawyers, so I ask for that. It happened with Uefa.

"We believe we have not done anything wrong“

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c79w9p114d5o

[chrisvilla4]

So we've basically won the 2020 caribou Cup then? 

Get it in the cabinet! 

[Spoony]

PSR stuff aside. Have they basically won the league now? Liverpool and Arsenal have thrown away points City just wouldn’t. I can’t see anyone else coming close tbh. They look by far the most impressive. 

Edited Saturday at 22:18 by Spoony

[Jareth]

Seems like a good and fair idea. Deduct points for same number of seasons the cheating went on. They'll remain competitive, but will never win the league in those years. Might even see them sold as it won't be much fun as a toy. 

[MarkLillis]

They’ve raised the bar in the PL and it seems like they did it by cheating.

However it is in the past and football is played on the pitch in the now.

Personally I don’t really want anything but a spending cap/ transfer ban.For a period long enough to seriously affect them and bring their squad back to “normal ” levels.

 

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Jareth said:

Seems like a good and fair idea. Deduct points for same number of seasons the cheating went on. They'll remain competitive, but will never win the league in those years. Might even see them sold as it won't be much fun as a toy. 

Yeah I can't decide if this is good or bad,

The negative is they wouldn't be relegated.
The positive is assuming it's a hefty deduction for each season, they would probably go years without winning the league

 

I'm leaning towards the latter