Manchester City’s victories are absolutely meaningless IMO

Big_Nothing said:
How is it bollox?

The only similarity is that at briefly in our history we spent more than 'most' others were willing to spend on a few players.

How that is comparable to nation states cleaning their money and reputations by absolutely blowing the nearest competition away, breaking and manipulating the rules, lying about it and destroying the nature of competition in doing so, I have no idea.
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We both agree that state owned clubs and sports washing is morally wrong and the footballing authorities have a lot to answer for. Without wanting to trivialise their disgusting behaviour, if we can park that to one side and look at the money element of the game you will see that what they are doing is no different from what Blackburn under Walker did, what Leeds tried to do and the mess Portsmouth got themselves in.

In 2008 / 09 season the 20 PL clubs owed a staggering £3.1 billion with West Ham recording in the region of £90 million net loss. All of these teams have tried to buy success or have sold the family silver to remain the PL. This is the reason why the FFP was brought in, too many clubs living above their means. Nine of the teams are no longer in the PL and at least three of them are lucky to still be operating.

It is regularly muted on here that the Boro have a staggering amount of debt that is luckily covered by Gibson but what happens when we don't have a Steve Gibson (God forbid)?

There are not many teams that aren't guilty of trying to buy success.
 
Jedi boro said:
NC has swalllowed the largely southern press bile at the time as it’s a myth we paid silly money for all our players in that era.

Arsenal offered Juninho more than us for a start but the fact Robbo went to Brazil personally to meet him and his family swayed the deal whilst Arsenal just sent a fax.
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We did pay a lot of money for our players and several of them have spoken about the silly wages we offered them.
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
They’re singled out because they’re under investigation for 115 breaches and have been fined £90m by UEFA for false accounting and failing to cooperate with investigations and requests for information. Which other English clubs have had that?

The rules are the rules. You have to abide by them. It doesn’t matter who set them and why, they’re in place and they’re voted through by a 14-6 majority. You can’t just say well we don’t like those rules so we’re going to ignore them and do what we like.
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Why are they under investigation by UEFA and not the other clubs who are pumping heavy sums of money into buying players?

They're not one of the clubs that conspired to change football in this country to suit themselves, backed by our chairman when it came to the vote. Those clubs should have been expelled by the FA, instead pandered to a weak FA supported by other chairmen looking to sweep up a few crumbs, despite the fact that it meant they wouldn't be able to compete for the big prize again.

It's a long time ago now but that changed English football. Foreign ownership is here now, it's been here for some time. There are only four clubs with a majority English ownership in the top flight. They're not all on the take, it's one of those not on the take that's being investigated thanks to the relatively new rules put in place with the support/pressure from clubs whose owners may be.
 
When clubs have more power than the ruling bodies, that's when the trouble starts.......or in this case has already started.

Chuck Sky and the foreign TV deals into the mix, then football in the UK is primarily a business not a sport. Balance sheets are more important than sporting success.

And I'm still waiting for the financial bubble to burst..........☹️
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
Why are they under investigation by UEFA and not the other clubs who are pumping heavy sums of money into buying players?

They're not one of the clubs that conspired to change football in this country to suit themselves, backed by our chairman when it came to the vote. Those clubs should have been expelled by the FA, instead pandered to a weak FA supported by other chairmen looking to sweep up a few crumbs, despite the fact that it meant they wouldn't be able to compete for the big prize again.

It's a long time ago now but that changed English football. Foreign ownership is here now, it's been here for some time. There are only four clubs with a majority English ownership in the top flight. They're not all on the take, it's one of those not on the take that's being investigated thanks to the relatively new rules put in place with the support/pressure from clubs whose owners may be.
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Other clubs are under investigation by UEFA. One of the issues is that all of those clubs can afford better lawyers than UEFA.

I agree with you on the Premier League, etc.

But I don’t understand why people are arguing against rule breaking TBH. The fact is that the clubs voted on rules around financial regulations. So there is an agreement between those clubs. One of those clubs appears to have decided that those rules shouldn’t apply to them. You don’t say well these are new rules so we’ll let it slide, you investigate and if there’s evidence of wrongdoing - and there appears to evidence of industrial-scale financial irregularities - then you charge them and discuss it in court. You don’t just let it slide.

Presumably all clubs are being monitored. Chelsea, Newcastle and Everton are sailing very close to the wind. It’s about not declaring full salaries and transfer fees, bonuses, agents fees, inflated advertising and marketing values. But, as I say, some of these clubs - nation states, billionaires - can buy better lawyers than the governing bodies can.

But where there is evidence, you call it out and pursue it.
 
The Card Cheat said:
They've spent less in the last ten years than Man United. Which to some extent disproves the idea City are just buying titles
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I am sure some of the charges against them is that they have under reported wages being paid to managers and players, I can remember one example being Roberto Mancini. They also have sponsorship deals set up with dodgy companies with hardly any history or footprint on the internet yet can spend millions of pounds sponsoring a football club. They are bent as bent can be and hopefully they can get punished but I can't see it happening.
 
Norman_Conquest said:
We did pay a lot of money for our players and several of them have spoken about the silly wages we offered them.
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That’s not the myth of course we paid well but SO DID ALL THE OTHER CLUBS.

Do you think zola was playing for free ???

But we were held up as the evil club spending all this money when every other club around us was doing the same.
 
Jedi boro said:
That’s not the myth of course we paid well but SO DID ALL THE OTHER CLUBS.

Do you think zola was playing for free ???

But we were held up as the evil club spending all this money when every other club around us was doing the same.
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That is what I am saying above to Bi _Nothing, we are all guilty of it. Some of us just paid more.
 
The_Lizards_Jumpers said:
Or you decided to make supporting them part of your public persona, like Oasis did, but it's often rumoured that you didn't actually go to that many games before you were famous. Now that football is trendy you can pin your colours to the Man City mast in a way of clinging on to your "working class hero" credentials.
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There’s that potentially of course as well.
 
I was once stood on the Holgate as a kid in the Clive Road corner back in the early 80s in the days of the 3/4,000 crowds. A studious looking guy in a long black coat and reading a book periodically shouted out phrases of the critical thinking genre, one of which was “is this a business or is it?” At the time I remember thinking, as those around me surely did, that he was a complete crank. These days I look at football and remembering that guy and think perhaps he wasn’t actually a crank but a visionary ahead of his time.
 
Nothing will be done and teams/clubs will continue to 'cheat' and spend beyond their means.

I've given up on the authorities - FIFA/UEFA/FA (etc). They're all weak as pi$$ and corrupt themselves.

I just watch the football now.

And I must say, cheating or not cheating, the way Man City play football is simply incredible. The attention to detail Pep has on his team is staggering. They're like robots and it's like he has them all programmed to do exactly what they need to do in any situation. It's amazing to see how well drilled they are and how effective they are.
 
1997-98 promotion from the Championship with the following having played:

Festa
Ravanelli
Emerson
Townsend
Merson
Branca
Schwarzer
Pearson
Michael Thomas
Gascoigne

Isn't this the same but just at a different level?
 
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