There is no such thing as fair or a level playing field in football. It will never happen. Not unless players and coaching staff are distributed at random, stadium attendance is banned and referees are completely AI, and private sponsorships are banned. I don't think we would really even want 100% fair. The game benefits from having big names and underdogs. There does need to be a line that we say, OK, that's gone too far. Will never get everyone to agree 100% where that line is. For myself, all I want is for the rules to be transparent and evenly enforced. As said previously, I feel like current FFP rules are misguided and encourage "cheating". It's not about being completely fair, it's about following the rules. Whether City are breaking the rules and whether FFP is "fair" are two different issues. I've always though FFP would end up unenforceable and that it would just encourage cheating or finding loopholes (which it appears to have done just that)... I find oil money in the sport distasteful but because of the inability to enforce, I've never been fully for FFP, even though I support it's intent. The idea behind FFP after all was to prevent clubs being pressured into unsupportable spending and to prevent clubs going under trying to compete with oil money. No one wants clubs to collapse... Well, besides United of course. That said, even though I'm not 100% behind FFP, I think breaking the rules IS breaking the rules and if you don't want to encourage a culture of teams being encourage to break the rules, and rules getting enforced haphazardly in the future, City should be punished, and punished harshly for this. (I believe they'll just get the wrist slap though).
Spanish government money for years. They should be punished too. I don't think "someone else broke rules" is an excuse.
I'm quite pleased with my neologism. On a more practical note, @Bumps - if you've got any more of these, stick 'em on the Newkie thread and get the page count up.
Agree with loads of that (and have said most of that in different non sensical ways lol, and, as a result you will now back my stance that Leicester should be stripped of their title and it should be handed to Spurs Yeah ? the rules is rules line gets bandied around Even Saint who, I believe, is very level headed accepts discrepancies In The rules of the game itself should be allowed to just run (Offside and VAR being his big bug bear ) Stealing yards on throw ins Hanging onto ball for over 6 secs Making a back These are all cheating but acceptable cheating apparently - not going into these btw lol
I thought you'd like that one. It's easy enough to work out by the context. In reality it's not even correct, a new word that hasn't passed into wider usage is technically a protologism, but that's going too far, even for me.
Okay I will accept I am totally wrong actually I won’t accept that I will just change my mind like I have stated I do - posted above lol If the following things occur - City are totally and unequivocally decimated - Leicester are treated the same the reason I add Leicester in is because if they are really trying to clean up the house then it should be fair I feel they are ‘picking’ on City as an easy and convenient target - I don’t feel it’s to make the game cleaner - I think it’s to keep it within their (the prems) control. So they can actually continue to allow it to be a **** show they also need to alter the rules so they are fair and not being picked up a decade later particularly in the case of City (and Leicester for that matter) - Everyone knew they were breaking or flying in the face of the rules so why not punish them in the current season and if the banking/monetary processes don’t allow for that they need to be changed so that they do. This way the team being disadvantaged benefits from the punishment to the club
Yeah, but it was more to do with the prolixity (look that one up @Bumps) than the eccentric spelling.
Difference is Leicester broke EFL rules. The prem have no jurisdiction on that so can’t do anything about it. If Leicester were relegated then maybe the efl could impose some sort of fine/points deduction for it though.
Again I understand that but that is a technicality The Prem can easily turn round and say they were found guilty and therefore not worthy of the place in the league. They are allowed to do whatever they want apparently(the Prem)
We are being told they can do anything Tbh it’s just a get out They cheated end of They were found guilty I know you are correct btw but if they wanted sort it out they could have done something at the time Same with City if they are unable to deal with these issues in the same season and allow for loopholes then something is badly wrong we can’t just sit back and go yeah they cheated but was EFL not Prem - which got them into the Prem It just bonkers which is why the only thing to me that makes sense is just allow that stuff to happen because they cannot manage or police it correctly. As I said this is supposedly just a sport so we aren’t dealing with peoples lives or are we ? If we are then this all takes a mammoth turn surely ?
Of course we are. Made the point the other day, but what about all the admin staff? All the caterers? What about the supplies that were owed invoices? Small business that we’re relying on payment before the club went into administration. Everyone thinks about players and managers who earn x amount and will go find another club to play for, but so many other people earning 20k a year work at football clubs and suddenly their company has just gone into admin and they have no job or income.
If that’s the case then it’s much more than a sport and everything needs to be spot on - surely can’t be any room for acceptance of anything on or off the pitch which turns it into an incorrect result if lives or on the line That just opens up whole cans of worms
Good post. I will go down the points one by one. The PL has brought charges against city not allegations. There is a big difference. They have provided a list of the specific rules that have been broken. There is no doubt about the breaches. What we are waiting for is how they will be punished. It's unbelievable that having taken on FFP, the PL has no written down punishments against each rule. For instance, everyone involved in football knows what the punishment for a red card is or misuse of social media. If you refuse to comply with eg turning in your accounts on time, the consequences should be detailed. If you were to get 5 point league deduction for non-compliance then two rounds of non-compliance equals a 10 point deduction and so on. - we employed 3 former city scouts who still had their logins to the city scouting system which they used. Not a good thing to do but more a privacy issue or data breach than cheating per se. The two clubs agreed a private financial compensation. Leicester should have faced punishment for their dodgy dealings while in the Championship. It was up to the EFL to deny them promotion. They didn't. Once they left the Championship and joined the PL they were working for a different company, so to speak. Have they done dodgy dealings now that we don't know about? The world is still waiting for it's first trillionaire. My issue isn't a moral one regarding the money. The despots money is made from trading a commodity fair and square (ish). I have a huge problem with the despots not their money. I also don't think a sovereign state or an Emirate should be allowed to own a football club, in their own country or ours. Whether that's Qatar, Finland or Jamaica. Nike, fair point. "Not fair enough" fair point .. maybe ... but we can't go back to the days when I first started watching football when the players were likely to live next door to you (Jimmy Case lived next door to my sister in law) and they got the bus to the game so you were also likely to be sitting next to a Liverpool or Everton player on the bus on the way to the game if you were early enough. Those days aren't coming back so I judge fairness now in football in context of where we are today. I think accepting that "it's not fair " is defeatist - again .... in context. We should never give up on trying to make it fair. A little anecdote unrelated to football - a few years ago my auntie was put in a dementia home against her will, other family members were involved which I won't go into. I was determined to help her to fight to get out, something I had no experience of and stumbled my way around until I gathered all the information I needed. I was told repeatedly that the decision had been made and it couldn't be reversed. I spoke to the nursing home manager, a doctor and several social workers. I made sure that I was armed with all the relevant legal information and got a sit down meeting where I presented the facts that had taken me weeks to get together. I could go on but long story, short, I got her out of the dementia home. I regard that as a much greater achievement than getting my degree at the grand old age of 50. I could have given up and said 'it's not fair but what can I do, all the professionals involved have told me that's the way it has to be' but I didn't because I not only knew it wasn't fair, it wasn't right. You have to fight for what is right no matter how uncomfortable or 'small' you may feel. I don't know what rules have been put in place to stop competition. It's obvious that it doesn't happen very often but there are rags to riches stories everywhere in football. Two of our own, both called Luis, Suarez and Diaz, literally dirt poor, barefooted and suffering from severe malnutrition. Both have risen to dizzy heights. Those clubs I mentioned yesterday, small villages now in their top league. Everything doesn't have to be measured against the PL ruler. They have achieved amazing success. I don't understand the timing either. I only know that it could have been swept under the carpet. Who has been waiting for this investigation? Nobody I know was giving it a second thought. I thought it was all over after the last investigation. And about you 'being odd' .... Your mind working differently is a positive. It means you think for yourself and that's a good thing. We disagree very strongly on this subject and that's a good thing too. There is always a different way at looking at a situation. We all get blinkered sometimes. I think I was the only one who agreed with Salah's big pay rise
