Rival watch

I wouldn't have thought Spurs had any chance of finishing fifth this year, but now I want to put a bet down on it.

Come on, Leicester and Man U!

 

No chance of 5th, but we need 7th (unless Arsenal win the Cup ) for Europa football. The big question though is do we want it, or is a season without that distraction worth the drop in Income - not that Europey is very lucrative.

 

FFP has never been the issue for us. He runs the club in a sustainable way. Imagine we had gambled all on constant CL football and (like Leeds) it hadn't happened. Where would we be then. Now that we have the new stadium, the purse-strings should (and will) be loosened. Need a little (more) patience I am convinced. It's an attribute all Spurs fans need.

 

Just a reminder of what was unearthed by Football Leaks in 2018...

* In 2013 the club claimed that Etihad paid £35m in sponsorship for the stadium naming rights, but in fact Etihad paid just £8m - the other £27m was paid via a holding company owned by a certain M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan
* An offshore company going by the name of Fordham paid €30m a year in non-specific marketing rights, but it has emerged that €9.8m of those marketing rights are paid by an individual going by the name of M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan
* The club failed FFP when sacking Roberto Mancini, as the £9m payoff sent their balance into the red, so their solution was twofold: increase the value of their sponsorship deals, and backdate them to the start of the season - and this happened to be the same year where they were paying 75% of their own stadium naming rights
* As a result of the above, Etihad were said to be paying £67.5m a year for the naming rights of the stadium - yet were still only paying £8m, with the remainder once again coming from the canyon-sized pockets of M. bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan
* In relation to their backdating sponsorship deals to game the FFP system, when a club finance officer queried what was going on he was told by non-executive director Simon Pearce "We can do what we want"
* Club president Khaldoon Al Mubarak outright threatened then-UEFA general secretary Gianni Infantino in an e-mail where he stated that, rather than meet FFP regulations, they would "rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world and sue them for the next ten years"

 

There are many things I don't understand about this ruling.

Firstly we have the sports commentators, who appear to have become so well informed since 0930 advising that since a lot of the evidence was time-barred there was no chance that the ban would be upheld. These would presumably be the same people who have been going on for months about the bad things that Citeh did and that what would probably happen is that the ban would be reduced to one year. How is it that in all the programmes I've heard and articles I've read about this, nobody seems to have said that there was no chance of this being upheld, and now apparently they're all wise after the event?

Secondly why have UEFA never tacked what is a far bigger scandal with Citeh which is the source of their sponsorship, which is their main income? Let's be honest, they've bought their way into the European elite on the back of a model which surely can't be "financially fair", in the sense that they effectively sponsor themselves!

All this goes together with the ludicrous on/off field decisions being made in matches, which appears to be getting worse, and means that my interest in professional football is really waning, and may not have much longer to go.

 

please log in to view this image

Hope that's cleared it up for you.

 

The ruling looks like 'they did it but covered it up effectively so it is too long ago to be punished'. I doubt the CAS is corrupt.

 

Why?
They're still pulling that crap now. Check out their sponsors and how many are linked to their owners. It's openly bent.

 

₦obod¥ ¢an und€r$tanđ ₮his d£₵ision

 

I have seen it widely reported that Bruno Fernandes will take both of Manchester United's penalties tonight against Southampton

 

Mate I hear plenty fans using FFP as an excuse...like I said they can stop using it as an excuse now.

As for the purse strings loosening, I’m not prepared to give Levy that credit quite yet or to take it for granted...he’s been here long enough for me to know how he works.

 

So quick question: do ENIC have anything close to the money available that The Sheikh Mansour Team do?

If not, why bother making the comparison?

 

when I say spend money you and others automatically think it means act like the the Mansours.

to my knowledge no one has ever said that.

we are the 8th richest club in the world and we think like a mid table outfit.

 

Mid table teams don't have our stadium. Unless it was somehow free. Otherwise it all comes out of the same budget.

 

But I say again, does anyone remember those oh so clever sports commentators, journalists and other "experts" saying that this was going to happen before it did?

Incidentally I've heard TalkShite a couple of times today and they think this decision is "good for English football", and there's not the slightest hint that UEFA might have had a case beforehand - in which case why did nobody say this?

 

Football pundits don't even know the Laws of the Game, never mind the details of the UEFA rule book.

 

I will say though that if City have not broken any rules, there is something wrong with the rules.

 

Show me a mid table club that has ever spent £50m on a player.

 

The rules are daft....there is nothing to stop related parties being sponsors. So they won't be breaking the rules now. The issue was whether they breached the rules previously. UEFA found that they had so I don't see how they can be accused of corruption. CAS say that UEFA are outside the tine limit. That is not likely to be made up.

 

That begs the question why UEFA didn't act sooner. If not corruption, then utter incompetence.