City and Chelsea broke the Sky 4 stronghold on the CL trough, good on ‘em. Made the league more competitive, if that pushed us further down the pecking order, it is what it is. The hypocrisy of fans of clubs who erected a glass ceiling that City and Chelsea had the temerity to smash through is breathtaking. You just sound bitter to me, keep the status quo at all costs, as it’s ‘fair’.
Their dominance wasn’t solely down to cash though was it? You lot spent as much as them during that era trying to catch them, and couldn’t. Primarily due to one man, Ferguson.
I’ve always had the same view, all the bleating about clubs joining the party has always smacked of protectionism to me. We’re nowhere near anyway btw. FFP was always merely protectionism by the elite clubs. A fact that City would have exposed had they lost at CAS, and taken the entire premise to the civil courts. Name me one other business where an owner can’t invest what he wants in it, in order to reap the rewards at some point further down the track? FFP was always a restriction of trade imo.
Sports are allowed to have rules which are different to normal business rules to protect the integrity of the sport . All sorts of rules in football as in other sports are weird in pure business terms .
Their dominance was down to three things. A) financial foresight and investment (old Trafford at the time actually made the difference and they invested wisely) B) Ferguson yes but fundamentally both ruthlessness and wise investment C) spending good money at the right time on good players. All three fundamentals are what they fail on today but could be applied to most clubs. However the issue is still fan base providing the ability to do A and so enable C. Same could be said for arsenal. Wenger, right players like over Mars, berkamps, Henry, Vieira etc. Same could be said for the Blackburn project. The difference is only the period of success which Ferguson's sustained Btw, chelsea let utd back in with their sacking culture and also created the conditions where city could get established. If chelsea truly dominated like they should have from 2004 then the city owners might well have headed to Spain or italy. Anyway it's still the case that it's all oil money not fan base nor prudence. If we look at spurs now for example. Theres a building story there that might well end with the sale of kane to balance books. No cl = hole in finances. No fans for a full year this year Losses from last year Reduced revenues the year before due to stadium issues and renting Wembley etc. In the past a club who built carefully as spurs had done for years might have been slightly insulated from these disasters. I just wonder now.
Yes exactly this. Ffp was designed to protect big clubs but dressed up at protecting small clubs. It actually blocks investment in theory to keep the big big. The thing is for us ALL seeing city win the domestic treble and the cl is not really seeing greatness its seeing any amount of money finally winning out. Apply the same resources time and again and it's not a competitive league at all it's a procession. The only thing holding it back right now is tv money share and my own club would want that broken to get.more.money to chase city. It is the worst thing that could happen imo
No, sports assume they have the right to impose fiscal rules under the premise of the ‘greater good’ pretty sure that assumption has never been tested in the civil courts outside of the bubble of football.
If we apply the same logic to business we would see certain unhealthy influences like facebook and google/alphabet needing to be broken up as they are now so dominant that prevent competition. The rules to do so actually exist
City and Chelsea were mid-table clubs who won the lottery, nothing more. No hypocrisy from me, I've always said that I would hate it if that happened to us - even when we were struggling to compete.
Btw the "sky 4" Who were these? Newcastle? At one point they were ahead of us for example.and we had to fight to get into the cl under houllier This notion of a fixed top 4 is also a construct. The cl only expanded to allow in more teams from one country in 1997. Prior th that were were in europa and in cup winners cup following a league cup in in 1996. We were not in the cl at all until 2001/2002 following our last ditch 4th place famously in 2001. Since then we have been in and out of the cl as our fortunes waxed and waned. Utd and arsenal would have been in there but others have always come and gone. The fact is chelsea stepped in and took on and city came in and took one. Now arsenal fell away and are one primary loser but spurs worked so hard to get a place but also lost their place. Even utd cant assure their place yet the oil.clubs are immune to a bad season
Ah but what if you are actually creating said monopoly, a monopoly on trophies? Just because all the other clubs get to live off scraps and still exist doesn't mean it's not a monopoly. Hopefully spurs will do something v city but it's unlikely.
It’s exactly the same. Ask any German football fan, or French. In Spain it’s pretty much a duopoly because of the TV rights I believe. Thankfully in the U.K. it’s more competitive, mostly down to the fairer distribution of TV money but to be fair, ultimately, money will talk....
The European Court of Justice ruled they could if it was proportionate to an inherent need of the sport .
Yeah ffp just means bigger clubs can continue to spend more and those smaller taking in less can spend less. Be good if we could have some kind of handicap for success, where you are limited in spend, something like NFL but with our normal transfer window. Like a cap on spending if you win the league and so on. Far too complicated to work out though and get buy in from other European leagues.
Good for them - tbh, Real Madrid and Barca have a huge fan base that will spend money. In cases like this and Utd’s, for example, if they invest wisely and dominate, I have no real issue. We’ve actually won the league when competing with both Chelsea and City, so have a few others so it can be done....it’s just that their financial strength does give them an advantage that hasn’t been built by footballing success or smart business decisions....or by marketing your brand, although eventually the latter will work for them. Basically, if you throw money at a problem, it won’t be a problem for long.....so successes like our own will be the exception rather than the norm, unfortunately. Right, Wrong or indifferent; Money talks.
I believe even when Atletico won the title several seasons ago real and barca took the vast majority of the money. The ratio at that point was 12:1 in favour of them. It is now 3.5 to 1. 50% of the money is distributed equally. The other 50% is split up based on performance and also the club size in effect. If we look at 2019/20 Barca took 160mil Real 150 Atletico 120 Next highest was Valencia on 82mil they were 9th. Seville finished 4th but only got 78. It just shows how the bigger you are the more you get still. In england it is basically all merit based. An equal base amount then an amount based on position from 1st to 20th.