Um, can someone explain to me why clubs buying their ways to success will be punished with financial penalties?! If there's one thing man City can afford it's, er, money. (And not even that much of it as 32m of the 49m fine is suspended). So basically for the price of one of their less-good midfielders or the wages for a couple of their stars they get to do what they want. Oh - and they are now forced to name a squad which is the exact same size as the number of players they fielded in the CL last year anyway. Financial penalties for mega-wealthy clubs is ridiculously illogical. If they're guilty of breaking FFP rules they should be banned from European competitions, shouldn't they? Of course that way UEFA don't make a bunch of money.
I also understand that the payment of the fine will not count against their expenditure for the purpose of next season's FFP. Also remember that this financial black hole was over and above the income generated by their ludicrous sponsorship deal with Etihad, which itself should have been investigated as beyond anything that is economically reasonable. Is their stadium also still subsidised and owned by the council? If so how did they have the right to change its name (which presumably Etihad paid them considerably for doing). Edit: just checked out the stadium. It was built in 2002 for £112m for the Commonwealth Games (pretty good value compared to Wembley I would suggest!) It was converted after the games for £42m with £22m paid by the Council, £20m paid by the club (at least the council had a legacy plan!) It is currently leased for £3m each year (from 2010, before that the rent approximated to £2m per year). There appears to be no additional charge for the renaming rights (which presumably were of considerable value to ManCity). So don't get me wrong - kudos to the council for actually having something to do with the stadium after the games, and for the reasonable costs. Nevertheless the stadium cost the council/government £134 million of which they have received back approx £20 million so far. This represents a massive subsidy to ManCity and a cost which other clubs like Arsenal, and in due course us, will have to pay themselves with a consequent impact on their other investments in the team etc. It's not surprising that City and WetSpam are obvious targets for takeover when they have such a massive bonus in terms of stadium construction.
Only 49 million! Although as their wage bill must stay the same then they can offload players that aren't needed, cut down their wage bill and then still make a massive signing and keep their wage bill the same. Not sure who they would sell apart from players like sinclair/richards/lescott but City only really need a left back and centre back and apart from the fine (which is nothing for them) its not much for them to be concerned about.
We can't really expect fair play from an organisation that is firmly into the money trough but remembers what it should be doing. LIP SERVICE and a nice bit of income, these clubs will hardly notice the 'sanctions' and UEFA gets a little richer. Financial Play Rules are paying the Fare.
One thing that is equally disgusting is that City and PSG are fined massive amounts yet Villarreal got a £10,000 fine for racist behaviour by their fans.
The main reason I assume they wont throw clubs out is T.V. rights surely . Imagine your head of Sky, pay so many millions for your regions rights and then get told half way in the Champions of your league wont be in it ,immediate phonecall to the lawyers follows and UEFA lose money .No team from a major league will ever get kicked out ... Bulgarians or Romanians on the other hand ..
Mansour has a £3billion fortune. That'll show him - only £2,983,000,000 when he's stumped up that £17m
The one thing that will be awkward for them is telling 4 players that they have no chance of CL football. Not a huge problem, but could upset a few.
Having read the regulations http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Dow ... WNLOAD.pdf Specifically parts 18-12 and 18-08 Basically it's pro rata'd down 25 -8 HG 24-7 23-6 22-5 21-4 Our foreign players A list Pantilimon Zabaleta KompanyDemichelis Kolorov Garcia Yaya Fernandhino Nasri Silva Navas Dzeko Aguero Jovetic Negredo Nastasic would qualify for the B list and Boyata is a back up HG player Presuming we lose Pantilimon and replace with an English keeper ( must have 2 in A list ) then we can add Mangala Fernando and Sagna. I don't think we will do any other business other than those 3 So 1 HART 2 ENG KEEPER 3 MILNER 4 CLICHY 5 zabaleta 6 Kompany 7 Demichellis 8 Kolorov 9 Garcia 10 yaya 11 Fernandinho 12 Nasri 13 silva 14 Navas 15 Dzeko 16 Aguero 17 Negredo 18 Jovetic 19 Mangala 20 fernando 21 Sagna Lescott Sinclair Richards Guidetti Barry Pantilimon Rodwell can all be sold and get the wages off the books
So the 4 slots that have been taken away are the homegrown ones? That's even more pathetic as a punishment. FFP's a joke, what are they even doing with the £50mill they're collecting from City and the £20mill from PSG? They should either keep it as a battle fund to make sure the lawyers don't stop them throwing City out of the competition when they inevitably fail FFP next season, or they should put it into grassroots football projects around Europe. At the moment FFP is just a tax for the clubs with wealthy owners who want to make losses.
On the plus side, as PSG received the exact same punishment as City, that should silence any of that bollocks about Platini being biased against the English game.
It seems you get away with only needing less than one fifth of your players being home grown whereas everyone else needs more like one third of their squad to be homegrown. Funny kind of pro rata!
"On the plus side, as PSG received the exact same punishment as City, that should silence any of that bollocks about Platini being biased against the English game." Not until the level of transgression is made public, it won't. Citeh are claiming they complied, while PSG were allegedly miles over and very suspect in their funding. The punishment should fit the degree of transgression. A club that is 20m over the limit should not be paying the same as a club that is 200m over.
Banning a club is the only true punishment. Each season, adding a penalty amount to the debt + increasing the home-grown reqt by two might be a laugh. Still doesn't mean you have to play the home-grown, but when the injuries start clocking up (which in the PL tends to coincide with the business end of UEFA tournaments) , it becomes more of a burden.
