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- By Tony Attwood
Manchester City have taken their spending this year past £300 million, which includes a fair sum for the transfer of Sverre Nypan from Rosenborg. Indeed just including the deals done in this transfer window, they have spent around £130m Allowing for the players who have been sold (Couto and Wright for a total of around £27.5m) that means they have still lashed out over money without worrying about any sanction from the Premier League over its previous spending (on which there is still no report).
Compared with that Brentford have spent around £25m, Brighton £40m, Chelsea £90m, Everton £13jm, Liverpool £3m, ManU £62m, Tottenham Hots £46m, amnd West Ham £33m. The figures take into account players sold and of course they will change as the transfer window goes on. Figures are from the Guardian, as of 0730 BST today.
Now perhaps we might be expecting Manchester City to be at or near the top of the spending table, except for one thing. The 115 cases against Manchester City for misdoings in previous transfer windows have still not been resolved. And there appears to be, what some see as a real arrogance in this round of spending as the club really is sticking two fingers up to the rest of the league. “You failed to stop our spending in the past, and just to show we don’t care, we are spending more now,” appears to be the message And we are only in June – they will probably be spending more in weeks to come.
What we all know is that a fine for Manchester City, if they ever are found guilty of anything will be as nothing to them, since it can be simply paid out of the funds that their owners make every few seconds from oil. So it would appear they are acting with what they feel is impunity. “The League needs us more than we need them” is the thinking.
And it looks on the surface as if the League has no idea what to do about this situation at all and so are letting it drift on in the hope that in the end everyone forgets about it. Certainly, the Manchester Evening News recently ran the story that unnamed “Legal experts reputedly believe that the Premier League charges case against Manchester City could continue for multiple years because of the potential for appeals.” This certainly looks like a City ploy, and is one we have mentioned a number of times.
But there is another way of looking at what appears to be a ludicrous situation. And that is that the League knows exactly what they are doing, and quite possibly have told Manchester City. Within this view, the vast majority of the Premier League will resign from the competition en masse and next summer join a new league into which Manchester City will not be invited.
Uefa will then be stuck with the situatioin in which it can recognise the New Premier League and so bring some of its most valued teams back into the fold, or it will refuse to recognise the League. In that case it will lose the top clubs in England from the Champions League, and their players from whatever whacky international competitions it and Fifa chose to run from next summer.
The alternative vision, that the clubs are just sitting and waiting for a decision, doesn’t ring true at all. These clubs are owned by highly experienced business people backed with the best financial consultants in the world. They know exactly what they are up to.
The losses from the conflict in England could be enormous and will raise the ire of clubs from France, Spain and Italy for whom the thought of playing in the European competitions without the top English clubs would be unacceptable. Players too will be less likely to sign for ManC despite the money on offer, if it means isolation.
Indeed one line of thought is that it is Uefa which is trying like mad to get the Premier League and Manchester City to sort out their differences but neither side is willing to budge. And of course, the force is with the clubs other than Manchester City, because ManC on its own has little to bring to the table – it is one club just like a handful of other powerful clubs such as Real Mad and Barcelona.
The question is, who is going to blink first. The Premier League knows that if it fines ManC such a modest amount that there really isn’t much ManC has to complain about, the rest of the league are likely to hand in their resignations. If they find ManC a lot that club will tie the League up in court for years to come.
Resignation by the mass of clubs from the Premier League is increasingly looking like the only way out, leaving ManC to set up a league with its own group clubs, and indeed to go and buy a few more in order to make up the numbers. Their supporters will attend games of course, but no one else will be very interested.
Tony yawn yawn fucking yawn, Mcfc will be found NOT GUILTY deal with it like you deal with your corrupt mardar@e pot less so called istorie club who’s in our opinion racist Yankee bitter owners ripe what you sow , a pathetic club pathetic self entitled living in the past so called fans yours the whole MCFC fanbase who can’t wait to give you a warm Mancunian welcome back in Manchester, remember pal what comes around goes around thanks you pathetic bridesmaids
We do receive a fair amount of abuse from people who suggest they are Manchester City fans, and of course most of it we don’t publish, as it is repetitive and does not answer the questions we raise, such as why the findings are taking so long to be released, and indeed what the rest of the league might do about it, if as a result Manchester C are allowed to stay in the league and areif found guilty perhpas punished by a fine that makes no odds to them.
But I thought I would publish the following just to give you an indication of the sort of thing we get on a fairly regular basis. I’ll just publish this one and then go back to blocking them – but we are still left with the quesion of why some feel the need to write in this way.
Tbh, there are so many holes in this article, it’s genuinely hard to know where to start.
For a start, we’re only just into the transfer window and City have acted quickly to get their preferred players in before another club snaps them up. That’s good business. It makes sense, why hang around and allow other clubs to steal a March on you? Now, when we’ve got the players we want, we’ll sell the players that we don’t want, therefore balancing the books. Tony, it’s not hard to understand as it’s the way thd market works. Don’t forget, we’ve been PROFITING from the transfer market for years now, everybody wants to sign the City youth players.
As for the 115 charges, they are historical and literally have nothing to do with current finances. Aside from the fact that these trumped up charges were levelled at City as a desperate means of trying to rein City in (at the behest of clubs like……Arsenal, desperate to preserve their privilege), as far as we go now, they’re irrelevant. Don’t forget Keiran Maguire estimated that City have a PSR ceiing of around £327m .
As for the rest of the article, it’s utter supposition and fanciful thinking. 100% guesswork and it looks to me that you’ve just had to fill some space. It’s ridiculous and I’m not going to dignify it with a response.
Lastly, do you honestly think that City don’t want a resolution to all this? Honestly, the longer it drags on, we all have to suffer ignorant articles like this.
Offensive posts simply show ignorance, I don’t read them.
However, I do bristle at ill informed, tribal nonsense, and this article contains a lot of that!.
e.g – most of the alleged contravention of rules hinge on the fact that the rules in question limit a clubs expenditure to legitimate income.
Ownership wealth is not permitted to be introduced to cover debt or support expenditure, even though it probably should be if it is capitalised and not loaned,
You ignore that when it suits your agenda, so when I reached the end I shrugged and consigned your opinions to an imaginary bin.
Cpl. Jones , you seem to think that breaking all rules you signed up for is ok. Every time you think up a new dodge no doubt you’re proud of your lawyers . Sorry for you if you imagine this corrupt course will be allowed to continue . Surely you see that no one wants or needs you and if the other 19 clubs want you out then all they need to do is expel you.
Your team has been weighed in the scales and found wanting.
Move away to the Tristan da Cunha 5th division with your little chums psg shedsea etc al . In the real world I don’t give a fig for your bent perverted ways.
I think the key point here is the statement that “As for the 115 charges, they are historical and literally have nothing to do with current finance”. They might be historical in the sense that they happened a long time ago, but the result, when it happens, surely will be in the present.
Tony, you say the charges (IF PROVEN, very important, that) will ‘surely be in the present’. Your own phraseology would suggest that you’re not confident in these charges being proven. Anyway, my point is that any punishment isn’t necessarily going to be current but if it is, then it STILL represents past activities and so doesn’t affect/represent current transfer activities.
Now that we’ve established that, what was the premise of the article because it isn’t immediately obvious apart from…..filler. Tony, you’ve been in this business long enough to know better. This is one of thd poorest articles I’ve ever seen you write. Risible writing, regurgitated nonsense and straw clutching. Rubbish, in other words
David I am not going to defend my writing – it is as it comes out each day. If anyone else has sent in an article and it seems to fit what Untold is about, then I publish it. If not, I write the piece. Of course the quality varies because I vary, there are good days and bad days, some days when I have a lot of spare time, other days when I am asked to write things I didn’t expect to have landing in my inbox, and I struggle.
And yet still, as I look back, the premise of my thinking on the subject seems valid.
First the number of charges against the club is very high.
Second, the time taken to reach a decision on the charges is very long.
Thirdd, the silence from the media is odd, especially when instead all they are reporting are transfers that we know from past experience won’t happen
Fourth, the loser in this case (either Man C or the Premier League) is going to be very shocked and may well not wish to carry on with a “win some, lose some” attitude.
And that final point seems to me to be the most important, and the one that the media is utterly ignoring. And since I deliberately chose the name UNTOLD for this blog I think it is a topic worth considering.
But you feel this is rubbish. Fair enough. I disagree. I think that the outcome could well affect both current transfer activities and the entire structure of English football, quite possibly more than when the 1st Division clubs opted to leave and set up the Premier League. You think not just rubbish, but also that my writing style of rubbish.
Ok that’s your opinion. If you are right, I look an idiot and not for the first time. But I am still not too sure that I look idiotic for raising the question.
Hmmmmm, something of a cop out, that. That means any old tosh can be thought up and written about, really. I prefer reality. The thought that the whole Premier League (minus 1) will resign is so far fetched as to be wondering about whether little green men will be landing on earth, soon.
The 115 thing is overdone and the PL have overstretched themselves. It’s the fault of the PL that this is *still* ongoing. If they’d picked what they thought their strongest case was and gone with that, they’d have been on more solid ground, possibly. I’ve been reading back over the CAS judgement and there isn’t much really. However, mud sticks. I’ve seen enough of your writing to know your thoughts but so much of what is said is just opinion and what people WANT rather than reality but it won’t matter, people WANT to believe City are guilty. However, the PL were bullied into this course of action and it’s blowing up in their faces because the allegations aren’t sticking but the APT’s are provable. City are fighting back and the owner lists are just as big a scandal because they’re ignored, pushed into the background, as they’re very inconvenient. Why should thd likes of Arsenal have these benefits? Why does the PL defend these benefits? Is it only City to be targeted? Why? These APT’s are an affront to common sense and, as I say, can be seen. The charges against City don’t stack up, in fact. However, because the PL were pushed into it, our name is mud and it ain’t right.