Manchester City fined again, and yet it seems to mean nothing

 

 

By Tony Attwood

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One of the key issues concerning discipline and punishment is always the question: “Does it work?”  As in does it work in stopping the person or organisation who is punished from doing it again, and does it encourage others not to follow the same line?

And this is where we get into trouble, because if the punishment in football is a points deduction, then yes everyone is treated the same.  But if the punishment is a fine,  that is far from treating everyone the same given the variety of wealth between the clubs.   

So when we read that “Manchester City have been fined just over £1m by the Premier League over delayed kick-offs or restarts related to nine matches last season,” such a report might passed unnoticed.  Indeed a quick survey of friends suggests none of us actually knew that delayed kick-offs could lead to fines.   Nor indeed that between October and February Manchester City were repeatedly delaying their starts.

So a trivial sum for the ManC but hardly a news story until we found that Manchester City were fined more than £2m last summer for a staggering 22 breaches of the kick-off and restart rules.

Now if ever you want to know if sanctions are having an effect, all you need to do is take a look at repeat offenders and what happens to them.   Take speeding for example.  Get caught speeding while driving a car enough times and there you go – or rather there your licence goes which is a fairly major deterrent.

But Manchester City being fined £2m for delayed re-starts and then being fined £1m for doing exactly the same thing again the following season seems rather pointless for two reasons.   One is they won’t even notice the fines on their accounts and the other is that clearly the fine isn’t stopping them from committing the offence again.

Now quite a few media outlets have reported these offences and fines but none of those that I have seen then go further and ask such questions as

“Which other clubs have been fined for this offence?”

If the offence is serious enough to earn a fine, what evidence is there that the fine is actually stopping ManC from committing the offence again?

Why are Manchester City delaying the start?  Is it carelessness or is it a psychological ploy, deliberately keeping the opposition standing on the pitch waiting?

In a statement, the Premier League announced that “Rules relating to kick-offs and restarts help ensure the organisation of the competition is set at the highest possible professional standard and provides certainty to fans and participating clubs. It also ensures the broadcast of every Premier League match is kept to schedule.”

What it did not comment on is whether the League felt that repeatedly fining Manchester City was effective, given their wealth.  Nor indeed if the League has given itself any power to award any other punishment to any club that is a persistent offender in this regard.   Nor have they noted the fact that in the 2023/24 season, the revenue of Premier League clubs was in the order of £6.3 billion.

At the moment, Premier League income is rising by about 4% per season, so surely fines for offences should at the very least be rising by the same amount, but it seems they are not.

One point here that I suspect we are not being told is that the Premier League has acted twice against ManC because of complaints by TV companies.  However, the TV companies are only a part of the real reason for the increase in income among clubs, which is what is known as “commercial revenue”.  That is growing at 8% a year among the big clubs.  It makes up about 75% of their total income.

The activities behind commercial revenue is mostly in the form of partnerships with other companies in relation to shirt and ground sponsorship deals and other simllar areas of association between the club and a company, or indeed a country or a group of countries.

The top club for revenue is of course Manchester City with its excessive sponsorship deals (although since the furore about having an official tractor sponsor we tend not to hear so much about these), and they are followed by Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham Hots.

The deals are of course settled over a period of anything from three to 12 years and so sponsors take a gamble on how they think the club will do over that time.   Obviously the rapid decline in the league position of Manchester United and Tottenham H will have caused some re-thinking for the future, but the deals are not usually dependent on club success or failure in the league and so club incomes don’t suffer declines in income when they collapse down the league table.

In terms of declared income (and of course clubs in groups are able to benefit from group activity which can shuffle players and money from one group member to another often without this impacting on the figures) Manchester City have by far the largest annual revenue.  But I think we knew that.