Manchester City

[Red_Polo]

I think there's place for an FFP fine - bar for compliance shifted. However it would depend on them applying adequate additional scrutiny, so far city have been able to do more or less as they please.

[Harv]

Kompany, the greatest CB that ever existed, and owner of one of the most bulbous heads mankind has ever witnessed is leaving them.

Good riddance to the filthy prick. Master of the cynical challenge and gets away with it because he's such a nice guy apparently.

[Red_Polo]

Gone to be player-manager at Anderlecht.

[Liverpool]

Blatantly obvious they were getting rid. Plays the final few games, loses his head and scores a worldie.

[Fosterbloke]

Pay back FFP? They don’t owe money.



If they were to bung money to UEFA that won’t be a punishment, that will just be a bribe to avoid any.

In terms of selling players to bring their figures into line with FFP. I didn't mean like a fine.

[Mark79]

In terms of selling players to bring their figures into line with FFP. I didn't mean like a fine.

Selling players now isn’t going to fix their figures retrospectively. It goes back as much as 8 years breaking of the financial rules. They can only fall in to line going forward, which would be a start, but isn’t a punishment for what they’ve done already.

UEFA can’t dock them points in the PL. I think all they could do is ban them from European competition or a transfer ban.

[Buzzo]

The fact that Pep talks about the finance involved tells you he knows how big they have spent.

He talks about their required attacking options and what he wants is ridiculous, of course they are going to do well. They can rotate like for like. With Sterling, Aguero and Bernardo Silva rotating with Sane, Mahrez and Jesus. Pep is a good coach but with the resources he has it is bound to lead to massive success. So FFP is a huge part of it.

That’s 2 full strength forward lines that would each start for most teams. That’s why they won the treble and that’s why they are crooked as **** (and this is replicated throughout the team).

By comparison we have one starting forward line averaging £30m per player and a fairly conservative back up three. We pretty much funded our squad by selling Suarez and Sterling and Coutinho.

They’ve never sold anyone for big bucks. They don’t sell out their stadium. The numbers don’t work.

[Tee]

The fact that Pep talks about the finance involved tells you he knows how big they have spent.

He talks about their required attacking options and what he wants is ridiculous, of course they are going to do well. They can rotate like for like. With Sterling, Aguero and Bernardo Silva rotating with Sane, Mahrez and Jesus. Pep is a good coach but with the resources he has it is bound to lead to massive success. So FFP is a huge part of it.

That’s 2 full strength forward lines that would each start for most teams. That’s why they won the treble and that’s why they are crooked as **** (and this is replicated throughout the team).

By comparison we have one starting forward line averaging £30m per player and a fairly conservative back up three. We pretty much funded our squad by selling Suarez and Sterling and Coutinho.

They’ve never sold anyone for big bucks. They don’t sell out their stadium. The numbers don’t work.

Yep, it seems like the basic numbers cannot ever add up but these corrupt cunts know how to play with their accounts and add value to this ****ty brand they created.

[Red_Polo]

Selling players now isn’t going to fix their figures retrospectively. It goes back as much as 8 years breaking of the financial rules. They can only fall in to line going forward, which would be a start, but isn’t a punishment for what they’ve done already.

UEFA can’t dock them points in the PL. I think all they could do is ban them from European competition or a transfer ban.

Correct, nothing can reverse it. What might be a judicious punishment is a combination of:

-More effective scrutiny so FFP cannot be so enormously abused
-An alteration of the compliance thresholds for clubs in breach that reflects the severity of the breach; so they have a long period of not being able to have any net expenditure wrt FFP
-A heightened level of scrutinee for those serving penalties

[Nicey]

Kompany, the greatest CB that ever existed, and owner of one of the most bulbous heads mankind has ever witnessed is leaving them.

Good riddance to the filthy prick. Master of the cynical challenge and gets away with it because he's such a nice guy apparently.

Oh behave ... he's Jamie Carragher with less shouting ffs and he is top bloke no getting away from it

[Buzzo]

Based on this.

They have spent £1.502bn in transfers in the last 10 years and recouped £414m so effectively £1bn squad investment. Even if the Saudis have increased their revenue streams a lot that is impossible.

Look at how much they spent the windows prior to the investment: £23m and before that £5m

[Buzzo]

Everyone seems really psyched by City’s big win

FA Cup final result: Man City flex their muscle to leave helpless Watford trailing in their wake

By Miguel Delaney

A total thrashing to reflect their total domestic domination. Manchester City win the FA Cup to become the first club in English history to complete the domestic treble, but it says an awful lot that it doesn’t feel anywhere near as seismic as it should, or that the embarrassing final scoreline shouts. It is certainly anything but “incredible”, or any of the usual adjectives that would be added to such a feat. City’s immense resources have instead made it feel somewhat inevitable, and almost as predictable as this 6-0 win over Watford at Wembley.

The crowning of a genuinely wonderful team just did not seem like such a wonderful event. That it was the joint biggest win in an FA Cup final - to go with Bury’s 6-0 over Derby County as long ago as 1903 - felt all too fitting given the feat of maximum domestic victory it confirmed.


It is usually in match reports like this that we would now begin to go into the details, the whos, the whys and the hows, but, really, what’s the point? The only relevant factor is that City are an inifinitely better-resourced club, as they have proven every time these two teams have met since Watford’s 2015 promotion. This was the English champions’ ninth win out of nine in this fixture in that time, by an aggregate score of 31-4, making it almost indistinguishable from any other victories.

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It was very often indistinguishable from any random Premier League game you want to pick out over the past two years, given that City have won over 82%, and about 70% as easily as this.

If by half-time it felt like any dull pre-season friendly in the United States, it by the end just resembled an evisceration. That’s if any neutrals were actually still watching.

The English game’s great showpiece became a great showcase for a huge problem in football, and not just in this country.

Some of this is obviously down to the genius of Pep Guardiola, and the excellence of his players. He has done to the Premier League what he did to the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich and to the Spanish league with Barcelona, racking up record wins and point hauls.

He has bent English football to his will.

https://twitter.com/btsportfootball/status/1129805500965687296

Why a diminished treble leaves Man City fans with greater questions
But this is also the increasing will of the game. We are just seeing in England a predictability that has become a massive problem in Germany, in Italy, in France and in Spain.

City thereby aren’t alone in that, but they do stand alone in terms of the nature of their project, and how they could prospectively make this problem so much worse.

Guardiola is only there because former Barcelona colleagues Txiki Begiristain and Ferran Soriano are there, who are there because the club will give them the scope for this global City Football Project and the wealth that allows it, a wealth that comes from the Abu Dhabi owners who are there because… well, those are bigger questions to go with all the questions about that regime and human rights abuses and the war in Yemen.

The very fact this is even mentioned in what is ostensibly a report on the FA Cup final says it all.

It was difficult not to feel a lot of sympathy for Watford in this situation, and not just because of the scale of the defeat and how futile their performance – their attempt to track City players – became.

Their big day was just one big bad beating, although you wouldn’t have thought from the deafening and defiant display of colour and song around the 84th minute, after it had gone 5-0. That is what football should really be about.

As to what this game was about, Watford’s big day did still come down that one big chance that Roberto Pereyra had in the first few minutes. He was put through one-on-one, and Ederson did wondrously to push it away.

There was then the penalty claim after an Abdoulaye Doucoure shot struck Vincent Kompany’s arm. It was somewhat ironic, given how this season has gone, that it would have been given in the Champions League – and certainly by VAR – but is not a penalty in England.

That, however, was the extent of the tension in the game, those 25 minutes.

That was it because, after City scored the first, that was the match.

There was no coming back.

Watford weren’t blameless or just subject to superior forces here it must be similarly acknowledged. They were slack, not least the usually excellent Doucoure, as a Raheem Sterling shot cannoned into the air from a deflection and David Silva showed superior fight to head it back. Sterling then headed it back his way, and the playmaker finished so well.

Questions could also be asked of Heurelho Gomes, and could have continued throughout the game, but that in itself almost seems so unfair.

It says just as much that, when you’re playing a team like City, the one chance you get means so much; that you have to take it – precisely because they give you so little margin for error.

That’s what they’ve done to English football, and what can they do to teams.

Watford’s one missed chance to a degree reflected the title race in that way. Liverpool had that one big chance to kill City and go seven points clear in February, but didn’t take it, and then saw City streak away with performance that was close to perfection.

That was precisely what happened here, as the goals – and the onslaught – just kept coming.

Gabriel Jesus headed in the second, before Kevin De Bruyne rolled in the third.

That was when an entirely predictable win because a procession, and reflected a problem.

Jesus got his second and City’s fourth before Sterling added the fifth and sixth.

More goals, but also just more minor details in the most major level of domination English football has ever seen.

It produced a feat we’ve never seen before, but one we might well have to get used to.

[Exiled_red]

Selling players now isn’t going to fix their figures retrospectively. It goes back as much as 8 years breaking of the financial rules. They can only fall in to line going forward, which would be a start, but isn’t a punishment for what they’ve done already.

UEFA can’t dock them points in the PL. I think all they could do is ban them from European competition or a transfer ban.

Nothing is going to change history, they have won those trophies regardless, but if found guilty then there need to make sure that from the moment verdict is announced that they don't continue to benefit from the breaking of the rules they did before. That means adjusting figures that they have to meet FFP rules by, by the amount.that they have breached them by, i.e. effectively force them to sell players and get them back to a more realistic position of where they should have been going forward.

Neither a fine nor a ban is really punishment as it is a minor inconvenience that allows them to continue to benefit from the rule breaking they did. Unfortunately this is the type of punishment we are likely to see, a small slap on the wrist a minor inconvenience, but once their punishment is done they can still reap rewards from the benefits of cheating going forward using the squad that it allowed them to build. I doubt UEFA will have the balls to do this properly.

[Shaggy]

[ame]https://twitter.com/samcunningham/status/1130381228857806848[/ame]

[Shaggy]

And another. This is great stuff.

[ame]https://twitter.com/LFCZA/status/1130369086729392128[/ame]