General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

I tend to believe that the situations with Everton and Chelsea are being pursued with a view to setting a precedent for the City case.

City will doubtlessly claim they are being singled out, with these separate cases that gets blown out of the water.

I'd like to think the Premier League's end game is to really harshly punish City, time will tell, but it really should be the outcome, relegation etc should all be on the cards.

isn't the Everton case more clear cut than City - i.e. Everton exceeded the loss limit, and admitted it but pleaded special circumstances.

City have fiddled the books to make all their dubious deals look legit, and the PL has to prove that against a club with bottomless resources for lawyers and accountants.

Everton will stay up this year, as Dyche has started to implement his style and there are at least 4 much worse teams. But the teams that were relegated last year should definitely be suing for damages.

If they don't punish City the Premier League loses all authority, let City off it paves the way for the return of the Super League and it will be driven by City and Newcastle because there will be no sporting authority to challenge them.

It isn't just about putting City in their place, it's also about retaining their own relevance long term.

….

If City go unpunished after this I can see a lot of fans losing interest in the league and switching off. The credibility of the league is on the line I feel.

So if the relegated clubs sue Everton for loss of earnings what happens if city get sanctions. Will all the clubs that finished fifth for years then sue them millions for loss of champions league earnings. The premier league is going to have some nightmare on its hands after this.

The idea of the super league was sort of the opposite though - it was being built on the idea of more TV/streaming revenue going straight to the clubs, but with much much tighter and more controlled rules on spending and wages to be more equitable. So I wonder if it'd be the other way around - that after a rake of seasons of City dominating while hundreds of charges hang over their head, that some of the other big English and European clubs push to leave again for something more competitive.

From reading this, it would seem that Everton were given multiple chances to get their house in order, but continued to take the piss.

TBH they should count themselves lucky the deduction came in a season that Burnley, Sheffield Utd and Luton are in the division, and rank awful.

I look forward to City and/or Chelsea recieving a deduction that will send them to a lower league in outer space, should they be found guilty of their sets of charges.

The points deduction for Everton is kinda both fair and unfair.

It's fair as they broke the rules, continued to spend awful frivolously, and so deserve to be punished accordingly. But at the same time it only becomes fair when both Chelsea & Man City are punished accordingly, and to a higher degree. To punish just Everton and not those 2 is unfair IMO.

Add Liverpool, Arsenal and United and the Premier league would be great, super competitive every season.

There's no chance anybody will switch off. Unless you think United, Liverpool and Arsenal fans are going to. It doesn't affect the fans of ordinary teams who have never qualified for the Champions league. They couldn't care less about it.

The only fans I hear whining about it a lot are United fans. You hear it from some Liverpool fans as well.

No, don't do those social media sites.

Between this and the VAR nonsense I'm certain people will start to turn against the product. To dismiss that notion is just burying one's head in the sand. In my opinion.

The City accounts are technically 100% correct, but it’s the commercial revenue deals that make up the commercial revenue that are falsified. To say City get more than 12% commercial revenues than United, the biggest brand in British football, is just a joke. And much moreso when those deals or their predecessors were signed when City had won nothing for a couple of generations.

The TV revenues are, at first glance, genuine, but only because the success bought by the fake commercial revenue has allowed them to earn extra tv revenues. So that means they are effectively equally inflated too.

Matchday revenue is the fairest reflection (even then City’s unfairly gained success will have of course have brought in an element of extra matchday revenues it otherwise wouldn’t have, but let’s put that aside). If you apply the same percentage to the other streams as matchday, then total revenue would be 342m. So they’re revenues are overinflated by 370m for the year.

It’s not easy to prove, but maybe that’s why it’s taking so long, rather than them trying to brush it under the carpet.

Delued moron? Nice one! God bless the countries accountants!

You are correct on the first paragraph, mistake on my part. I did mention this in a passing post I made, the points made elsewhere still stand even with this.

I should have twigged that from the mention of Jose’s sacking

Suggesting that matchday revenue equates to European and worldwide earnings is ridiculous.

A team can have a huge fan base abroad who spend money on jerseys, kits and memorabilia.

During the summer they ran out of merchandise in Japan where tickets were sold out for both matches in no time, sold out in Korea in 30 minutes.

That doesn't relate to matchday revenue unless you are including Asian matches.

Will there be an investigation from 2018 onwards to see if City have broken anymore rules?

Kit sales don't really count towards clubs revenue though, about 10% ish of any revenue from kit sales goes to the club. The manufacturers pay the clubs for the rights to sell those kits and that's why they pay the 50-70m a year to do it, as they then get the remaining 90%.

Some clubs, like Liverpool for example, have accepted a lower payment per year from Nike but a much higher commission (around 20-25% iirc) on the jersey sales and I think it's higher on some LFC branded items. Arsenal might have a similar set up but don't know the figures.

One of the drivers of why Liverpool broke their contract with New Balance and instead moved to Nike, a year early, is because New Balance regularly sold out of kits and couldn't keep up with the demand. This was at a time where Liverpool won the CL & PL in successive seasons. Nike were able to keep up with the demand after that, and posted record kit sales at the start of the 20-21 season. Having shops regularly sold out of kits might sound a good thing, but in reality it's not for the massive clubs. And the levels might be different. Man City kits 'sold out' could be 50 but Man Utd's 'sold out' could be 500. We don't know those numbers but I would assume that they are not the same.

The term fair market value is a bit of a cover up though.

If a made up shell company comes in and gives Luton 60m a year to put their logo on the front of their kit, just because Man Utd get it after years of commercial success, they can use the term 'fair market value'. But is it fair? Or just using one deal as the barometer.

That's what Man City is built upon. Ethiad came in and looked at the deal that Arsenal had with Emirates at the time. Arsenal, who at the time were consistently in the CL and challenging for the PL, were receiving x million for stadium and kit sponsorship. Arsenal were somewhat successfully commercially and a recognised name across Europe. Man City were not a recognised name, were not in the CL consistently and were not challenging for the PL, but were able to use this Arsenal Emirates deal as the base value, throw a few million on top, and call this 'fair market value'. Newcastle have used this and done the same recently.

It's why Man City abstained in the PL vote around Newcastle and related party sponsorship. They knew what they built the (recent success of the) club on.