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

I've heard previously that there are some partners of players being paid a salary by external sources.

One being a player that has tried to leave Man City every other summer for the last 3/4 years but somehow manages to sign a new contract a couple times in those same summers. He currently has a low (low for his ability level) release clause to move away from Man City this summer. He might finally get that move away to Barcelona or PSG he has tried to engineer a few times.

What could possibly influence a couple to change their mind to stay in rainy Manchester, and sign a new contract, after previously stating that they wanted to leave to live in sunny Europe?

It is short-sighted to conclude that because Villa haven't come near challenging for a league title in ~two decades it isn't relevant to you. But your post is an excellent example of how this all works. Football fans are so endlessly tribal, that City winning it all with no fans you know is highly palatable. If it was your Utd / Liverpool / Arsenal supporting mates winning instead that would just annoy you. This is much better.

But it does affect Aston Villa. Because presumably Aston Villa will one day want to challenge for the title again. City have established an FC Bayern like hegemony. The last refuge here is the idea that once Pep leaves, things might be different. But the structures that underpin Pep's reign, including the financial the irregularities, will prove extraordinarily difficult to compete with. If you build an unbelievable team over multiple seasons, maybe you steal one on a down year for them. But they'll be back setting the pace the following August.

To compare this to the much more organic way in which the biggest clubs in England were built is a complete fallacy. City are a naturally smaller club, that's just how it is. Their well documented struggles to fill out their stadium even as the best club team in the world attest to that. The bigger clubs were built off their bigger fan bases. Some of them were better run than others and were able to capitalise quicker during different periods - but as more money flowed into football it generally followed that the bigger clubs were the beneficiaries and / or those bigger clubs were always easier to turn around with the right management. There are exceptions here - Leeds scuttled their own ship; Forest got it wrong in many various ways at exactly the wrong time and Chelsea provided the template for a much bigger wall of money to follow. But your argument is essentially that the size of fanbases, and the history of clubs shouldn't matter. Every small little club should be afforded the same opportunity so long as they get a Middle Eastern wall of money, because those guys will never run out of money so it's different.

This is the thing though, isn't it? We now have the greatest club of all time with the platform to sustain this level of dominance…until at some point their owners decide that the investment doesn't make sense or is no longer required. Sure the club will be sold and maybe it gets bought by someone really smart. Maybe this "history" that has been bought and paid for the last ~15 years (and what is yet to be added on in the coming years) endures, and those new owners can attract and retain top talent while investing within the rules. But the far more likely occurrence is for it all to slowly crumble away in this scenario, as the reality of a mid tier club with a localised fanbase pulls down towards the mean outcome over many years. The current "sponsorship" deals will no longer be available. City will start to lose players they want to keep to Real (that this doesn't happen currently should ring MASSIVE alarm bells btw) and some day in the future the club with the indisputable greatest period in the history of the game will be relegated.

Your contention that FFPC was initiated to save clubs from frivolous owners without the cash to back it up is partially true - really it was invented to do the other thing, to try and ringfence European football from being bought by a wall of money. This was always pretty silly in my mind, for once that sluice gate of money was opened for the Qatar World Cup, the idea they would simply go away was entirely naive. If the Premier League charges are beaten by City, in the same way they already beat UEFA, then expect the same thing to happen again.

Presumably you'll be hoping that one day Villa are bought by a Middle Eastern state, so you can get in on the scam. As well you might, increasingly that is the only way you'll be able to win the big trophies.

The players are playing for a club that they know are cheats. If City have titles stripped the players will have titles stripped. You cant say city are cheats but the players are squeaky clean.

I think this is also a problem that feeds into it all, as long as city are winning the league everyone’s attitude is “well at least I don’t have to listen to my united/liverpool/arsenal mates in work bragging about their team winnning it”

The amount of people I’ve chatted to in work saying they’d rather see city win it then Arsenal is unreal and I’m shocked tbh, basically people are desensitised to city’s cheating to titles they just accept it as parity.

People are happy to complain about city’s cheating but seemingly don’t really care when they actually win the league then.

And that's all fine and it would be right if that happens. I have no argument with anything you say there. City deserve to have titles taken off them although I don't think the more recent ones are part of any charges.

My comments were about the comparison made between Lance Armstrong and City. A drug cheat being compared to a title winning side. That suggests that all the players are drug cheats.

It's a comparison made by somebody whose not very intelligent.

There’s nothing that would stop them mentioning it, bar an editorial decision not to.

He is wrong and you are wrong. Lance Armstrong was a drug cheat.

The other night on MNF, Neville said to Carra about saying something on air that he shouldn't have / couldn't talk about. So you could be onto something.

The blanket ban of Sky talking about Man City's 115 charges but at the same time happy to talk about Everton/Forest points is confusing alright.

Lance is the same as Pep so - a drug cheat.

Pep isn't a player.

Yes the opinion of a reasonable intelligent person.

As I said it's a stupid comparison.

There are only two reasons you'd defend the comparison. 1. You are not very smart and more likely 2. Your hate for Man City is so great you can't see the wood from the trees.

Don't tell me you're unaware that Pep was banned from playing football for taking performance enhancing drugs?

Pep said that he only took what his doctor (Ramon Segura) told him to take, before then hiring that doctor (Ramon Segura) to be the team doctor for his Barcelona team.

Because he has previously been banned for using drugs.

His Barcelona team also had strong links to Fuentes and the doping scandal that Spanish football did its upmost to bury.

"Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus"

That was as a player , 20 years ago, he is now a manager - I dislike what City have become, and as Evertonian would prefer liverpool to win league than City , but ther is zero evidence as a manger he used drugs to enhance team - as much as I dislkike City, I grudingly admire ther football achiebement, PSG for example have failed to deliver, with similar investment.

is that Doctor with him at City now ?

You can be rest assured there are lawyers ready with cease and desist letters at a moment's notice.

I'm not a City fan, but ther is no hard evidence that team doped, thers was rumours about Liverpool a few years ago - and thats what they were rumours.

Without real evidence sounds sour loser, and I really hope West Ham show up on Sunday.

Maybe I am not making myself clear enough here

Man City's "Official" record of wages that they submit and can be seen by the public is not worth a ****.
They have multiple instances of cooking the books, outsourcing payments to people and so on.
So while they are under their current ownership whatever they put out as an official figure for wages, agent fees or anything of the like is absolutely and totally worthless.

It holds the same weight as me going in and asking the 5-year-old what wages they think Haaland is on.

It does not matter if they are claiming to be the highest paid now (they have almost certainly always been the highest paid it's just not been on the books). We have no idea if that is ALL they are paid due to past events under the same owners. It's that simple.

You cannot cheat and look for respect afterwards!

Financial doping is business related. As I said you can compare it to any of the multiple businesses who have been involved in fraudulent and other financial scandals.

An athlete doping bears no relation to a company cheating the books.

There have been plenty of stories over the years. It's hard to know which are real and which are fake.
Some were very outlandish - like I remember there were rumours that they would get a bonus for wishing some royal a happy birthday or something along those lines. Creative you have to say.

I have no idea what is real but I know it is highly unlikely at this stage that those players were paid what was on the books after Roberto Mancini was caught out "double jobbing".

You would have to accept they found a loophole - took advantage of it but then drew the line at the manager and said even though we want to keep these world-class players at a second-rate club we won't break the rules again and pay them from outside the club to stay.

Like there is being naive and then there is this

What has any of this got to do with the stupid comparison I'm talking about? I'm not defending City. I'm saying the comparison is stupid and wrong because it's suggesting the players are using drugs.

Pep was wearing a nice limited edition watch there recently in a CL game. Only 50 made, and cost £1m. Nice if you can afford it! Or be gifted it perhaps 😀

No tweet suggested the players are using drugs. You read that in the tweet. The tweet compared the titles of one cheat with the titles of another cheat.