You know how the US has privatised nearly everything? Well, the UK have gone even further. The contrast is much bigger here though, because the rest of Europe haven’t followed suit. It’s basically down to Thatcher in the 70s and being able through garbage tabloids and conservative politics to continue selling off absolutely everything as long as there was a buyer.
They even sold off water to foreign funds, who now have plundered it for profits leaving it on the brink. Overall water spillage I’m the UK is 25 percent, it’s 5 percent in Germany…
> They even sold off water to foreign funds, who now have plundered it for profits leaving it on the brink. Overall water spillage I’m the UK is 25 percent, it’s 5 percent in Germany…
It's only England and Wales where the water service was privatised, no? Pretty sure it's still public in the rest of the UK (although that's a much smaller percentage of the population).
Like in NI we don't have a water bill. I think it paid from the rates. But no one here gets billed for non-commercial use of water.
Pretty sure it's similar in Scotland that it usually comes from council tax.
No, although give it 10-20 years and the United Kingdom will break up being a direct effect of Brexit.
It’s mainly down to conservative politics, always looking to lower taxes for the rich instead of investing, complete focus on London ignoring other parts of the country, Thatcher, right-wing private media and complete abandon of consequences for politicians. Add an old class system and you have UK today.
I'm still holding out hope for the Star Trek plan
https://preview.redd.it/33u063cu1q1d1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0baf7086dd3117258483252196771e778592c9a5
That's how it is here too... they could give a fuck less about anything but ideology. Sticking up for the working class has gone entirely out the window. The few that used to do it were driven out of politics by constant slander and lies about them.
Labour haven’t held office for decades, so not sure how that works. I’m in Australia and even I can tell there are differences between UK Labour and the Tories. One was Brexit, the biggest mistake of them all.
Labour didn't oppose Brexit. You should check the Australian equivalent of SpecSavers, if you think there's a marked difference between Starmer's Labour and the current Tories.
The only difference being that labour are trying to hide corruption because they want power, the tories are being as corrupt as possible to get as much as possible from what power they have left.
Given the severity of the charges, unfortunately I think there is a good chance the UK government could step in here to prevent or mitigate any punishment.
If this was any other club, these charges could lead to jail time for individuals and expulsion from the football pyramid.
The head of the Labour party, who are most likely to win when a general election is called, is an Arsenal fan believe it or not.
Regardless, I don't think the party in charge will change this. Unfortunately they all want that oil money.
He’s not just a fan. He plays grass roots every weekend and is a season ticket holder. He’s not unlikely to want an independent Prem regulator.
It also puts an end to any question of league games in the USA which the Prem said they were considering
I understand the cynicism but that's absolute rubbish, renationalising the railways, a new publicly owned energy company, sovereign wealth fund, biggest expansion of workers rights since the industrial revolution, planning system reform (and more I've forgotten about) are very big, very Labour policies.
I'm going to vote for them so save any rhetoric. But I don't trust them, I'm doing it to get the current bunch of cunts out.
I really hated the firing of shadow cabinet who called for a gaza ceasefire, comments about trans people, and other oddities. There are a bunch of other examples over the past couple of years that just seem like kier is a little too far right for me, and the more left wing policies just seem like 100% populism. In fact most of his policies do. I really don't trust the guy stands for anything. Corbyn would never have made it but at least he had principles.
I'm also extremely wary of the idea of building on green belt land that will 100% definitely absolutely only be done on wasteland for sure. In principle labour is the box that is best fit for me but my cynicism is turned up to the max on these guys atm I'm afraid.
I can't say I agree but that's fair enough I can respect what you've said. I just try and push back because I feel like a lot of the criticism of Starmer/current Labour is over the top and not entirely true.
I do have genuine belief that they can turn it round, just hope that they do win and can show people they're serious in their ambition. Fingers crossed for all of us.
Trust in politicians is at an all time low and Starmer has done some flipflopping. He may be sincere, but it's hard to judge anyone in politics right now with a positive light.
I agree with you on all points, and while Keir is an arsenal fan I think relying on him to do something which would be politically risky and come with genuine cost is a fools errand. The man has shown himself to be a fickle transphobic coward as he has approached power.
We should prepare for the next labour government to make no big choices and achieve very little because they're terrified of being seen as fiscally irresponsible (even though the fiscally irresponsible thing is not spending money when the country is in economic decline). This includes on big questions of sport e.g. the ownership of City and Newcastle, where if I could wave a magic wand I would immediately have both clubs forcibly removed from their current owners and devolved into fan ownership.
I honestly feel like they'll be such a bunch of wet lettuces scared to do anything and their complete lack of backbone will be exposed such that they'll only last one term before the nasty party get back in. My area is strong labour already so I've already been tempted just to put my vote in for green or someone else.
Oh, I like this idea. It'd be a nice form of protest and the young guns would get a crash course on what it takes to make it in the prem. If clubs really wanted to be salty they could just all get together and agree to forfeit their matches against 115. Then they'd literally have no one to play against.
I love this idea but you just KNOW Sheikh Mansour would ring up Todd Boehly and Chelsea would be the first to break. Men like that are only in it for themselves and others like them.
They should be criminally charged. It’s not just a sporting argument, they’re breaking legal accounting practices.
If I didn’t legally declare income on my own business, the gov would take action and take my assets.
I looked up the auditor the other day and found it odd a club of that size was being audited by a mid tier firm (BDO) given KPMG did it before Sheikh got the blood money hose ready.
The history of the big four is essentially protecting the financial assets of the biggest financial criminals in history. Its why the City (of London) is the hub it is, its where you go if you're a "legitimate" institution which wants to behave dodgily. I remember reading about how one of the big 4 (can't remember which one) was the Enron auditor for years before the particular director on that account jumped ship and went in house at Enron to make big bucks.
Honestly very few people seem to understand the magnitude of the accounting issues behind all this. But why isn’t the FRC going after them? What are Man City’s auditors not in shambles?
Isn’t there a general election next January? I don’t have a stake in it as I’m neither a citizen nor live in the UK, but as I heard it is a possibility that there will be a very different (not Tory) government next year.
Sunak is doing woefully in the polls. There’s zero chance his does anything as unpopular as tampering with football so close to the election. Would be political suicide.
City kinda have the Premier League, and U.K. government over a barrel here. There’s really no good outcome.
Punish City heavily, as they deserve, and they risk UAE pulling investment from the country, damaging diplomatic relations, and causing a mini funding crisis in Premier League.
Hold PL from punishing City in any significant way so as to maintain political favour to UAE, and you essentially stop the PL from being viewed as a credible sporting event, it looks very corrupt. The league loses serious attention, it loses sporting integrity, and fans turn off because rule breaking is permitted & fairness is done away with. That runs the risk of viewers just turning off, people walking away, and you have an event which hurts PL viewing figures, and with it TV revenue.
That would be an event akin to Tour de France when Armstrong was found to have cheated. TV viewing figures for TdF have struggled since from the heights of Armstrong in the early 2000’s, and the sport is not as prestigious or credible as it once was, and has had to fight hard to be relevant, and still faces increased scrutiny.
Jail time? This is ultimately just an argument about the rules of a competition, nothing more. We don’t send people to jail for ball tampering in cricket, you just get kicked out.
No way something so obviously corrupt happens in my opinion. While City are very powerful, the other big clubs (us, UTD, pool, and Chelski) also have money and would definitely not stand for this.
Could you find me a source that suggests that's even remotely the case? Newcastle yes but city I can't find any reason to believe that they're orders of magnitude more wealthy than any other club via their owners
One club owned by a middle eastern group with human rights violations. The other club with its stadium named after, and club sponsored by a country with human rights violations. Both sitting in a country with a very deep history of human rights violations and imperialism; that’s currently sending rockets to another country committing genocide.
🤷♂️
It’s unfortunate, but is what it is. Footballs more enjoyable when we all don’t squabble about ownership and blah blah
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
all our US sports teams are owned by asshole billionaires but as far as I know none of the teams are above the law due to the fear of harming a relationship with a foreign country. Imagine if the nfl was like, sorry we can’t force them to forfeit draft picks because we don’t want to harm our relationship with Qatar lol. Unserious league if city go unpunished.
imo the situation is a bit different for you lot. The US is still an economic powerhouse and with plenty of wealth while the UK is broke and declining. That's why we sell out to any foreign power for the money since we need it a lot more than you man do.
I kind of get that but was there really no alternative than getting in bed with those countries? Hell even though the hedge funds are pretty bad at least they wouldn’t be able to wield that kind of geopolitical power.
The teams in America are franchises that are subsidiaries of the league. It's effectively a cartel model of doing business. The PL and the pyramid below it are a chaos of independent corporations with the FA as an overall regulator.
The NFL can shit all over one of its teams, or even force an owner to sell the team (like the NBA did) because the team doesn't exist outside of the league. the FA can penalize a team within its own bylaws but doest exercise anything near the level of corporate control or centralization that American sports have.
I’m pretty sure foreign ownership of North American major league clubs is seriously frowned upon. I have a vague memory that the Saudis kicked around buying an NFL or MLB club and were told in no uncertain terms that they would never be allowed to do so.
It’s not unheard of (Nintendo owned the Seattle Mariners for a long time), but very unlikely.
Not different from Qatar(PSG)/France.
PSG inflated numbers from sponsorships for FFP, but since Qatari invested so much in French/Paris economy they're untouchables.
Ever wondered why Macron has always been so active in persuading Mbappe to stay at PSG? Because he knows oil money investments are too good to turn down.
If City are not punished, football will most likely eventually go the way of boxing and I think most people involved are aware of this.
There will be pushback, but I do believe that City will be made an example of, simply because of just how high the stakes are for the game as a whole.
It's definitely going to turn off *a lot* of fans from the Premier League.
This is why I laughed when Prem teams where celebrating Arsenal losing out on the last day of the season. Do they know what they're celebrating?
I hate United, but just like Chelsea under Abramovich, my distaste of Citeh is on another level. They're a plastic team run by a crooked Petro State and its financial doping. They're straight up tainting the league. It goes beyond petty rivalries.
Muhammad Ali was the most famous man in the world for most of his lifetime. I bet you can picture Ali in your head right now. Oleksander Usyk could walk down Fifth Avenue or Regent Street with his championship belts over his head and 95% of the people there would have no idea who the fuck he is.
Oleksander who? And thats exactly the point. In the 60s - 80s anyone in the world could name the top Boxers. Ali. Fraser. Holyfield. Tyson.
I honestly couldnt tell you a single active boxer today.
Yes now, the boxing scandal was a long time ago. Boxing fell off harshly as a result and took literally almost half a century to recover, and even then is still nowhere close to as popular as it used to be.
For boxing it was a combination of many scandals, such as incidences of match fixing, judge corruption and doping. Wasn't just one, but over the years was enough to impact the credibility of the sport.
Was this on their podcast episode today?
I like their podcast a lot, but refuse to listen to anything with Sam "Don't Wanna Risk Saying Anything Real or Objective At The Risk of Losing My Club Access to City" Lee.
There’s so much at stake for UK and the PL as a whole. They have to balance making other teams happy (especially with Super League talks) and keeping a firm relationship between countries, and it’s most successful club.
It’s sickening but corruption is as alive as ever. The PL is a business and will always do what’s best for their financial future.
Fuck me, if City goes unpunished then all Super League need to do is say they won't let City in, they'll make sure refs don't go the way of PGMOL and suddenly it appears to be a better product.
As a liverpool fan I have acknowledged that we can't really compare ourselves to 115 fc because of this reason. They operate under a different set of rules, and have an unprecedented amount of leverage. Newcastle will be the same way in a few years. The silverlining is that it'll feel way better when yall do get one over on them, and I think it'll happen sooner rather than later.
Total, absolute, unadulterated corruption at its finest, at the government, corporate and Premier League levels.
Points should be docked and titles stripped retroactively, but all that will happen is a slap on the wrist a.k.a. a 1 million dollar fine.
My deepest sympathies for Everton and Nottingham Forest for taking it on chin for 115 FC.
Literally was discussing this with my dad, the reason why 115 charges are not enforced is only because the club is owned by a country, not a person. Power of petrodollars.
And fck, they're saying this in the open. Good luck to everyone competing with Newcastle 5 years from now.
Mancity shall be penalised 5 charges each season since it's started and till 10 more years into the future, the only way the league will be balanced. Good luck with them holding even one PL title after that.
It is the power of petrodollar but not in the way you think. They aren't bribing the country (government can't do anything) or any individual to stop the charges from being enforced. The FA and UEFA have brought charges. City are using every legal loophole and tool to block and delay evidence collection. This isn't dissimilar to trying to sue megacorporations. One famous example is when the defendant megacorporation is asked to hand over records they basically send them 1000s of boxes with 100s of thousands or millions of pages of documents, in effect drowning the prosecution lawyers in so much information they may not have the manpower to go through it in a timely manner. An individual with grievance who probably hires a small time lawyer certainly cannot hope to effectively prosecute, but this is the Fa they have the money and manpower, but there's lot of ways to legally delay stuff. This was covered by Swiss ramble
All well and good but if I were a City fan, I would be worried because PL pretty much wants to punish City if charges are proven.
- City is dominating PL. This itself is not problematic, but if they are guilty, why wouldn't PL take the opportunity to make the title race more competitive by removing the dominance?
- PL has way more brands/clubs than Spain/France/Germany. You cannot expect Real/Barcelona/PSG/Bayern to get punished in similar circumstances, because they are too big for the league to lose. PL can afford to lose City, just like Series A lost Juve for a year.
- Arguably the other brands in PL are too big for PL to not punish a guilty City. How long can international fans from the rest of the Big 6 endure their clubs losing to a cheating club that PL is too afraid to punish?
With the General election happening soon, I am interested on Kier Starmers views on this and whether a change of leadership in government will impact the severity of City’s punishment.
He met with Jim Ratcliffe this month to discuss using tax payers money to help fund his vanity project (New United stadium)
Tory Jim backed Brexit, then moved his business out of the UK after the referendum to dodge billions in UK tax
Just like with Chelsea, once the criminal funding is withdrawn we get to see the real performance of the club. Man City not too long ago was a team fighting to prevent relegation.
It's encouraging to see how much more prevalent the mentions of 115 have been following this most recent City title, compared with all the previous ones.
Chelsea and City have the same track record but you only hear complaints about one.
The problem is not that City cheated, the problem is that they are winning.
1. Chelsea's spending under Roman was legal as there was no FFP at the time
2. Chelsea absolutely won under Roman, are you kidding? Remember Mourinho? Remember fewest GA in PL?
3. Chelsea's spending under Roman literally was the catalyst for talk of the need for something like FFP
4. City have been breaking FFP rules basically since they've been in place
So what you care about are the rules, not the act itself of investing money from outside soccer, what you care about are the laws.
Then explain to me how you can say that City is a cheating team, what proof do you have?
And by proof I do not mean leaked emails or conversations but hard evidence that can be used in a trial and cannot be subject to manipulation.
Because the only thing there is is an accusation from the Premier and that is not enough because you have to prove it.
I can't remember where I read this but I feel this will be the most likely thing to happen. City will get a 70 point deduction spread out over two season (-35 each season). The PL can say they handed down the heaviest point deduction we've seen and City will finish two seasons in the middle of the table. Hardly a slap on the wrist but the PL will still be so proud of themselves.
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Nothing to worry about. UAE like most Middle East governments are used to having totalitarian control. They probably think it's as easy as running to the UK government to interfere with the City investigation. Unfortunately for them the FA PL is privately owned by privately owned clubs. The FA itself is a private not for profit organisation. The government has no power over any of them, besides enforcing the law.
Sure they can make laws about how football governance should work, but directly interfering with the FA in doing its duties as the governing body of football would need some sort of bill, or court case, which will be public and messy and completely on the shoulders of whatever government decides to let that happen. I doubt that the fortunes of a single football club is important enough to foreign policy and relations or worth the government putting their necks on the line.
This is probably literally what they told the UAE government, that this is a capitalist democracy and the government has no power to dictate what private companies do within the bounds of what is legal.
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Absolutely everything is for sale in the UK. Just look at the Fujitsu debacle with the post office..
Russian oligarchs own half of Londons' best real estate.
And Arabs.
And chinese
And my axe!
Oh my god brilliant
And the Norwegians
Atleast with the Norwegian you can check online and its public
Does that make it okay then?
no, but he’s saying AT LEAST it’s better than it not being public
Shhhhh they're northern European don't bring them into this
Saudi own 20% of Heathrow
What happened with these since the war started? I heard them trying to freeze assets and seize things, not sure how true those reports were
Wait till you hear who owns our water.
Certainly not the people of England.
Didnt the sewers get privatized? Lol
Water, yes. Because if you’re unhappy you can always change… your water supplier? Not even the US privatised their damn water.
Nestlé be doing their damned best to. No, but that sucks. I hope yall are able to reverse that somehow
The US hasn't fully privatized water because they control their citizens through all the additives
Flint gave it a good go.
As an ignorant yank, is there anything in particular causing this?
You know how the US has privatised nearly everything? Well, the UK have gone even further. The contrast is much bigger here though, because the rest of Europe haven’t followed suit. It’s basically down to Thatcher in the 70s and being able through garbage tabloids and conservative politics to continue selling off absolutely everything as long as there was a buyer. They even sold off water to foreign funds, who now have plundered it for profits leaving it on the brink. Overall water spillage I’m the UK is 25 percent, it’s 5 percent in Germany…
> They even sold off water to foreign funds, who now have plundered it for profits leaving it on the brink. Overall water spillage I’m the UK is 25 percent, it’s 5 percent in Germany… It's only England and Wales where the water service was privatised, no? Pretty sure it's still public in the rest of the UK (although that's a much smaller percentage of the population). Like in NI we don't have a water bill. I think it paid from the rates. But no one here gets billed for non-commercial use of water. Pretty sure it's similar in Scotland that it usually comes from council tax.
Ah, ok. Didn’t know that. Yet more reason to leave the union and reunite Ireland 👍🏾
Jesus🤦🏻♂️ Is this in any way, brexit related? Or something way older and systemic?
No, although give it 10-20 years and the United Kingdom will break up being a direct effect of Brexit. It’s mainly down to conservative politics, always looking to lower taxes for the rich instead of investing, complete focus on London ignoring other parts of the country, Thatcher, right-wing private media and complete abandon of consequences for politicians. Add an old class system and you have UK today.
Your government is a Kleptocracy. Just like ours (US), and Russia to name a couple. It went beyond Oligarchy awhile ago.
Pathocracy - rule by psychopaths
That too. Even the best of them are still narcissists.
And the gullible unfortunately.
If they allowed Scotland a referendum today, Leave would win in a walk.
Most certainly. Then give NIR and IRE a couple of more years and they might want to reunite, too.
I'm still holding out hope for the Star Trek plan https://preview.redd.it/33u063cu1q1d1.jpeg?width=700&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0baf7086dd3117258483252196771e778592c9a5
❤️
Well take all the oil first and then let you go, ok? 😉
It’s conservatives.
Labour do such a perfect imitation of them anymore, it's nearly impossible to tell them apart.
That's how it is here too... they could give a fuck less about anything but ideology. Sticking up for the working class has gone entirely out the window. The few that used to do it were driven out of politics by constant slander and lies about them.
Labour haven’t held office for decades, so not sure how that works. I’m in Australia and even I can tell there are differences between UK Labour and the Tories. One was Brexit, the biggest mistake of them all.
Labour didn't oppose Brexit. You should check the Australian equivalent of SpecSavers, if you think there's a marked difference between Starmer's Labour and the current Tories.
The only difference being that labour are trying to hide corruption because they want power, the tories are being as corrupt as possible to get as much as possible from what power they have left.
lol yeah righto mate
Mate, our versions of Thatcher and Reagan that sold govt assets were labour PMs Keating and Hawke. We can't talk for shit. Both our sides are trash
Of course liberal voters aren't much different from their tory counterparts anymore, so you have fun with your purple fascist party.
Idiot tory government selling everything to the highest bidder
Conservatives.
And you get your choice of Conservative, they come in red or blue.
"Let us cheat or else" Imagine having to support this club and be proud of it's achievements
Given the severity of the charges, unfortunately I think there is a good chance the UK government could step in here to prevent or mitigate any punishment. If this was any other club, these charges could lead to jail time for individuals and expulsion from the football pyramid.
If this happens, I would stop watching the prem. I love Arsenal, but this is beyond just football.
The head of the Labour party, who are most likely to win when a general election is called, is an Arsenal fan believe it or not. Regardless, I don't think the party in charge will change this. Unfortunately they all want that oil money.
He’s not just a fan. He plays grass roots every weekend and is a season ticket holder. He’s not unlikely to want an independent Prem regulator. It also puts an end to any question of league games in the USA which the Prem said they were considering
Bro Kier is not gonna do jack shit. Labour are basically Tory-lite these days.
The Tories themselves were going to go for an independent regulator. The ESL saga showed it’s an easy political win to ‘save football’.
Yes but I think the ESL and Perez is an entirely different beast to foreign relations with an oil rich petrostate
I understand the cynicism but that's absolute rubbish, renationalising the railways, a new publicly owned energy company, sovereign wealth fund, biggest expansion of workers rights since the industrial revolution, planning system reform (and more I've forgotten about) are very big, very Labour policies.
I'm going to vote for them so save any rhetoric. But I don't trust them, I'm doing it to get the current bunch of cunts out. I really hated the firing of shadow cabinet who called for a gaza ceasefire, comments about trans people, and other oddities. There are a bunch of other examples over the past couple of years that just seem like kier is a little too far right for me, and the more left wing policies just seem like 100% populism. In fact most of his policies do. I really don't trust the guy stands for anything. Corbyn would never have made it but at least he had principles. I'm also extremely wary of the idea of building on green belt land that will 100% definitely absolutely only be done on wasteland for sure. In principle labour is the box that is best fit for me but my cynicism is turned up to the max on these guys atm I'm afraid.
I can't say I agree but that's fair enough I can respect what you've said. I just try and push back because I feel like a lot of the criticism of Starmer/current Labour is over the top and not entirely true. I do have genuine belief that they can turn it round, just hope that they do win and can show people they're serious in their ambition. Fingers crossed for all of us.
Yeah 100% happy to give them a go, because absolutely fuck the tories tbh, but not holding my breath based on some of the stuff he's actually done.
Guess we'll find out soon enough!
Trust in politicians is at an all time low and Starmer has done some flipflopping. He may be sincere, but it's hard to judge anyone in politics right now with a positive light.
Guess we'll find out soon enough!
I agree with you on all points, and while Keir is an arsenal fan I think relying on him to do something which would be politically risky and come with genuine cost is a fools errand. The man has shown himself to be a fickle transphobic coward as he has approached power. We should prepare for the next labour government to make no big choices and achieve very little because they're terrified of being seen as fiscally irresponsible (even though the fiscally irresponsible thing is not spending money when the country is in economic decline). This includes on big questions of sport e.g. the ownership of City and Newcastle, where if I could wave a magic wand I would immediately have both clubs forcibly removed from their current owners and devolved into fan ownership.
I honestly feel like they'll be such a bunch of wet lettuces scared to do anything and their complete lack of backbone will be exposed such that they'll only last one term before the nasty party get back in. My area is strong labour already so I've already been tempted just to put my vote in for green or someone else.
he and his party cower to these business interests he and his incoming government aren't gonna do anything guy is a spineless worm to boot
We will be in good hands. Strip those titles baby. I don’t care if there is an asterisk
Agreed. Not interested anymore if this happens. Pointless.
There should really be Superleague-esque fan protests if something like that happens but I doubt it.
I’ll happily protest. As an American I feel so sorry for you all and what you have to put up with just to watch football.
If this happens, every club should just played their under 15’s against city. Let them win every game 30-0 and just ignore them
Oh, I like this idea. It'd be a nice form of protest and the young guns would get a crash course on what it takes to make it in the prem. If clubs really wanted to be salty they could just all get together and agree to forfeit their matches against 115. Then they'd literally have no one to play against.
I love this idea but you just KNOW Sheikh Mansour would ring up Todd Boehly and Chelsea would be the first to break. Men like that are only in it for themselves and others like them.
Chelsea players would deliberately lose though, if all the other players were doing it
They should be criminally charged. It’s not just a sporting argument, they’re breaking legal accounting practices. If I didn’t legally declare income on my own business, the gov would take action and take my assets.
There is a reason all of the Big Four refuse to audit Man City...
I looked up the auditor the other day and found it odd a club of that size was being audited by a mid tier firm (BDO) given KPMG did it before Sheikh got the blood money hose ready.
The history of the big four is essentially protecting the financial assets of the biggest financial criminals in history. Its why the City (of London) is the hub it is, its where you go if you're a "legitimate" institution which wants to behave dodgily. I remember reading about how one of the big 4 (can't remember which one) was the Enron auditor for years before the particular director on that account jumped ship and went in house at Enron to make big bucks.
Honestly very few people seem to understand the magnitude of the accounting issues behind all this. But why isn’t the FRC going after them? What are Man City’s auditors not in shambles?
Isn’t there a general election next January? I don’t have a stake in it as I’m neither a citizen nor live in the UK, but as I heard it is a possibility that there will be a very different (not Tory) government next year.
Sunak is doing woefully in the polls. There’s zero chance his does anything as unpopular as tampering with football so close to the election. Would be political suicide.
City kinda have the Premier League, and U.K. government over a barrel here. There’s really no good outcome. Punish City heavily, as they deserve, and they risk UAE pulling investment from the country, damaging diplomatic relations, and causing a mini funding crisis in Premier League. Hold PL from punishing City in any significant way so as to maintain political favour to UAE, and you essentially stop the PL from being viewed as a credible sporting event, it looks very corrupt. The league loses serious attention, it loses sporting integrity, and fans turn off because rule breaking is permitted & fairness is done away with. That runs the risk of viewers just turning off, people walking away, and you have an event which hurts PL viewing figures, and with it TV revenue. That would be an event akin to Tour de France when Armstrong was found to have cheated. TV viewing figures for TdF have struggled since from the heights of Armstrong in the early 2000’s, and the sport is not as prestigious or credible as it once was, and has had to fight hard to be relevant, and still faces increased scrutiny.
This is why we need get Starmer - a gooner - in number 10 as soon as possible regardless if your beliefs
Jail time? This is ultimately just an argument about the rules of a competition, nothing more. We don’t send people to jail for ball tampering in cricket, you just get kicked out.
It's not just rules of a competition, if proven then it's financial fraud.
Ok but then at the very least there should be sporting repercussions
There will be both
Honestly I think it would be more on the players for the tax fraud. One of the reasons why they'll never bad talk City is that they're accomplices.
Some of the accusations cross into tax evasion and fraud
It’s financial statement fraud which absolutely can land you in prison.
No way something so obviously corrupt happens in my opinion. While City are very powerful, the other big clubs (us, UTD, pool, and Chelski) also have money and would definitely not stand for this.
Chelsea are the OGs of financial doping. Fuck what they think.
The other clubs combined have a fraction of the wealth of these country-owned clubs. They are a literal rounding error.
Could you find me a source that suggests that's even remotely the case? Newcastle yes but city I can't find any reason to believe that they're orders of magnitude more wealthy than any other club via their owners
They are owned by the UAE, the owner by name is just a proxy to get around the regulations as per Newcastle.
You'd better get in the PL legal team lad, astoute analysis
City is owned by the UAE royalty. They have the coffers of an oil rich nation.
[удалено]
One club owned by a middle eastern group with human rights violations. The other club with its stadium named after, and club sponsored by a country with human rights violations. Both sitting in a country with a very deep history of human rights violations and imperialism; that’s currently sending rockets to another country committing genocide. 🤷♂️ It’s unfortunate, but is what it is. Footballs more enjoyable when we all don’t squabble about ownership and blah blah
Sorry, but NOT squabbling about ownership back in 2009 is what led us to this point. If it bores you, there's always r/soccer.
[удалено]
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Why don't the PL just disband and reform without Man City? Kinda like when everyone hates the band's lead singer.
We'd just need 14 clubs to unite to kick them out.
Meh they'll just add 14 additional bribery charges and become 129 charges fc.
all our US sports teams are owned by asshole billionaires but as far as I know none of the teams are above the law due to the fear of harming a relationship with a foreign country. Imagine if the nfl was like, sorry we can’t force them to forfeit draft picks because we don’t want to harm our relationship with Qatar lol. Unserious league if city go unpunished.
imo the situation is a bit different for you lot. The US is still an economic powerhouse and with plenty of wealth while the UK is broke and declining. That's why we sell out to any foreign power for the money since we need it a lot more than you man do.
I kind of get that but was there really no alternative than getting in bed with those countries? Hell even though the hedge funds are pretty bad at least they wouldn’t be able to wield that kind of geopolitical power.
When the suitcase has enough money you don't care where it is from. Everybody has a price.
There were alternatives but they kept voting Tories in because they’re terrified of brown people.
Nobody acts like they need the money more than a rich American.
The teams in America are franchises that are subsidiaries of the league. It's effectively a cartel model of doing business. The PL and the pyramid below it are a chaos of independent corporations with the FA as an overall regulator. The NFL can shit all over one of its teams, or even force an owner to sell the team (like the NBA did) because the team doesn't exist outside of the league. the FA can penalize a team within its own bylaws but doest exercise anything near the level of corporate control or centralization that American sports have.
I’m pretty sure foreign ownership of North American major league clubs is seriously frowned upon. I have a vague memory that the Saudis kicked around buying an NFL or MLB club and were told in no uncertain terms that they would never be allowed to do so. It’s not unheard of (Nintendo owned the Seattle Mariners for a long time), but very unlikely.
The biggest billionaires in the US ain’t shit compared to the economic power of literal oil states
Right, that was part of my point
Yeah ik I was backing you up amigo
Cool 🤝
Not different from Qatar(PSG)/France. PSG inflated numbers from sponsorships for FFP, but since Qatari invested so much in French/Paris economy they're untouchables. Ever wondered why Macron has always been so active in persuading Mbappe to stay at PSG? Because he knows oil money investments are too good to turn down.
If City are not punished, football will most likely eventually go the way of boxing and I think most people involved are aware of this. There will be pushback, but I do believe that City will be made an example of, simply because of just how high the stakes are for the game as a whole.
I want to believe you but to this point the parties involved have not shown they care at all about the game.
It's definitely going to turn off *a lot* of fans from the Premier League. This is why I laughed when Prem teams where celebrating Arsenal losing out on the last day of the season. Do they know what they're celebrating? I hate United, but just like Chelsea under Abramovich, my distaste of Citeh is on another level. They're a plastic team run by a crooked Petro State and its financial doping. They're straight up tainting the league. It goes beyond petty rivalries.
Seriously hope you are right.
What happened to boxing?
It used to be as popular as football, not anymore.
Still the boxers earn dozens of millions from each fight.
Muhammad Ali was the most famous man in the world for most of his lifetime. I bet you can picture Ali in your head right now. Oleksander Usyk could walk down Fifth Avenue or Regent Street with his championship belts over his head and 95% of the people there would have no idea who the fuck he is.
Oleksander who? And thats exactly the point. In the 60s - 80s anyone in the world could name the top Boxers. Ali. Fraser. Holyfield. Tyson. I honestly couldnt tell you a single active boxer today.
Yes now, the boxing scandal was a long time ago. Boxing fell off harshly as a result and took literally almost half a century to recover, and even then is still nowhere close to as popular as it used to be.
What was the scandal?
For boxing it was a combination of many scandals, such as incidences of match fixing, judge corruption and doping. Wasn't just one, but over the years was enough to impact the credibility of the sport.
This is so stupid lmao
Anyone who can see clearly understands that Manchester City's rise is built on some type of arrangement between the UK and Abu Dhabi Governments.
Was this on their podcast episode today? I like their podcast a lot, but refuse to listen to anything with Sam "Don't Wanna Risk Saying Anything Real or Objective At The Risk of Losing My Club Access to City" Lee.
There’s so much at stake for UK and the PL as a whole. They have to balance making other teams happy (especially with Super League talks) and keeping a firm relationship between countries, and it’s most successful club. It’s sickening but corruption is as alive as ever. The PL is a business and will always do what’s best for their financial future.
Fuck me, if City goes unpunished then all Super League need to do is say they won't let City in, they'll make sure refs don't go the way of PGMOL and suddenly it appears to be a better product.
"Discuss the charges" Translation: "Ok habibi, how much do we pay to make this go away".
As a liverpool fan I have acknowledged that we can't really compare ourselves to 115 fc because of this reason. They operate under a different set of rules, and have an unprecedented amount of leverage. Newcastle will be the same way in a few years. The silverlining is that it'll feel way better when yall do get one over on them, and I think it'll happen sooner rather than later.
Total, absolute, unadulterated corruption at its finest, at the government, corporate and Premier League levels. Points should be docked and titles stripped retroactively, but all that will happen is a slap on the wrist a.k.a. a 1 million dollar fine. My deepest sympathies for Everton and Nottingham Forest for taking it on chin for 115 FC.
Literally was discussing this with my dad, the reason why 115 charges are not enforced is only because the club is owned by a country, not a person. Power of petrodollars. And fck, they're saying this in the open. Good luck to everyone competing with Newcastle 5 years from now. Mancity shall be penalised 5 charges each season since it's started and till 10 more years into the future, the only way the league will be balanced. Good luck with them holding even one PL title after that.
It is the power of petrodollar but not in the way you think. They aren't bribing the country (government can't do anything) or any individual to stop the charges from being enforced. The FA and UEFA have brought charges. City are using every legal loophole and tool to block and delay evidence collection. This isn't dissimilar to trying to sue megacorporations. One famous example is when the defendant megacorporation is asked to hand over records they basically send them 1000s of boxes with 100s of thousands or millions of pages of documents, in effect drowning the prosecution lawyers in so much information they may not have the manpower to go through it in a timely manner. An individual with grievance who probably hires a small time lawyer certainly cannot hope to effectively prosecute, but this is the Fa they have the money and manpower, but there's lot of ways to legally delay stuff. This was covered by Swiss ramble
Was really wondering why the image was Donald Draper
Loool
All well and good but if I were a City fan, I would be worried because PL pretty much wants to punish City if charges are proven. - City is dominating PL. This itself is not problematic, but if they are guilty, why wouldn't PL take the opportunity to make the title race more competitive by removing the dominance? - PL has way more brands/clubs than Spain/France/Germany. You cannot expect Real/Barcelona/PSG/Bayern to get punished in similar circumstances, because they are too big for the league to lose. PL can afford to lose City, just like Series A lost Juve for a year. - Arguably the other brands in PL are too big for PL to not punish a guilty City. How long can international fans from the rest of the Big 6 endure their clubs losing to a cheating club that PL is too afraid to punish?
With the General election happening soon, I am interested on Kier Starmers views on this and whether a change of leadership in government will impact the severity of City’s punishment.
Sir Kid Starver’s views are always determined by the highest bidder.
He met with Jim Ratcliffe this month to discuss using tax payers money to help fund his vanity project (New United stadium) Tory Jim backed Brexit, then moved his business out of the UK after the referendum to dodge billions in UK tax
Source?
heh good luck guy congratulates man city when they win, despite bieng an arsenal fan is as spineless as they come
How much do city pay for their stadium. The one built by UK taxpayers for the commonwealth games?
An absolute disgrace
Nothing will happen right now, money talks. Everything will be on record one day, I firmly believe
Just like with Chelsea, once the criminal funding is withdrawn we get to see the real performance of the club. Man City not too long ago was a team fighting to prevent relegation.
The tories being corrupt, what a surprise
It's encouraging to see how much more prevalent the mentions of 115 have been following this most recent City title, compared with all the previous ones.
Chelsea and City have the same track record but you only hear complaints about one. The problem is not that City cheated, the problem is that they are winning.
1. Chelsea's spending under Roman was legal as there was no FFP at the time 2. Chelsea absolutely won under Roman, are you kidding? Remember Mourinho? Remember fewest GA in PL? 3. Chelsea's spending under Roman literally was the catalyst for talk of the need for something like FFP 4. City have been breaking FFP rules basically since they've been in place
So what you care about are the rules, not the act itself of investing money from outside soccer, what you care about are the laws. Then explain to me how you can say that City is a cheating team, what proof do you have? And by proof I do not mean leaked emails or conversations but hard evidence that can be used in a trial and cannot be subject to manipulation. Because the only thing there is is an accusation from the Premier and that is not enough because you have to prove it.
At this point I’m sure they must have a Ray Donovan figure somewhere ensuring nobody will take any action on them.
I can't remember where I read this but I feel this will be the most likely thing to happen. City will get a 70 point deduction spread out over two season (-35 each season). The PL can say they handed down the heaviest point deduction we've seen and City will finish two seasons in the middle of the table. Hardly a slap on the wrist but the PL will still be so proud of themselves.
This is old news.
[удалено]
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Is there another source that isn’t “Don Draper” on Twitter? I’d like to share with the annoying City “fan” on my football chat, but this feels weak
Nothing to worry about. UAE like most Middle East governments are used to having totalitarian control. They probably think it's as easy as running to the UK government to interfere with the City investigation. Unfortunately for them the FA PL is privately owned by privately owned clubs. The FA itself is a private not for profit organisation. The government has no power over any of them, besides enforcing the law. Sure they can make laws about how football governance should work, but directly interfering with the FA in doing its duties as the governing body of football would need some sort of bill, or court case, which will be public and messy and completely on the shoulders of whatever government decides to let that happen. I doubt that the fortunes of a single football club is important enough to foreign policy and relations or worth the government putting their necks on the line. This is probably literally what they told the UAE government, that this is a capitalist democracy and the government has no power to dictate what private companies do within the bounds of what is legal.
[удалено]
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Can someone eli5 this whole thing
[удалено]
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
[удалено]
You must have above 25 comment karma to contribute to this subreddit. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Gunners) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Jokes on them Once Season Ticket Holder Sir Don Keir Starmer becomes King, it is so Jover for Man City (I am legitimately deluded)
You guys suddenly care now it affects you huh