Diluted Dante wrote:

What's the point of FFP then?

Its dead. As a dodo. Big clubs can go spend what they want, cook the books etc and its all good.

Uefa statement in full

Uefa takes note of the decision taken by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to reduce the sanction imposed on Manchester City FC by Uefa’s independent Club Financial Control Body for alleged breaches of the Uefa Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play regulations.

Uefa notes that the CAS panel found that there was insufficient conclusive evidence to uphold all of the CFCB’s conclusions in this specific case and that many of the alleged breaches were time-barred due to the 5 year time period foreseen in the Uefa regulations.

Over the last few years, Financial Fair Play has played a significant role in protecting clubs and helping them become financially sustainable and Uefa and ECA remain committed to its principles.

Uefa will be making no further comments on the matter.

Man City statement in full

Whilst Manchester City and its legal advisors are yet to review the full ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the Club welcomes the implications of today’s ruling as a validation of the Club’s position and the body of evidence that it was able to present.

The Club wishes to thank the panel members for their diligence and the due process that they administered.

CAS statement in full

Lausanne, 13 July 2020 - The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has issued its decision in the arbitration procedure between Manchester City Football Club and the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA).

The case concerns an appeal filed by Manchester City FC (MCFC) against the decision of the Adjudicatory Chamber of the UEFA Club Financial Control Body (CFCB) dated 14 February 2020 in which it was deemed to have contravened UEFA’s Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations and sanctioned with exclusion from participation in UEFA club competitions in the next two seasons and ordered to pay a fine of EUR 30 million.

The Panel of arbitrators in charge of the matter, composed of Mr Rui Botica Santos (Portugal), President, Prof. Ulrich Haas (Germany) and Mr Andrew McDougall QC (France), conducted a hearing with the parties, their legal representatives, witnesses and experts on 8, 9 and 10 June 2020.

Following the hearing, the CAS Panel deliberated and concluded that the decision issued on 14 February 2020 by the Adjudicatory Chamber of the CFCB should be set aside and replaced by the following:
a.) MCFC has contravened Article 56 of the Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations.
b.) MCFC shall pay a fine of EUR 10,000,000 to the UEFA, within 30 days as from the date of issuance of the arbitral award.

The CAS award emphasized that most of the alleged breaches reported by the Adjudicatory Chamber of the CFCB were either not established or time-barred. As the charges with respect to any dishonest concealment of equity funding were clearly more significant violations than obstructing the CFCB’s investigations, it was not appropriate to impose a ban on participating in UEFA’s club competitions
for MCFC’s failure to cooperate with the CFCB’s investigations alone.

However, considering i) the financial resources of MCFC; ii) the importance of the cooperation of clubs in investigations conducted by the CFCB, because of its limited investigative means; and iii) MCFC’s disregard of such principle and its obstruction of the investigations, the CAS Panel found that a significant fine should be imposed on MCFC and considered it appropriate to reduce UEFA’s initial fine by 2/3, i.e. to the amount of EUR 10 million.

The final award with reasons will be published on the CAS website in a few days.

It seems like the rules came in 2011 but Man City were bought in 2008? Is that what time barred refers to? Maybe in addition to the rules being implemented there was a time period for people to adjust?

edit: the rules fully came into play in 2015.

UEFAs charge was for offences between 2012 and 2016.

Expect city to go on a massive spending spree now. Which is good in that it will ensure a proper title race between liverpool and them. Though id rather they were banned for cheating.

1) Man City did something that looked okay
2) UEFA said “this looks hunky dory”
3) some guy hacks Man City and it ends up in a news paper
4) UEFA go “I guess we shouldn’t have said that was fine -BWaaaaaaa 2 year ban”
5) Man City: you said this was fine - fuck off.

The fact of the matter is UEFA needed a 3rd party hack to see if their own rules were being followed and only accidentally banned Man City.

I was hoping for a abu dhabi v qatar final this year.

Will be interesting to findout via the journos how ECA (european club assoication) react to this and what they will say to UEFA. Alledgly Real, Barca and Juventus were pushing UEFA hard to ban City.

Edit: what crayon said, i didnt do a page refresh.

Put pressure on UEFA to do something. What that is i dont know. Tighten the rules around finance?!?

Part of the problem is that UEFA needs to keep the gulf states onside as they will provide funding for the replacement of the champions league by the end of the decade. The ECA who want the european super league could breakaway from UEFA and run itself if it thinks UEFA are inept. So UEFA are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The ESL will cause alot of controversy when it does eventually launch, especially if its a closed competition with no relegation out of the league.

Money talks and owners want profits. So they will "keep their friends close and keep their enemies closer".

Anyway what do we think city need to challenge liverpool?

Replace the following players with top quality players and i think they will challenge: sane, kompany, silva, fernandinho and another striker.

I had the sense that Abramovich stopped putting dollars in because he’d got bored of everything.

Hi its the gers fan here about to comment on financial doping lol

Watching folk lose their nut is hilarious. You've seen your TV deals, right?

RamSteelwood wrote:

FFP is a bit of a scam anyway. it should be there to protect clubs from unscrupulous owners running them into the ground, instead it's more about maintaining the status quo and protecting the big teams to make sure no other teams can 'do a man city', and that they can protect their superstars from being bought by setting ridiculous buy out clauses.

they could easily control the big clubs just by restricting squad sizes, salary caps, limit the number of transfers that can be made each window (offset against sales) etc. if they were interested in keeping some parity in the competition

Cant do salary caps against EU law. It would be great if sport got an exception.

Buyout clauses are in Spainish law, though it seems to get more popular with players wanting them added to their contracts (outside of spain).

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

I had the sense that Abramovich stopped putting dollars in because he’d got bored of everything.

I thought he’d stopped putting so much in once our government were put in an untenable position with Russian interference after Salisbury?

Once they started pulling his visas he put a stop to the stadium rebuild and cut back on player purchasing.

Also this. However to keep chelsea competitive they need a refresh, without Abramovich cash monies.

afgavinstan wrote:

Hi its the gers fan here about to comment on financial doping lol Watching folk lose their nut is hilarious. You've seen your TV deals, right?

What does the Premier League's TV deal have to do with financial doping?