City shenanigans and the rest ...

Burnwinter

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/dec/01/premier-league-in-peril-as-gold-mine-manchester-citys-date-with-destiny-looms

A rare insightful column from Ronay. The first major point is that behind the scenes, a long-awaited settlement over City's 100+ financial charges is about to be attempted.

He then speculates about how any major crackdown on City, Newcastle and other clubs linked with high nett worth political figures (especially major trophies stripped or asterisked) might lead the UK government intervening heavily in internal regulation by the Premier League for diplomatic reasons.

And he finally infers that such complications could trigger the revival of super league proposals—the league's integrity would have a huge question mark thereafter and it would be a weaker product.

I'm highly dubious about any super league, mainly because I think the arrangements for promotion and relegation would be crooked and anticompetitive. But if there's going to be one, Arsenal has to be one of the incumbents.

Daz

Burnwinter
Ronay = skip first few paragraphs of waffle.
Hard to see how any kind of super league would end up having less corruption than the epl.

Qwiss

Burnwinter fucking with the PL would be suicidal from the UK government. People care about football more than the NHS, immigration and education.

goon

I don’t think there’s any real threat to the league if it decides to throw the book at City. It’s more of a threat if they don’t, because it basically tells clubs you can break the rules and cheat for a decade enabling a wave of sporting and commercial success and we will give you a little slap on the wrist for it.

I’ve little doubt too that most of the American owners, who own about 70% of the league, will not want to be fighting against clubs who can distort the market with no real consequence.

The main threat is government intervention, which is ironic, because the impending ‘independent regulator’ is supposed to protect the fans from corruption and greed. The one good thing about the date being set over a year down the line is it will likely be a Labour government in charge who you would like to think will want to avoid looking like they're interfering.

Burnwinter

I agree. In the absence of a super league, the players and clubs will collectively want to "protect the product"—that is the thing they sell the rights to—while advancing their private interests.

Ronay's fairly sage point is that the value, defence materiel and whatnot changing direction based on the whims of Gulf monarchs are large enough the UK government might "regulate" for reasons just as extrinsic as those driving all this investment in the sport. But the electoral significance of football makes it all pretty dicey over time ...

Coombs

Daz it would be corruption by design, which is what capital always wants.

Burnwinter

It will be a hot potato either way, there's no solution that's clearly going to satisfy all parties.

It's true Ronay overwrites as if he were HP Lovecraft. But his general point the contradiction between diplomatic, trade and football interests might snooker the "independent regulator" is something I hadn't thought about up to this point.

It seems a stronger argument against state-linked club ownership than bleating "those filthy Gulf monarchies" as if (as we've said many times before) Russian oligarchs or United States billionaires have spotless hands, or sagely deploying pejorative terms such as "petroclub".

That's because it could bring "sovereign risk" into play for the controllers of the league's capital ... the clubs considered as a corporate collective.

Speculating, but it might create some urgency for the PL to decisively settle the matter of City's quite blatant FFP dodges, these backdoor payments to Mancini probably among the most easily identified.

Can't say I expect a great outcome, but from the league's perspective, the product is everything.

Gurgen

Interesting column. I for one have no faith in a fair outcome. A fair outcome would be that foreign governments cannot own football clubs in the first place. The sport is broken beyond repair. It's so seedy and corrupt that there is no longer any point in discussing how seedy and corrupt it is.

JazzG

I think we are well beyond that now, when they let Abramovich buy Chelsea it was over then.

Burnwinter

It's not so much whether it's corrupt, it's the flavour of corruption (shiny bauble for infinitely rich foreign governments or hustle and grind peacocking zone for bored billionaires)

goon

It’s worth pointing out that the PL didn’t have to investigate and if they did it reluctantly they certainly didn’t have to slap City with 115 charges.

They’ve done this because they want to.

invisibleman18

They have to be seen to be investigating something. But City are backed by an oil nation state. There's not going to be any meaningful consequence like points deductions or titles stripped or anything like that.