Generic small time football blather thread FOREVER

[LondonBlue 773]

 

1 minute ago, NJS said:

So not as complete a takedown of the APT rules as first thought. 

 

Theyll have to include the shareholder loans for them to continue though. 

 

don't think City were ever challenging the rules in full. it was just certain aspects. but you know the press "oh its the end of the world, woe is us"

 

[LondonBlue 773]

Matt Lawton in the Times...

 

It opens the door for the English champions, majority-owned by Abu Dhabi, to strike significantly higher sponsorship agreements with associated parties than previously allowed — including with Etihad, their stadium and shirt sponsor — and to pursue compensation and costs from the Premier League for abusing its position. Other clubs could also now seek damages should they believe they have been impacted.

 

 

Martin Samuel in the Times ...   link

 

It’s a mess. Complex, perhaps incalculable. It always was. If Saudi Arabia are trying to get on the map with the Neom City project — estimated cost $1.5trillion — what is it worth to them to bring it to the world on the front of a football shirt or in a stadium naming-rights deal? And how can that investment be measured against Newcastle’s previous sponsors such as Fun88, Wonga or McEwan’s Lager? “This means more” used to be an advertising slogan around Anfield — but sponsorship does, to some companies. And fair market value was always a dubious, debatable concept, for that reason.

Edited October 7 by LondonBlue

[LondonBlue 773]

 

shareholder loans are to be judged related-party deals

 

everton have a 450m loan, arsenal 250m loan.   oops.

[Dr Gloom 21923]

29 minutes ago, LondonBlue said:

 

shareholder loans are to be judged related-party deals

 

everton have a 450m loan, arsenal 250m loan.   oops.

 

[Dazzler 9750]

31 minutes ago, LondonBlue said:

 

shareholder loans are to be judged related-party deals

 

everton have a 450m loan, arsenal 250m loan.   oops.

Arteta is taking it well:

 

Dyche is taking it worse:

[LondonBlue 773]

29 minutes ago, LondonBlue said:

Matt Lawton in the Times...

 

It opens the door for the English champions, majority-owned by Abu Dhabi, to strike significantly higher sponsorship agreements with associated parties than previously allowed — including with Etihad, their stadium and shirt sponsor — and to pursue compensation and costs from the Premier League for abusing its position. Other clubs could also now seek damages should they believe they have been impacted.

 

 

Martin Samuel in the Times ...   link

 

It’s a mess. Complex, perhaps incalculable. It always was. If Saudi Arabia are trying to get on the map with the Neom City project — estimated cost $1.5trillion — what is it worth to them to bring it to the world on the front of a football shirt or in a stadium naming-rights deal? And how can that investment be measured against Newcastle’s previous sponsors such as Fun88, Wonga or McEwan’s Lager? “This means more” used to be an advertising slogan around Anfield — but sponsorship does, to some companies. And fair market value was always a dubious, debatable concept, for that reason.

 

Martin Samuel...

 

- “The tyranny of the majority,” City argued, and everybody sneered. It’s called democracy, they chorused. Well, yes and no. First past the post is democracy too, yet the tyranny of the majority is why your vote will never count if you are a Labour voter in a safe Conservative seat, or vice versa.

 

- It’s the ruination of football, the destruction of the English game, that will be the argument. No, it’s not. City’s dominance is still scheduled to end pretty much the year Pep Guardiola walks out the door

 

- as of 2023, Brighton held shareholder loans of £302.8million. Charging interest at between eight and ten per cent would put £66-84million on their PSR calculation and will now have to be factored in going forward.

 

- Everton, for instance, have £451million in shareholder loans, equating to as much as £104million on their PSR calculation. Arsenal have £258million, working out to a potential addition of £62.5million. 

 

- it was three judges, not City, who studied it and saw through it

[LondonBlue 773]

 

bottom line.  the ruling shows that the premier league have been using underhand tactics.

[LondonBlue 773]

interest free shareholder loans it transpires, are a form of financial doping. so thats, everton, arsenal,  livarpool, brighton, bournemouth all cheating thanks to the tyranny of the majority. embarassing.

[Howmanheyman 33209]

Just caught ten minutes of that Kavel knacker on sky sports slowly explaining what happened but not actually saying anything. Stealing a living that lad. 

[Gemmill 44880]

1 hour ago, LondonBlue said:

 

shareholder loans are to be judged related-party deals

 

everton have a 450m loan, arsenal 250m loan.   oops.

 

Is this right that they're now gonna be included? Cos it's gonna cause significant bother for some teams if so. And the rule should be applied retrospectively back to the point that these initial rules were cooked up by a bunch of clubs that knew they were taking the piss. 

 

[wykikitoon 20143]

With clubs like Chelsea and Arsenal and I would even say Everton I would be shocked if they do that.  If it was Ipswich for example at the top then aye, get it applied would be shouted.  But not the long established PL teams especially two of the blue chip ones.

[Gemmill 44880]

The ruling states that the APT rules are unlawful because they exclude shareholder loans. So I don't see how the PL can just go "Aye but that's how we like them. We're keeping the interest free loans out of the rules". 

 

They've got themselves in a right fucking mess. And yet they'll still insist that they can self-regulate. 

[ewerk 30610]

I think the point about shareholder loans is that if you’re going to have APT rules then you have to include what would normally be the interest payments in PSR calculations.

 

So they’re saying that you either do that or don’t have APT rules. Which would suit us rather fucking nicely.

[ewerk 30610]

 

[RobinRobin 11270]

11 hours ago, Howmanheyman said:

 

 

🎵

Man, I feel like a City."

🎶

 

 

Edited October 8 by RobinRobin

[Howmanheyman 33209]

4 hours ago, RobinRobin said:

 

 

 

[LondonBlue 773]

15 hours ago, Gemmill said:

 

Is this right that they're now gonna be included? Cos it's gonna cause significant bother for some teams if so. And the rule should be applied retrospectively back to the point that these initial rules were cooked up by a bunch of clubs that knew they were taking the piss. 

 

 

 

who knows how they'll resolve it. it's a mess though.

 

clubs with shareholder loans will quite reasonably say we followed the rules.

 

clubs without shareholder loans will say they were disadvantaged.

 

don't see how rules can be backdated.

 

best guess is some sort of amnesty for the past and some sort of new rules.

 

open warfare amongst the 20 PL clubs at their next meet up. maybe some fisticuffs.

 

the premier league started this and only have themselves to blame.

 

 

[Tdansmith 3259]

 Martin Samuel's full article for those who can't access it. 

 

"Unlawful, unlawful, unlawful, unfair, unfair, unreasonable, unreasonable. The seven conclusions of the arbitration panel governing Manchester City’s case against the Premier League make for sobering reading. Yet, even sober, the hangover is going to last a very long time.  It is not just Associated Party Transaction (APT) rulings that must now be revisited — this decision made them obsolete and unusable overnight. The whole concept of Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) is also in the bin, now that shareholder loans, too, are to be judged related-party deals.

That is City’s big win, in many ways their payback. Their accusation was that the league and its members acted like a cartel by introducing rules specifically intended to curb the potential of a minority of clubs. They pointed out that many clubs benefited from interest-free shareholder loans. If that wasn’t a related-party transaction, they argued, what was? And because the arbitration was carried out by serious people, who listen to reason and logic, they agreed.

Imagine if every loan given to a club by one of its owners was charged, as is standard, at between 8 and 10 per cent, if it could be obtained at all? We would be looking at PSR failings across the board. And now we are. Wrapped up in legalese is a seismic verdict for football. It doesn’t mean that clubs can do what they want — there will still be financial regulations, although there are precious few right now, however the Premier League may wish to spin it. What it does mean is that these cannot be tailored to negate the growth of Newcastle United, City or any specific club.

On page seven, the panel deal with what is termed “the consultation with clubs which led to the adoption of the APT rules in December 2021” and hears from Jamie Herbert, the Premier League’s director of governance. “Mr Herbert gave evidence that the PL had been considering the need for amendments to the PSR over a period of years. This evidence was challenged by MCFC [Manchester City]. However, it is agreed that there was no evidence of any formal initiative before the Autumn of 2021 to amend the PSRs in the manner in which they were amended in December 2021. In other words, they cooked it up based on what most clubs wanted. There were no commissioned studies, no in-depth research of a type that would suggest change was always on the cards. Herbert talked of discussions about rule changes dating back to 2018. Maybe there were. But clubs talk all the time.

The fact is, these talks suddenly escalated and only became formalised when Newcastle were bought by the Public Investment Fund (PIF) of Saudi Arabia and it was feared they could receive huge investment, becoming more competitive. City argued from their own perspective but the desire to limit competition, the anxiety caused by Newcastle’s takeover, was very much at the heart of this.

“The tyranny of the majority,” City argued, and everybody sneered. It’s called democracy, they chorused. Well, yes and no. First past the post is democracy too, yet the tyranny of the majority is why your vote will never count if you are a Labour voter in a safe Conservative seat, or vice versa. That’s what John Stuart Mill wrote about in On Liberty. The pursuit of majority interest at the expense of a minority faction. So when the PIF bought Newcastle in October 2021 and almost instantly the Premier League began adjusting its rulebook — an email on the subject to the league from a club official specifically mentioned “the Gulf region” and was dated October 12, five days after the takeover — that’s the tyranny of the majority in action. AKA: a carve-up.

And we later read that the panel believed this official when, as a witness, he or she insisted Gulf-owned clubs were not the target. They believed the assertion that this intervention could just as easily have been discussing an “American consortium who had links to lots of American companies”. Except there are already quite a few American consortiums with links to lots of American companies in the Premier League, and the email didn’t mention them. It referenced the Gulf. “The takeover of Newcastle United heightened . . . concerns again and encouraged the clubs to seek action,” the witness admitted. Even so, the same email would have been sent had the worry related to Americans. It’s just that it wasn’t. It was sent five days after a Saudi takeover.

It’s the ruination of football, the destruction of the English game, that will be the argument. No, it’s not. City’s dominance is still scheduled to end pretty much the year Pep Guardiola walks out the door. Once the rules are redrafted, as they surely will be, City won’t be able to just claim what they like in sponsorship revenue. No club will. There will still be fair market value standards that have to be met, unless the system is entirely abandoned, which seems unlikely.

Yet the big change comes because the arbitration panel found that while APT regulations would be legal if applied in a non-discriminatory manner, Premier League rules excluded from the fair market value process some forms of financing by parties connected to a club. It means that in the future, the Premier League would have to regulate all forms of financing provided by shareholders and related parties, including sponsorship deals and loans, but also softer arrangements such as guarantees or equity investments. The calculation would be on the same terms available from a third party unconnected to the club and could even assess whether a club with a poor credit rating — one imagines Everton’s isn’t so hot right now — would be able to find a lender at all.

Equally, who doesn’t love Brighton & Hove Albion? Everyone’s second favourite club. Personal opinion: the best-run in the country. Yet, as of 2023, Brighton held shareholder loans of £302.8million. Charging interest at between eight and ten per cent would put £66-84million on their PSR calculation and will now have to be factored in going forward.

Brighton are a well-run club yet, as of 2023, had more than £300m in shareholder loans

The clue is in the delay. This was a verdict delivered 14 days ago, one that City have been happy to publish since it arrived. The hold up has been at the Premier League’s end. Now they are trying to spin it out further. Clarifications, consultations, all the things a governing body does if it wants to fashion a tight rule book which, as Leicester City found much to their delight, isn’t the Premier League’s style at all. Why? There is another case ongoing involving Manchester City and 115 charges. So the APT decision likely impacts proceedings elsewhere. If the League can bog this down in legal process, they hope it won’t weaken their case against City yet further. The Premier League, its rulebook and executives are facing a firing squad but are now asking to inspect the guns to ensure they fit professional standards. What a shower they are.

It is not so much a can of worms as one of those tins of exploding snakes. If shareholder loans should have been part of the PSR equation all along, Everton and Nottingham Forest may wonder how they, alone, suffered points deductions. The Premier League can’t even simply revert to a time before the APT update, because now calculations around shareholder loans are unavoidable. So there is no simple reset button, no back-to-factory-mode setting. The parameters around PSR will have to be rewritten, if the system is not to be scrapped.

The drawing board does not have a mark on it. Everton, for instance, have £451million in shareholder loans, equating to as much as £104million on their PSR calculation. Arsenal have £258million, working out to a potential addition of £62.5million. At best it collapses the market around English football, at worst it puts some of the league in breach, or with vanishingly small sums to invest in player acquisition. There would be more asterisks attached to the league table than there are presently flying around boardrooms, as owners begin to study the 175-page adjudication and consider its implications. Although not all of them. The idea City are out on a limb is inaccurate too. The club believe they have the support of at least six others in their actions — Everton, Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa, Chelsea, Leicester City and Newcastle. Others may be recruited if the Premier League attempts to keep the rules as they are with the odd tweak and adjustment.

Who will vote for a flawed system that might now impinge, and quite brutally, on finances? Adjust any PSR calculation by tens of millions and see how much is left for investment. And if the rules are unlawful, as stated, how far do we now rewind on PSR calculations involving shareholder loans? How many years must be recalculated? Will there be an amnesty? And what about going forward? At what rate is interest now calculated to alight on fair market value? Would Forest receive the same rate on their £23.4million as Everton would on £451million — if Everton could get such a deal at all?

It’s a mess. Complex, perhaps incalculable. It always was. If Saudi Arabia are trying to get on the map with the Neom City project — estimated cost $1.5trillion — what is it worth to them to bring it to the world on the front of a football shirt or in a stadium naming-rights deal? And how can that investment be measured against Newcastle’s previous sponsors such as Fun88, Wonga or McEwan’s Lager? “This means more” used to be an advertising slogan around Anfield — but sponsorship does, to some companies. And fair market value was always a dubious, debatable concept, for that reason.

Just as profitability and sustainability has always been a counterintuitive aim. Ever since it started, football — indeed all business — has worked on the basis of how much money can be attracted to enhance the chance of glory. It is why there is a National Lottery to fund British Olympic objectives; why Hampshire County Cricket Club have been sold to the owner of the IPL franchise Delhi Capitals.

City’s owners are not the first to throw money at a project and, it is to be hoped, they won’t be the last. Yet PSR behaves as if investment is bad, as if that drive to squeeze every last drop to achieve is actually the problem. Every financial constraint further cements an established elite — and even that wasn’t enough. So new rules were drafted to ward off, and warn off, interlopers.

Yet it was an overplayed hand. It was unlawful, it was unfair, it was unreasonable. And it was three judges, not City, who studied it and saw through it too."

[PaddockLad 17261]

Lots saying Samuel is getting paid by Man City…. Mostly Liverpool, Arsenal and Man Utd fans obvs 😆

 

The debt to owners thing has been explained away by these types too, apparently it’s irrelevant as it will all be converted to equity. Where that leaves anyone with a giant stake in Everton am not sure  

 

The judgement is nuanced and not the massive victory that Man City are claiming, and Masters (of the universe presumably?) and his gang are currently no doubt “seeking views from stakeholders” on the next fix they’ll have a vote on at some point in the near future. Don’t expect much to change. APT is apparently still subject to fair market value  🤷🏻‍♂️

 

 

Edited October 8 by PaddockLad

[wykikitoon 20143]

Can you put the paragraphs in, my eyes are hurting!  I.e spaces between.

[wykikitoon 20143]

Quote

 

Equally, who doesn’t love Brighton & Hove Albion? Everyone’s second favourite club. Personal opinion: the best-run in the country. Yet, as of 2023, Brighton held shareholder loans of £302.8million. Charging interest at between eight and ten per cent would put £66-84million on their PSR calculation and will now have to be factored in going forward.

Brighton are a well-run club yet, as of 2023, had more than £300m in shareholder loans

 

Well Martin, I don't love them  and now knowing they have them loans are you still thinking they're the best run club in the country?

Why do they need these loans with the players they're selling?

[wykikitoon 20143]

Quote

It’s a mess. Complex, perhaps incalculable. It always was. If Saudi Arabia are trying to get on the map with the Neom City project — estimated cost $1.5trillion — what is it worth to them to bring it to the world on the front of a football shirt or in a stadium naming-rights deal? And how can that investment be measured against Newcastle’s previous sponsors such as Fun88, Wonga or McEwan’s Lager? “This means more” used to be an advertising slogan around Anfield — but sponsorship does, to some companies. And fair market value was always a dubious, debatable concept, for that reason.

 

[Tdansmith 3259]

23 minutes ago, wykikitoon said:

Can you put the paragraphs in, my eyes are hurting!  I.e spaces between.

No, can't be arsed. 

[wykikitoon 20143]

12 minutes ago, Tdansmith said:

No, can't be arsed. 

[Dazzler 9750]

Sky putting out stories that Tuchel hasn't been approached for the Man Utd job that hasn't been vacated.. to think Dan Ashworth breached his contract to go there, the fucking thick cunt