EPL 2018-19

[maninblack 7,974]

If Salah took PKs it wouldn't. See I can make up pointless things too

[IPoopOnWhoop 104]

3 hours ago, Firemans4Horn said:

This is wild

 

That guy needs his ass kicked.  I hate how it is just accepted that people are going to act like that to athletes and officials.

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

15 hours ago, IPoopOnWhoop said:

That guy needs his ass kicked.  I hate how it is just accepted that people are going to act like that to athletes and officials.

He's not wrong though.

[midtown 3,346]

15 hours ago, IPoopOnWhoop said:

 I hate how it is just accepted that people are going to act like that to athletes and officials.

It's just as accepted that athletes can act like giant baby assholes too.  Plenty of finger pointing to go around.

[JNip 132]

The reason why I support this team. 

 

[Jograves 357]

You're a frontrunner. That's why you 'support' that team. 

[mdmost 43,004]

He gets in fist fights with his family just like you!

[Captain Ron 12,883]

4 minutes ago, mdmost said:

He gets in fist fights with his family just like you!

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

I heard the guys from Coldplay were in the United dressing room on Sunday.

[sidis 9,828]

freaking toffees man...

you're welcome, everyone.

against top 6 in the spring, 2-2 draw against spurs, 4-0 thrashing of united, 1-0 win against arsenal, 2-0 win against chelsea, 0-0 critical draw against liverpool (city needs to send us some terrorist/chinese state money), lose 0-2 to city.

meanwhile, get our asses beat by shitty southampton and millwall.

whatevs.

[MoJames 8,244]

Here's this.

UEFA Investigators Set to Seek Manchester City’s Ban From Champions League

An investigation into accusations that Premier League champion Manchester City misled European soccer’s financial regulators in pursuit of its success on the field is expected to recommend that the team be barred from the Champions League, European soccer’s richest competition and the trophy the club covets most.

English soccer authorities and officials at UEFA, European soccer’s governing body and the organizer of the Champions League, have for months been investigating Manchester City amid allegations of rule-breaking revealed in damaging leaks over much of the past year. Members of the investigatory chamber of UEFA’s financial control board, a group set up to analyze the accounts of clubs suspected of breaking strict cost-control regulations, met two weeks ago in Nyon, Switzerland, to finalize their conclusions.

The investigatory panel’s leader, the former prime minister of Belgium Yves Leterme, will have the final say on the submission to a separate adjudicatory chamber, which could be filed as soon as this week. The body is expected to seek at least a one-season ban.

Even the suggestion of a ban would be a stinging rebuke for Manchester City and its Gulf owners, who celebrated a fourth Premier League title in eight seasons on Sunday. They long have sought to add the Champions League — club soccer’s top prize — to the club’s growing haul of domestic trophies, and any effort to bar the team is likely to spark a monumental legal fight.

Manchester City’s current squad, assembled and financed at the cost of more than $1 billion, is just the latest example of the financial might the club’s owner, Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, can bring to bear. Sheik Mansour has invested billions over the past two decades — on players, coaches, facilities and the team’s operations — to transform Manchester City, which played in England’s second tier as recently as 2002, into one of soccer’s biggest and most successful brands.

It remains unclear if any Champions League ban, if levied, would be enforced next season or in the 2020-21 campaign. Qualification games for next season’s tournament begin in June, meaning UEFA faces a race against time to finalize a sanction that City would have the right to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Manchester City has vigorously denied wrongdoing, and its officials have warned UEFA that they would mount an aggressive response to any effort to bar the club from the competition. “The accusation of financial irregularities are entirely false,” City said in a statement earlier this year. “The club’s published accounts are full and complete and a matter of legal and regulatory record.”

If UEFA is unable to establish a case and enforce a punishment, it risks seeing its system of financial rules — in place since 2011, and designed to impose a measure of financial fairness within the European soccer economy — rendered meaningless. Several officials on the financial control bodies also have said privately that their reputations could be harmed if their work is seen to be toothless.

Many of the allegations of financial impropriety and rule-breaking lodged against Manchester City came to light after they were reported by news media outlets with access to the so-called Football Leaks files. The files are said to include emails and internal club documents showing efforts by City to circumvent UEFA’s financial fair-play regulations by masking cash infusions from a United Arab Emirates state-backed investment company through inflated sponsorship agreements with entities including the U.A.E.’s national airline, Etihad. Eithad is City’s principal sponsor, its name adorning the team’s stadium, its signage during matches and even the front of the players’ jerseys.

City has not labeled false any of the information reported to date. Instead, it has dismissed the reports as “an organized and clear attempt” to smear the club’s reputation through the publication of documents that it says were obtained illegally. The European authorities in January unmasked a Portuguese citizen as the hacker behind Football Leaks, a clandestine operation that revealed some of the soccer industry’s most closely held secrets.

UEFA’s financial rules, first implemented in 2011, were designed to prevent clubs from risking their financial futures by overspending on talent. At the time, dozens of teams were tens of millions of dollars in debt, in part because of a rapid rise in the cost of top players fueled by lavish spending by a handful of superwealthy owners.

The rules permit sponsorships from companies linked to a club’s owners as they try to balance their accounts, provided the agreements are struck at prices that reflect the market rate.

Etihad signed up as principal sponsor of Manchester City a year after Sheikh Mansur’s takeover, branding the club’s jersey, its stadium and an affiliated campus City has built. But an internal email published by German news weekly Der Spiegel last year suggested that the airline financed only 8 million pounds ($10.4 million) of the 59.5 million pound ($77.8 million) agreement, with the rest coming from ADUG, the investment vehicle Mansour used to buy City. The Speigel reports also outlined a number of other arrangements that allowed the club to evade UEFA’s financial regulations.

According to the people with knowledge of the investigation, City’s punishment most likely will be linked to an accusation that it provided misleading statements in resolving an earlier case, as well as false statements to licensing authorities in England, and not over the true value of the sponsorship agreements. That made the case a curious fit for the financial control officials, who were assigned the case instead of UEFA’s main disciplinary body.

In 2014, City agreed to a settlement agreement with UEFA related to an earlier breach of the spending rules; as punishment, it agreed to pay a conditional 49 million pound fine (about $63.4 million) and to accept restrictions on incoming transfers.

As part of their current inquiry, the UEFA investigators, an independent group of governance and finance specialists led by Leterme, met with City officials in April in Switzerland. The investigators were unconvinced by the club’s explanations, according to a person with knowledge of those discussions.

Their decision to press forward in seeking punishment against Manchester City could have serious implications for UEFA, which essentially would be accusing a team backed by the U.A.E.’s royal family of cheating and lying to a range of stakeholders, including the Premier League, as it built itself into a champion.

The outcome of the case will be monitored closely amid mounting concern over the credibility of UEFA’s financial fair play regulations when it comes to sanctioning the biggest clubs. Paris St.-Germain, the French club that also is owned by Gulf royalty, in its case the ruling family of Qatar, managed to avoid a major punishment recently when it faced similar questions about its sponsorship agreements, and its ability to comply with the financial control mechanisms, when it bought the world’s two most-expensive players — the forwards Neymar and Kylian Mbappé — in a single summer transfer window.

P.S.G. and UEFA have a tangled relationship. The team’s owners also run beIN Sports, the broadcaster that is UEFA’s biggest media rights buyer. Both the club and beIN Sports are run by Nasser al-Khelaifi, a Qatari national who was elected to a position on UEFA’s executive board earlier this year.

 

First comment from a Liverpool fan - "And a 2 point league deduction."

[Jograves 357]

Keep this thread alive so we can come back in a couple of years and celebrate our title. 

[Huckleberry 32,878]

Banned from the Champions League? What difference will that make at this point?

It would just mean still no Champions League title and a three-peat domestically as the City roster gets extra rest.

[Jograves 357]

You're being investigated by the English FA too. I'm sure they'll just grease some palms but you'll probably get some weak ass transfer ban. 

[Huckleberry 32,878]

lulz

The FA won't do shit. All these "unfair" things that are being done are exactly why the EPL is now clearly the best league in the world and swimming in money like Scrooge McFuckingDuck.

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

28 minutes ago, Jograves said:

Keep this thread alive so we can come back in a couple of years and celebrate our title. 

I'm celebrating now. Fuck it.

[Firemans4Horn 18,052]

In 2014, City agreed to a settlement agreement with UEFA related to an earlier breach of the spending rules; as punishment, it agreed to pay a conditional 49 million pound fine (about $63.4 million) and to accept restrictions on incoming transfers.

 

Really slowed them down. 

[Huckleberry 32,878]

Surly soccer followers on the Football board: "Why don't we actually spend the money we claim to have? Why won't the boosters give some money to improve facilities?"

Surly soccer followers on the Basketball board: "Why won't our boosters give money to buy out Shaka Smart? Why don't we have better basketball facilities?"

Surly soccer followers on the Other Sports board: "CITY IS SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY ON THEIR FACILITIES, YOUTH SYSTEM, AND CLUB IN AN EFFORT TO WIN AND GET BETTER, IT'S NOT FAIR!"

[Jograves 357]

Yep. American college athletics are exactly the same. Spot on. 

[Firemans4Horn 18,052]

Surly posters (and FIFA, the FA, UEFA): 

 

psg and man city are owned by state owned corporations form shady parts of the world and sponsored by state owned companies. They’re also spending ridiculous sums of money. Is it possible they are cooking the books to get around FFP?

[Jograves 357]

Brighton fired Chris Hughton. 

[Schulz2.0 28,957]

29 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

Surly soccer followers on the Football board: "Why don't we actually spend the money we claim to have? Why won't the boosters give some money to improve facilities?"

Surly soccer followers on the Basketball board: "Why won't our boosters give money to buy out Shaka Smart? Why don't we have better basketball facilities?"

Surly soccer followers on the Other Sports board: "CITY IS SPENDING TOO MUCH MONEY ON THEIR FACILITIES, YOUTH SYSTEM, AND CLUB IN AN EFFORT TO WIN AND GET BETTER, IT'S NOT FAIR!"

Read the Der Spiegel articles. Man City has pretty clearly committed fraud in order to subvert FFP regulations. This is like Ole Miss getting pissy about their NCAA sanctions. 

[Huckleberry 32,878]

I'm not pissy. City deserves punishment.

I'm just mocking the fans of the most consistently high-spending club in England whining about another team spending money. The fair play rules are garbage anyway. If a team spends themselves into ruin then that's their punishment right there. All the current regulations do is artificially depress player wages and prevent aggressive investment.

[Firemans4Horn 18,052]

12 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

I'm not pissy. City deserves punishment.

I'm just mocking the fans of the most consistently high-spending club in England whining about another team spending money. The fair play rules are garbage anyway. If a team spends themselves into ruin then that's their punishment right there. All the current regulations do is artificially depress player wages and prevent aggressive investment.

Like a salary cap or luxury tax?

 

if documents came out that the Yankees were paying players under the table to get around the luxury tax all hell would break loose. I don’t know how that can be considered wrong and city fraudulently bypassing FFP is considered good business?

Edited May 13, 2019 by Firemans4Horn

[Huckleberry 32,878]

Are you having trouble reading? I said City deserves punishment under the current rules.

The rules, however, are stupid. Just like the luxury tax in baseball is stupid without a salary floor (aside from the mathematical floor of league minimum times roster size). And just like salary caps are stupid.

[Firemans4Horn 18,052]

Sorry, my mind was still trying to comprehend your terrible college sports analogies further up the page. 

Edited May 13, 2019 by Firemans4Horn

[MoJames 8,244]

Just now, Firemans4Horn said:

Sorry, my mind was still trying to comprehend you terrible college sports analogies further up the page. 

your*

[Schulz2.0 28,957]

6 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

I'm not pissy. City deserves punishment.

I'm just mocking the fans of the most consistently high-spending club in England whining about another team spending money. The fair play rules are garbage anyway. If a team spends themselves into ruin then that's their punishment right there. All the current regulations do is artificially depress player wages and prevent aggressive investment.

The only team you can make an argument has spent anywhere near close to City (in the EPL) has been United. Everyone is a decent way back.

Transfer spend 6/14 to 4/18

2018 window:

So, over the last 5 years City still spent £300m in transfers than Liverpool. I’d argue that you’d probably have different views if you weren’t a City fan.

[Huckleberry 32,878]

I said consistently high-spending. This goes back to the graphic that went out a couple of months ago. For nearly 30 years now Liverpool has been the only English club always in the Top 10 of Europe in spending money on players (cumulatively since the PL started). They slipped out last season for half a year. Right back in.

You are correct that other teams have shown up, spent a shitload, and actually won. That's actually the entire point. Liverpool has managed to spend and spend without winning the domestic title.

Edited May 13, 2019 by Huckleberry

[MoJames 8,244]

3 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

The only team you can make an argument has spent anywhere near close to City (in the EPL) has been United. Everyone is a decent way back.

[Jograves 357]

7 minutes ago, Huckleberry said:

I said consistently high-spending. This goes back to the graphic that went out a couple of months ago. For nearly 30 years now Liverpool has been the only English club always in the Top 10 of Europe in spending money on players (cumulatively since the PL started). They slipped out last season for half a year. Right back in.

You are correct that other teams have shown up, spent a shitload, and actually won. That's actually the entire point. Liverpool has managed to spend and spend without winning the domestic title.

So City at 1.3b and LFC at 600m puts them in the same category?

[MoJames 8,244]

4 minutes ago, Jograves said:

So City at 1.3b and LFC at 600m puts them in the same category?

Yes, the category - amount of money spent by EPL teams that I will never see.

[JNip 132]

5 hours ago, Jograves said:

You're a frontrunner. That's why you 'support' that team. 

Lol. I've been supporting them since they were in 2nd division back when Oasis came up with Be Here Now. I am not really the biggest fan but I just have to support someone when I watch the EPL. It's kinda boring when you have no one to cheer for. 

There's a reason why Claudio Reyna is my favorite American soccer player ever. 

Frontrunner lol

p.s. I liked Liverpool for a little while (back when City still sucked), but mostly because I used to hang out with one of the Hicks sons and we would go to Fado's on Saturdays and get hammered on Tom Hick's dime. 

Edited May 13, 2019 by JNip

[JNip 132]

1 hour ago, Jograves said:

Yep. American college athletics are exactly the same. Spot on. 

Talking about that, have you noticed how much nicer college football locker rooms are than professional soccer locker rooms? Blows my mind. I guess that they don't have to worry about recruiting. 

[Firemans4Horn 18,052]

16 minutes ago, JNip said:

Talking about that, have you noticed how much nicer college football locker rooms are than professional soccer locker rooms? Blows my mind. I guess that they don't have to worry about recruiting. 

 

I went into the home locker room at Boca Juniors, I imagine there are prison showers that are nicer. It was moldy and there was standing water on the floor. 

[Jograves 357]

22 minutes ago, JNip said:

p.s. I liked Liverpool for a little while (back when City still sucked), but mostly because I used to hang out with one of the Hicks sons and we would go to Fado's on Saturdays and get hammered on Tom Hick's dime. 

Jesus H. Christ, you are evil incarnate, aren't you. 

[MoJames 8,244]

3 minutes ago, Jograves said:

Jesus H. Christ, you are evil incarnate, aren't you. 

I wonder if these two are Real Madrid fans.

[Bone3421 716]

Trying to compare Liverpool and city is regarded...yes liverpool spends but they use $$$ they get from sales from other players and revenue from being one of the top clubs worldwide in support

City uses a bottomless scrooge mcduck vault...will they get banned probably not.
Would i take a belated league title hell yes i would lol

Coutinho fee paid for VVD and maybe Becker to if clauses get enacted

[Jograves 357]

Spending isn't the issue for me. You have to spend to win the league. 

But, there shouldn't be one rule for 19 clubs while 1 club creates their own. 

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

1 hour ago, JNip said:

Talking about that, have you noticed how much nicer college football locker rooms are than professional soccer locker rooms? Blows my mind. I guess that they don't have to worry about recruiting. 

Did the tour of Anfield last year and it was pretty damn nice.

[MoJames 8,244]

2 minutes ago, Cheeseweasel said:

Did the tour of Anfield last year and it was pretty damn nice.

Did you slip at all?

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

4 minutes ago, MoJames said:

Did you slip at all?

In the pub. 

[TexArcher 37,805]

On 5/12/2019 at 11:07 AM, IPoopOnWhoop said:

I never said you have never won a league.  I merely stated that you guys have never won the league you play in at the moment. 

This is really, truly, remarkably stupid smack.

[MoJames 8,244]

1 hour ago, Cheeseweasel said:

In the pub. 

Lol just realized this might be construed as a rub on Gerrard. I was reading an article about how Liverpool would polish the visiting team lockers very well so that it was difficult to walk. Apologize for the potential of this being considered a joke from years ago.

[pied 252]

wasn't directed at me, but as a Liverpool fan, slip jokes from a Chelsea fan seem to be fair game imo.  

 

I toured Anfield prior/during the Main Stand renovation and while an unbelievable experience, the tunnel area was pretty spartan.  The locker room was closed because it was game day, but the pictures don't compare with what we see in most colleges.

Edited May 13, 2019 by pied

[Bone3421 716]

Lol just realized this might be construed as a rub on Gerrard. I was reading an article about how Liverpool would polish the visiting team lockers very well so that it was difficult to walk. Apologize for the potential of this being considered a joke from years ago.

I saw it earlier...and was like "whatever mo, dumbass" lol

[MoJames 8,244]

Guardian's Best of 2018/19 Photos

[MoJames 8,244]

 

[Longhornfan1024 1,707]

49 minutes ago, MoJames said:

 

Uh . . . what?

[Cheeseweasel 26,438]

I guess there's been a lot of "put our guy in the wall and make him duck" plays in the playbook. Seems reasonable.