I know that they got the buying price reduced by a decent chunk to allow for fines (40 or 50 million IIRC) and self reported some of they dodgyness they found in the due diligence to UEFA (leading to a £8.7 mil fine from UEFA).
Chelsea face new questions over how Roman Abramovich funded success
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I mean, just this season Chelsea and Man United have been fined for FFP issues. Things do happen but rarely anything other than a fine.
I'm shocked.
Cynic in me says this will be used to set a weaker precedent for all that follow. A big fine but no real sanctions so they can point to it whenever they 'punish' the other plastic clubs.
Cynic in me says this will be used to set a weaker precedent for all that follow. A big fine but no real sanctions so they can point to it whenever they 'punish' the other plastic clubs.
Exactly. With all the money in football these days a fine is not even a slap on the wrist. My post was more about point deductions and relegations or stripping of titles. It’s never going to happen. Our footballing authorities haven’t got the stomach for the fight because they have too much invested in cosying up to these clubs and their dodgy but very wealthy owners.
“Not on our watch” is a fine argument if the issue is personal responsibility but a ridiculous one if the issue is league sanctions. A club is bigger than the owners and these things are supposed to be about punishing clubs not punishing individuals.
Well yes, the club has already been fined a ton this season and we'll probably get further punishment.
Do you think the punishment should be harsher if Roman (and all the people directly involved) were still there? I personally do.
It somewhat makes sense why Boehly and company were in such a hurry to remove everyone associated with the club so quickly. They knew there was some serious dodgy shit and they were trying to protect their investment.
I’m honestly not sure on this question.
I see your point but the benefit to the club in the past via rule breaking is the same. And if you apply the rules differently, you create a situation that incentivized owners to break rules if they believe they’ll sell before the law catches up, which in these cases is often a decade.
How can this help? I dont see many people claiming Barcas legal woes are mitigated because those from 20 years ago are no longer at the club.
Individuals won’t be sanctioned, entities will be
Also, do you take into account the "self reporting" aspect? UEFA did feck all until 2022 Chelsea snitched on 2004 Chelsea. I think you have to, otherwise there's no incentive for anyone to do it.
It's complicated.
That’s a reasonable argument for greater leniency. What it all adds up to in terms of an appropriate sanction I don’t know. Generally speaking, I think fines are a joke in these matters as the money is tiny and the whole point is that clubs are happy to spend a bit more for competitive advantage.
Wasn't it phrased, that he wanted to give the money to the "victims of the war" so people were wondering, if he didn't want to give it to Russians?
Strip them of all titles won under the Abramovich ownership and relegate them to the bottom tier of English football.
Shocked. Can't believe any PL clubs would do something like this. Least ones funded by sugar daddies.
Pretendstobeshocked.gif
Admittedly not exactly the best example given they probably wouldn't have wanted to compete, but Juventus were excluded from European football this season as well as being fined for FFP breaches, so there's a precedent for it now. Edit: Plus AC Milan a few years back.
How Chelsea and City get away with it I'll never quite understand.
Well well well..
Both are the most responsible for the PL basically becoming soulless, and eating itself. If neither of these clubs were around you can guarantee the league would be a much healthier place.
Why wouldn’t Chelsea and their fans expect to get away with it? For decades now they’ve been told their owner was a disgusting human being and it would all come crashing down because of it, they laughed it off and took the success and ended up with literal zero repercussions because of it.
Just given 2b that somehow didn’t cripple them with ffp since it was a gift and had the government set so many rules and oversee a takeover that no other club has.
They’ll probably get a points boost due to this
Would it not? It definitely couldn't be worse.
I don't think it would be worse, but thinking that the league would be much better without City/Chelsea, would only be said on a United/Arsenal/Liverpool forum.
Even if those clubs were dominating still at least it wouldn't be via blatant rule-breaking. You can accept being beaten by a team who have earned their money. I respect Arsenal and Liverpool. I don't respect Chelsea or City.
That's an interesting one. Chelsea had us forged in the fire of their cheating and made us the strongest team in the world to compete with them. Liverpool went to quad-level Saijin mode to compete with the cheating entity known as City. I doubt either thing occurs without having to meet an artificial bar.
Some here on the site would also argue that the footballing plutocracy needs to be broken at all costs otherwise the status quo cannot be challenged.
I'm playing Devil's Advocate here.
Cheating is cheating, however. And all parties who have had prizes robbed from them because of it should be recompensed. Just an absolute shit show that the league has been corrupted for nigh on 2 decades now.
We hate Putin, we love only our middle eastern overlords. All 115 of them.
I remember going nuts when Drogba scored that penalty in 2012 but the news that we may have made a dodgy payment to Samuel Eto'os agent has just ruined it totally for me.
That’s massively incorrect to be fair. Tottenham, Everton, Villa fans have all been outspoken in their dislike for those clubs because they essentially cheated their way to spots those clubs may have taken. Which is a very valid argument. They also took numerous players from those clubs. Stones, Barkley, Walker, Grealish, Chukwemeka etc etc.
I know you take a dislike to when city and Chelsea and clubs of that ilk get questioned and criticised on their success and how it came about on this forum but it’s an absolute nonsense to suggest only three clubs have been effected by it.
No it wouldn't. Tons of football fans around the world know how much these clubs hurt global football.
You're a Manchester United fan.
The few fans I know who support West Ham/Brighton don't give a feck whether it's "earned" or "unearned" money.
Tottenham finished 3rd in a 2 man race against Leicester, Everton has been flirting with relegation for years and Villa have been relegated so it's hard to buy those arguments. I think the teams who can feel most hard done by Chelsea and City are Arsenal and Liverpool. Not nearly rans who were nearly rans before 2003 and continue to be nearly rans.
I'm sorry, were those clubs not poached for talent before Chelsea and City came along?
It's not about Chelsea and City being picked on for me, feck em, they're part of the cartel now. The sooner we can stop pretending football was this egalitarian landscape before 2003 the better for discussion purposes. Maybe other club fans are aggrieved by Chelsea and City "jumping the queue". I'm not ruling that out. I'm saying the vast discontent with Chelsea and City has come from the top of the pyramid. And not for altruistic reasons, or love of the game. We won 8 out of 11 PL titles in a certain timeframe, was the sport ruined?
The fans I know who support other clubs also massively dislike/ignore City. I've seen shitloads of people talking about the charges and it's not just Utd fans/other big clubs.
That Leicester/Tottenham/Arsenal race was also one of the most organic and fun in recent memory as well. Winning a certain amount of titles in a row doesn't mean the sport is ruined, it's how that club wins those titles. You can admire a club that has built itself from a difficult situation and become successful with hard-work and strategy and well spent funds (that have been acquired legitimately) It's like watching races but one bloke is on roids and just blasting past everyone else. It loses any sense of competitiveness and edge.
Winning whilst playing within the agreed upon rules maintains the integrity of the competition. If Chelsea/City or whoever else wish to cheat, they should do so, but be expelled. You seem to sweep the fact that it is systematic cheating, against these agreed upon rules, that has gotten both clubs to where they are. I don't think I've ever seen you acknowledge the fact these clubs signed up to play to these rules.
About football being fair, you're absolutely right, it wasn't and it isn't, but so long as you've signed up to play under association rules, you must abide by them. If you don't wish to, try and form a breakaway league, or take the association to court and challenge them outright. You don't just get to cheat.
And I'm not buying that you don't comprehend the vastness of the ripple effects from the cheating and what it has done to the game, not only in the PL, but across Europe as well.
The problem is, everyone has their head in the trough now and wants their piece of the pie. Corruption is a fabric of the sport in England in a way it couldn't be before Roman and then City went on their merry way. You have states threatening to pull out of trade deals with the government now and 'clubs' interwoven into cities with unprecedented levels of 'investment' to grease so many palms as to be untouchable. This is not normal, and I would love for you to explain how it's acceptable.
1. I'm on record saying that if City/Chelsea are proven guilty at whatever panels that the authorities should throw the book at them. That hasn't changed. They signed up to the rules and stipulations.
2. I also believe the rules are cartel like and unfair. The rules don't foster success based on sporting merit and competence. So I'm in this binary place where if City get sent down to the Isthmian league I won't shed a tear, but at the same time I don't have to pretend like the rules are this golden standard I have to respect. They're shit and stupid, and I don't care when they're broken, they should be broken by every team in the league. They need to be binned.
3. I think the only ripple effect is the acceleration of inflation in the game (more money chasing limited amount of talented players). But that's a subset of more money in the game from TV, sponsorships, and so on. This doesn't actually harm the vast majority of clubs who get more money for their talent. This only harms the blue bloods who didn't have to spend as much to get the top players in their league. Now they can't without spending more.
4. I don't think governments involved in sport is normal. Neither are clubs being owned by oligarchs, or clubs experiencing leveraged buyouts like us or Burnley. In fact, I'd love for every club to be owned by it's fans. But that's a pipe dream right? So short of that utopia, I'm for money in the game from whoever. If you're worried about clubs going under once their benefactors leave, force money into escrow. If you're worried about undue influence from governments, ban links to governments. Introduce the independent observer. Or better yet, introduce measures to make governing bodies' decision making fully independent of their governments. Make the game fair or shut up (not you, just in general). No half measures
Hmm, you may wanna check out how many times Villa, Everton and Spurs missed out on either CL football or a Cup Final victory at the expense of City and Chelsea. How you see it is irrelevant to the point anyway. Point is those clubs have grievances and that’s a fact.
To be honest I never actually know what your end game in any of this is.
You’ve said in your last post you don’t like cheating, you think the rules are shit and you think chelsea city should be punished and wouldn’t care. And I’ve seen you say that before to be fair.
Yet, bizarrely you quite regularly respond to posts extensively criticising City and Chelsea’s cheating and it’s effect on the Pl and football with criticism and sarcastic comments.
Even the post you initially Quoted with a laughing emoji by @Solius . What was said in that post that differs from the content of your last post?. You’ve said you think chelsea and city should suffer if found guilty (anyone with a brain cell at this point knows those two have been cheating for years) It’s also patently obvious their cheating has had a knock on effect and has brought the game into constant disrepute. He didn’t say everything is chelsea and citys fault. He said they are two of the most responsible, and that again cannot be argued. They are the biggest and most prominent cheaters in Pl history. So again, why respond with hostility ? Like what is your end game ?? What point are you trying to prove?
Adex likes to be contrarian for the sake of it.
Not ‘The Cartel’ again 
Hollow. As we said.
The argument that only Utd, Arse and Pool are affected by City and Chelsea jumping the queue kinda falls flat on its face when you take into consideration the fact that Liverpool finished 7th or 8th quite often in those late Benitez, Woy, Queen Kenny and Brentan years, and us finishing 2nd twice in the last decade while missing out on CL half the time. Clubs like Everton or Villa flirted with relegation or got outright relegated precisely because in the years when they were good and could’ve kicked on with consistent European football, they got cockblocked by clubs who won the lottery, prudent financial management and careful squad building means diddly squat when it’s just a pissing contest between oligarchs and nation states at the top. If anything, the resentment against Fergie’s Utd and his superhuman feats post 04 have masked a lot of the deleterious effects of these teams, people would go ‘how bad can it be when Utd are still winning?’ and conveniently ignore everything else.
His post was funny! That's why I laughed. @Solius is cool peoples
He said if City and Chelsea didn't exist football would be much better. And it's just like, come on.
Do any of us have an end game in this? We're all chatting shit on a football forum. Nothing we say will impact anything in the real world. I've even toned down my posts on this matter because I don't make it 100m before being accused of trolling or being contrarian.
Your end game may be wanting City/Chelsea expelled and their trophies revoked. My end game is a fair game where trophies go to the best run clubs, not the ones with oligarch backers or billions of fans who follow them because of success 30 years ago.