The Manchester City verdict and England run world champions close – Football Weekly

0:00John Brewin:This is The Guardian.

0:30this mean for the last 15 years of city domination did it not happen and will it be quicker to ask who isn't going to sue them now for lost trophies lost earnings lost moments etc there's some actual football england gives spain a good game in the nation's league but again don't quite get over the line against top opposition not a game of huge consequence but how to get over that and then to the fiasco in hungary where the republic of ireland beat israel on sunday gavin bizuno dropped out there was a secret ballot in a secret meeting that we all heard about the players and manager in the middle of a moral maze that should have been decided by fifa or uefa or the irish government or the fai the rest of the nation's league might have to wait there's a lot to get through this is the guardian football weekly on the panel today john bruin welcome hello there hello barney ronnie hello everyone welcome barry glenn denning hi max and from the price of football uh he's been uh he hasn't been on air on a network or a podcast for two minutes so we were contractually obliged to bring him on from the price of football kieran maguire hey kieran morning all alex says all the big hitters are out for this one hope it's two hours long charlie should the 1999 division two playoff final be declared null and void paraguay ralph pray for the national league defenders facing erling harland mike says is this a good time for city fans to dust off last season's panic banners okay so the news broke on friday that man city had been found guilty of the vast majority of the 115 charges against them relating to breaches of premier league financial regulation two years and 10 days since the hearing began.

1:56The news was leaked rather than official announcement for the Premier League that we're still waiting for. City's official response was first this, maintaining their innocence, said the club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence. On Saturday, their chairman, Khaldun Alma Barak, said following Friday's media reporting, many of you will have spent your evening answering questions and responding to messages from friends family and colleagues so have i here's what i said to my family the premier league process still has a long way to run and our confidence and intent in proving the club's innocent is just as strong as when this began kieran can you as simply as possible because i'm pretty sure most people listening will know just run through what they've been found guilty or what we know they've been found guilty of?

2:47Three things. First of all, disguising money from the owner and pretending that it's sponsorship money. So that's artificially inflating your revenue. Secondly, paying people off book, which suppresses your costs. Both of those go into your PSR calculations. And thirdly, not complying with the Premier League investigation into their finances. Right. And how much money have they spent that they shouldn't have spent or made that they shouldn't have made or wouldn't have made it's not easy to quantify that yeah what i did is that if you compare manchester city's performance pre big the takeover to manchester city's performance post the takeover over the nine-year period they've gone from an average of 14th to to second in the table and on that basis they've probably generated somewhere in the region of 900 million to£1 billion of additional revenue in prize money, in appearance money, in UEFA competitions, in sponsorship bonuses and so on.

3:46Has that money been spent? Yes, it has. So it's certainly been recycled in terms of transfer fees and wages. But there's an argument for, say, that had the takeover not taken place, we're probably talking the thick end of£1 billion. Right. And then do we know what the punishment could be? Well, I think we've got to look at a precedent here. as far as the Nottingham Forest and Everton cases. Both of those were a breach of the£105 million loss limit over three years. Both started effectively with a six-point deduction, and then you have extra points deducted depending on by how much you've exceeded the limit, and then there's extra points deducted for what we refer to as aggravating factors, i.e.

4:31have they helped the commission. Equally, there can be mitigating factors which help to reduce, I think, forest punishment in particular if they've cooperated. So looking at the charges, I think there's four years in which Citi are deemed to be over the PSR limit. So that means you start off with 24 points. If they've been over the limit by a lot, then you start to sort of add. I think it works out as one extra point per every X million pounds. and we go from there. Now, we don't know what those X million pounds are. Aggravating factors, well, there's no love lost, is there, between the Premier League and City.

5:11So you would expect that to top up the bill as well. What should the punishment be is a slightly different question. Barney, I don't know what you think it should be.

5:19Barney Ronay:Can I just add something to what Kieran said? There's one thing that keeps bothering me about this. It's really important to keep explaining why this is a problem because on the face of it, spending your own money is essentially what's happened here. Sometimes if you look at this in isolation, it can be really hard, particularly maybe if you're a City fan and it's really hard to be objective about this. You've spent your own money, you've brought money into football. And if you disagree with the rule that there should be any limit on that, it could seem absurd to you that this is such a big thing, even if you accept that there are rules and you play by them.

5:54Barney Ronay:But I think it's really important to separate out that what we've just described there, the point is that everybody's sticking to this rules. So what's the damage? You're spending your own money, you're not stealing money, but what you are stealing is other people's success. Think about other people's lives being affected by this. Think about how many footballers their lives have been affected by this. You've moved abroad, you've had to move your family, you haven't won something. Like connections, relationships, things you want to do, hopes, life chances, things you work all your life for. If everyone's sticking to these rules and you don't stick to them, you are affecting people's lives in quite a violent way.

6:34Barney Ronay:It's not simply this thing of, well, are these rules correct or not? They shouldn't be correct. That's a separate argument and a legitimate one. You can have a debate about that. Lots of people think, well, they're bringing money and what's the problem? But that's not how it works. You've perverted the way people's jobs function and their lives function. And also fans, hopes, things that you... I've bought a sky subscription for the last 12 years and it turns out i've been watching something that's not maybe really sport maybe i have a claim against manchester city and of course the second thing is not reporting your financial not cooperating is deceit um you could call it fraud if you wanted to obviously there's an appeal it may not have happened but but those are the two things there is real damage here um even though you may disagree with the rules the point is other people not everyone stuck to them um and in terms of punishment um that's the really key issue because this could all actually be massively dampened down by an inadequate punishment if we don't know the outcome of this yet i think just as a side issue because everyone one of the punishments i'd like to see would be a i would suggest a five-year ban on having any sponsors at all um because that's where the crime it's like a headmaster would do that that's like saying you're going to learn from this it's like doing lines grow your income organically it would also test the owner's resolve to actually be involved in this if you can't stick your name on it what's the point so that would be one interesting punishment that speaks to the alleged or well no actual crime pending appeal and barry like within this there's this idea of If they got 100 points one season, well, then they'd go to the championship and come back up.

8:16And would that be a big enough punishment? Or do you stagger the punishments? I don't know what you think the punishment should be.

8:23Max Rushden:Well, I mean, how do you put a price on the mild irritation I felt at Wembley when Sunderland lost the 2014 League Cup final to Manchester City? It's unquantifiable. Yeah, I think if that happened, if City got a points deduction that was sufficient enough to ensure their relegation to the championship for a season, I think most of their fans would quite enjoy a season in the championship. And to be fair, a lot of their fans should be, as you've said, Max, very angry at their owners. So it does feel to me that it should be staggered, that it should hurt them and hurt City for a long time. And I'm wondering, Ciarán, should their owners be stripped of their fit and proper status and be forced to offload the club?

9:19Max Rushden:Because surely this proves that they are not fit and proper owners. That would probably outside the remit of the Premier League, but it could be caught within the activities of the independent football regulator because it does have the power to force a sale of a club, which is more difficult for the Premier League to. And I'd imagine that the Premier League would like to wash its hands of that particular decision. whether the regulator would want to get you know for the for your first big in trade job that would be quite a scary one and also what what they might say is well it happened before we were appointed so therefore we don't want to get involved every everybody doesn't want to make decisions here

10:02Barney Ronay:sure i can can i just add um what barry just said there like it's so fundamental to uk law the idea that you can say to someone you're no longer allowed to own something you're effectively saying you have to you have to sell this club that goes beyond the remit of that that's totally contrary to everything that uk law is based on and would have a massive shockwave effect on so many parts of well parts of the economy that many people don't really don't really think are good Why is the London housing market basically this repository for international money? Because it's seen around the world as something safe.

10:48Barney Ronay:In this country, property doesn't get confiscated. It doesn't. It's safe. We have this incredibly ancient network of statute and common law that means you buy something here. It's basically yours. It's a safe place to rest money. What football's talking about there, and the question Barry just raised, is so massively... I mean, I'd be really interested to see what would happen. But it's a vast issue. And it goes so far beyond saying, no, no, we don't want you to buy in. We've decided you're not fit to own this. To say you're no longer allowed to own it and you have to sell this huge piece of real estate and investment that you've poured so much money into, that's kind of mind-blowing.

11:26But we did have that with Sheffield Wednesday. With Chan Seery, whilst the regulator wasn't in place, there were lines of communication in London, which led to HMRC putting in the winding up order, effectively forcing him to put the club into administration through the back door. So there's no doubt that the regulator is happy to use those powers. It would just be such a huge decision.

11:51Barney Ronay:That's not quite the same, though, is it? That's applying the law. That's saying if you can't pay this bill, you're going to have to sell up. that that's not the same as saying because i don't think that um abu dhabi is going to have any problem paying a tax bill if you're literally saying you are not allowed to own this property in manchester that's really fundamental and interesting you're not fit to wear the shirt but you're not fit to own the club i wonder john with this staggered thing you know this idea that you'd say right you're 40 points off for every year that you know you committed these um crimes would be, in a footballing sense, would be totally fascinating.

12:30I mean, I just don't imagine the players would hang around. But this idea that they'd have to get 80 points to get 40 points, you would sort of find it gripping.

12:40John Brewin:The punishment at this point just seems so opaque, doesn't it? Because we're still in this process of the Premier League have not actually commented, have they? They're refusing to comment the confidentiality of which Manchester City speak. the leak such as it was and the news published over the weekend that appears to be what Manchester City are kicking against so it feels a long way down the road we don't know how long the process is going to take Kieran may be more across that than we are but as regards punishment there is a psychological punishment for the fans of the club now chatting to people over the weekend who are Manchester City fans, there is this state of disbelief.

13:28John Brewin:People I know that are rational people, people that actually work within quite a similar sphere, law enforcement, working in the law, cannot get beyond this idea that the system is unfair and that it is kicked against their club. The red cartel have produced this great conspiracy against their club. and I heard Noel Gallagher talk about how it's not going to take away any of what we achieved you know the feelings that we had when Aguero scored or when Rodri scored the winner in the Champions League final but I do wonder if a fan of Marseille from say 1993 thinks back on those glory days and there's a certain point of that was tainted or a fan of Juventus from the mid 2000s and what Abu Dhabi did was, and this is the Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Mansour and Keldun and all the people involved are accused of doing, is going against the rules and if you don't have rules in sport, I remember this is a sport and football is just what we see every year in that Derbyshire village you know, people just chasing after the ball if there's no rules, you can just, you know, you just fight over the ball and that's it And we talk all the time about rules with VAR and all the rest of it.

14:49John Brewin:And this is, it's a separate issue in the fact it's a financial issue, but there were rules to follow. And the accusation that the verdict is they didn't follow them. Harland would be quite good in that Derbyshire village. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, once he's got it, I don't know what his heat map would be like. Barney, you touched on this, but it is an interesting philosophical question about, you know, and John mentions, you know, you can't take the Aguero moment away from City fans over there. And you can't, right? It was an amazing bit of football. But like, how should we view the last 15 years?

15:20What are we meant to, you know, does Georgie Thompson's, I think, Adam Harry tweet, does she have to revoice Premier League years? It still happened.

15:28Barney Ronay:We still watched it. Well, it's really hard to know what to think, isn't it? Because it's never happened before. I mean, I'm a massive, just a huge Lance Armstrong fan. And, you know, for me, it was all real. It was all real. It is very difficult because it's really hard to get your head around because it definitely happened. These things were played out. It wasn't bribery on the pitch. People weren't not trying and allowing you to score goals. So those players had to push themselves to the very limits of their physical capacities, had to do amazing acts of theatre. They're still brilliant footballers.

16:06Barney Ronay:It still happened. Kevin De Bruyne still gave us these incredible moments. and that's real. He didn't buy that. But the point is, it might not have been able to happen. It only really makes sense if you believe in football as one team against another, and in supporters and the entire culture of the game being real. If you just want to watch an exhibition, then it doesn't make any difference. If you just want to see Messi endlessly scoring penalties, and that's your entertainment, then who cares who's paying for that? But the point is, if we actually believe in the culture of football, which is people trying to build things and people having an equal chance and it being a test of your system and your skill within a framework of rules, then you've basically destroyed the whole thing.

16:50Barney Ronay:Like you have, you've destroyed what sport is because other people were sticking to the rules. Caveat, not everyone was sticking to the rules, but to the best of our ability, we were trying to make them do that. So I can understand wanting to hang on to those moments and the players as well must feel very strange about this because we're talking about the arbitrary values you attach to the value of a human when you're buying their talent essentially which is ridiculous so you could say well you shouldn't have been able to buy omar marmouche because he is worth this much or is he i don't know do you is i have no idea we attach a value to that and then we say this is your this is your budget it's sort of insane really when you break it down but we still do have a market that decides those things and other teams wanted him couldn't buy him maybe had a narrow escape because he was always supposed to play for spurs that's obvious and so we attach these arbitrary values and say that's the set of rules but in the end we do that and there are players you couldn't bid for couldn't afford couldn't do who would have improved your squad and you might have won that game you're winning leagues by one point and then everyone gets to feel good about that and other people get to feel bad So we have to accept the spectacle and accept what our sport is, or we have to say it means nothing and we're just watching a TV show.

18:05Barney Ronay:And that's what City breaking those rules turns it into. We know they're good footballers. yeah that makes this podcast just a tv review podcast doesn't it so um um kieran a couple of things like obviously lots of people ring up talk sport or five live and say stick him in the national league but the national league don't have to accept them do they i mean that is that sort of points deduction is the only thing they can't just say you're in league one for example premier league and the efl are separate bodies so you can't do that but if you take a look at what happened with Leicester City's point seduction.

18:38That was a point seduction which was imposed by the Premier League and applied by the EFL. So whilst there is a dispute between the two bodies about financial distribution, there are lines of communication. So if the panel concludes the best thing is to have something similar to what we saw with Rangers and Juventus, you're going to be demoted so many divisions, it's then up for the EFL to make that decision. And they're going to welcome Manchester city with open arms yeah manchester city is going to be the biggest story in town so it'll be fantastic for their clubs so you you would see them probably taking on the recommendations and can i ask about the future implications like the wave of lawsuits that could come from other teams other players their own players what's the time frame the time frame is appeal we don't know how long that'll be and then do the clubs act in like is it like a class action or is it individual clubs each saying hey we didn't qualify tottenham didn't qualify for the champions league six times because of this i think and obviously you know stoked didn't win the fa cup tony pulis has talked about etc etc etc what's can you envisage what might happen well again we have precedent with everton having to pay burnley 35 million pounds in compensation and when you talk to lawyers they talk about a loss of a chance burnley lost the chance to play in the premier league for an additional season when they were relegated and therefore they claimed compensation as a result.

20:02So therefore you'd have to look at it through first of all the financial lens. Clubs were denied the opportunity to be Premier League champions and the wealth that that brings. But most importantly from a financial point of view it's the Champions League versus the Europa League where the difference is and you're talking realistically£40 million a pop there for the the clubs finishing fifth in those years in which City finished in the top four. So that's going to be one area. As far as players are concerned, again, you talk to players, the bonuses that you get for qualifying for the Champions League at the elite end, it's normally 25 % of your weekly pay packet.

20:42So for a player who's on 100 grand a week, that's 25 grand a week for that player, you multiply that by 25 people in the squad and the numbers very soon start to multiply and then regardless of the wealth of Manchester City's owners you then wonder why they might say if we think we're going to lose these cases why don't we go and do similar to what we've seen in golf with with PIF and Live Golf and just walk away because we're coming out of this with no credibility you whatsoever our reputation is in tatters shake man's always only been to see city play twice so it's not as if he's you know it's not as if he's got a sergio aguero tattoo or anything he's not he's not a hard hardcore city fan um so so therefore you you could see that as a nuclear option and yeah there's the broader issue that regardless of the merits of all of this manchester city is a big employer in the city of manchester barry so we should talk about the like the journalism that broke this, right?

21:42Rui Pinto and Football Leaks and other journalists who have reported on this for a long, long time and have faced quite a lot of opposition for doing it.

21:52Max Rushden:When this story broke, it wasn't long before my thoughts turned to our colleague and friend Nick Harris, who has been like a dog with a bone on this story for years and was the subject of repeated threats on social media. He was doxed on social media. His address was published. I believe a brick was thrown through his window allegedly by a disgruntled Manchester City fan. And he has faced relentless abuse and hardship at a very difficult time in his life. The stuff he had to put up with was disgraceful. So my thoughts sort of turned to him, and he's vindicated now, but he still had to go through all that hassle and grief.

22:47Max Rushden:And there are other reporters who have been subjected to awful abuse, mainly on social media. On the back of what they've reported, I know Miguel Delaney has been approached in airports and in pubs and being the subject of abuse for Manchester City fans, and I'm sure there are others. I suppose that's the nature of the job, is something you shouldn't have to put up with it, but they have had to put up with it.

23:17Barney Ronay:It's such a huge story, the kind of macro elements of this. You mentioned Khaldun al-Mubarak's statement, but there's so many layers to it. It's like the why of this. It reaches into everything. So how, how much do you trust? Imagine the pressure he's under. He's the sort of highest ranking non-royal person involved in this. He's basically been the face of this thing. His job has been to make this propaganda project work and look what's happening. Like he's under so much pressure here to try to kind of make this work for essentially his employers. And this, this isn't just something that he walks away from.

23:58Barney Ronay:So when I hear him make statements, I kind of have a kind of sympathy for him in a way in that this is a nightmarish situation. And beyond that, I've often wondered about the punishment and about the scale of football's place in things here. We know that Andy Burnham, from his days of using the UAE as a means of inviting huge amounts of investment into Manchester, When he talks about Manchesterism, there's always some part of me that thinks, well, there's a part of Manchester that's literally renamed the Emirates. There's a tram stop. This is not some miracle of internal economic growth. There's been so much Emirati investment in Manchester.

24:38Barney Ronay:One of his first acts as prime minister was to speak to the government there and to assure them of his help. There's a talk of a£10 billion investment on the table, further investment in the UK, which is obviously vital. Really, really key trading partner. There was a Bloomberg story which had lots of unattributed quotes in it. You should probably be slightly wary of, but there must be something in it, which suggested there's been direct communication between a governmental level about the worrying possible impacts of a major sanction on Manchester City over this. And we tend to forget that sport and football really is the toy shop to most people.

25:15Barney Ronay:We think it's so important because of loyalties, but at a government level, it's just nothing. To the government in Abu Dhabi, this must seem absurd. Come on, just sort this out. It's nothing. It's sport. We're talking about investment here. Do you want it or not like what why is this happening that the cultural differences are vast and so i am proud of the people in this tribunal who've decided to enforce some essentially very minor sporting regulations that go against kind of macro geopolitical pressures and there's a kind of element of the rule of law and rules-based international order here but i will wait to see what the actual punishment is before deciding because the level of pressure on these people is vast.

25:59Barney Ronay:It's ambient pressure. I'm not suggesting anyone's literally, Andy Burnham's literally picking up the phone and saying, listen guys, we can't afford this. But we're all aware of these pressures and anything that goes against the idea that you can just steamroller regulation because of investment and deals on trade is really good, I think. And I am proud of it, even though we're talking essentially micro regulations, but let's see what the final outcome is. All right, that'll do for part one kieran thank you so much pal cheers guys kieran mcguire there from the price football podcast and we'll be back in a second to talk about england to spain three

26:41welcome to part two of the guardian football weekly uh so to the nation's league game england to spain three um john obviously we watched the uh argentina game together with sadness buried with happiness but I mean I uh I was quite enthused about this game obviously we didn't win and we we often don't beat really good teams but I I wasn't sad no no and and it was an entertaining

27:06John Brewin:international football game uh the outside of a of a World Cup or Euros which is not often the case although it is something to be said the Nations League has made that uh that happen more often I suppose after the shame of Atlanta and the soul-searching, probably the worst team you wanted to face is Spain because the difference in English football against Spanish football was shown by, well, what went wrong for England? in the fact that the technique of the Spanish still looks so superior. England played well, but played this direct football that Tuchel has to lean on. There were good points.

27:54John Brewin:There were the folly of Harry Kane falling over himself. But then you'd look at, say, a player like Laminya Mal, or a player like Alex Baina. These are not English players. English players don't do that stuff. I suppose if we're looking at it from a footballing technical level, we appear to be no good at defending anymore. And, you know, this is England. This is England. We're the country of redoubtable centre-halves. We're so good at centre-halves that Steve Bruce could not get an international cap. You know, we had John Terry. We had Sol Campbell. we have Rio Ferdinand, we have, you know, Jonathan Woodgate, Jamie Catt, all these players.