J-Skillz

I have raised the issues Martin Samuel raises in this article. Taking everything into consideration — there is a fine line between punishing City harshly and pulling the plug on the club. Why? 🔺The later option results in +1,000 people losing their jobs. Other clubs not getting paid the £500-800m City owes other clubs in unpaid transfer fees. Nobody getting compensated for the hundreds of millions in damages that City has caused them. 🔺City’s proposed punishment is very severe — 30 points deducted per season for 5 seasons plus European ban. But I don’t like it. It takes 5 years before we have turned a page completely. Artificial. Seasons would have alternate tables. It is a torture for City fans. 🧑‍⚖️I like this structure a lot better. And I would hope that more would consider it — because I am not sure many alternatives get the job done: 1. 150 points deducted in 26/27 2. 15 year ban on related party transactions (except equity investments) 3. Hefty fine 4. Life time ban for all involved executives from having functions in football or visiting any football facility in the UK 🔺But is this not way too lenient? No, it actually isn’t. This is what many miss. Below is City’s revenue split into three main categories. Matchday is £75m, PL and CL money is £210m and commercial revenue is £340m. It cannot be less than this, for a club to compete at the top. City’s Match Day revenue is tiny, 6th in the PL. Of the £340m of City’s commercial revenue — at least £200m comes from AD sponsors. 90m comes from Puma who will tear up their contract and at best renegotiate. If City next season in the Championship — have to sit down and negotiate new sponsorship deals with independent companies — they are never getting close to a sum of £340m. Nor are they getting £140m. This is the beauty with punishing City with a ban of associated party transactions (called “APT”). You link the size of the sanction to the club’s ability to sell real sponsorship deals — which is where they would have been had they not cheated. 🔺If you send City to the Championship and allow APTs — they could end up competing for a title in 27/28 being one of the highest spending clubs while not breaching FFP. I think most feel that this is too lenient. But if you ban them from making ATPs — which they clearly have shown that they cannot do in good faith — City will not be a top spending club in 27/28. They will simply be able to spend what they genuinely generate. Player sales will cover legal costs, fines and loss of revenue in the Championship — but going forward it will be fair.