In his fortnightly exclusive column for CaughtOffside, Jon Smith, one of football’s first-ever agents and a man who was an integral figure in the forming of the Premier League, discusses Manchester City being charged with over 100 breaches of Financial Fair Play and Manchester United’s impending sale.
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The pressure to punish Manchester City will be massive…
The interesting thing is that the Financial Fair Play rules were put in place for the right reasons and then engineered for the benefit largely of the bigger clubs to retain and remain in the status quo. The teams who are really well known across the globe, such as Manchester United, Juventus, Bayern Munich and Real Madrid for example, will have bigger turnovers, so they obviously have bigger budgets to spend relating to the cap on the turnover. So that’s how it was engineered but along came a sovereign wealth fund that said ‘we’d like to join, but we’re building a brand’, so the authorities said ‘well, once you’ve built it, let us know’.
There is no excuse for Manchester City to break the rules. If you’re part of the club, you have a responsibility to obey the rules. But Manchester City have allegedly broken the rules over 100 times and what is going to happen is that they’ll put in place the best possible legal defence and it’ll be deferred for quite some time while the processes take place.
In my opinion, there is no way there can be no action taken unless they’re proven innocent. As it has taken this long to come out, the likelihood is that there are allegedly some serious breaches, otherwise, the FA and Premier League and other regulatory bodies are going to look a bit silly. I also expect UEFA to support the FA because they were the ones who initiated FFP in the first place.
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If Manchester City are found guilty, I think it would be absolutely wrong to take away previously won titles because the fact they won the 2011-12 league with the last kick of the game on the final day, there were still nine months of play that took place in the lead up to that moment. There were thousands of moments that could have changed the course of the season. You can’t go back and legislate for many incidents which may have had an effect.
Moreover, the really interesting thing is that the likes of Henry Winter at the Times almost immediately came out and said Manchester City should have the book thrown at them if they’re found guilty of these FFP breaches, and for someone of his standing within the industry to come out and say that so quickly would indicate the media are likely to garnish a very unsupportive stance on the Citizens should they be found guilty. It also appears the public, via social media, feels the same way, so the pressure to punish the club severely will be huge.
So what happens next is there will be a whole process, but while this happens, I would like the authorities to look at implementing a system that doesn’t just reward historical size, but allows the likes of Newcastle United to play on a level playing field and not punish new money while also not handicapping the Brighton’s of this world so they can match the same spend should they wish, however, that spend probably has to have some sort of cap on it, otherwise a sovereign wealth fund could just blow away every other club. There has got to be a realignment of achievement together with size because as Mrs Smith will tell you, size isn’t everything, it’s what you do with it that matters.
Qatar well placed to takeover Manchester United…
The other big story at the moment is the red half of Manchester, who look like they’re going to be subject to takeover bids from Qatari-based wealth funds.
Everything seems to be pointing toward a group of Qataris, and possibly others coming together, so it softens the impact of another Qatari wealth fund getting involved in Western sport. I don’t know if Sir Jim Ratcliffe will get involved in that but there aren’t many individuals out there (although there are a few hedge funds) who could afford to be involved in the process of buying Manchester United Football Club, so the Glazers’ options are fairly limited. It will be a huge investment for whoever wants it. The price of the club, plus all the other investments that will be needed, such as the renovation of Old Trafford, has the potential to top £7 or £8 billion.