Leicester City £100m action plan revealed in worst-case scenario

[Stadt]

Get our own house in order. Remember when the murmurs coming out of the club suggested we didn't want to spend to anymore because we'd fall afoul of UEFA's FFP rules? Some fell for it obviously .

[MPH]

3 hours ago, shen said:

True, but when you factor in Everton were just as bad, but didn't play fair on top of that, it starts to change the picture a bit.

A season finishing 16-17th for a club of our recent history would be bad enough, relegation is an extra gut punch.

 

well, I DID say the season just gone would be the one we really have a case for…

[Daggers]

1 hour ago, Aus Fox said:

... they should be disqualified from the competition like any other cheating athlete would be.

 

1 hour ago, Foxxed said:

...us being shit and them breaking the rules doesn't mean them breaking the rules should be forgiven and forgotten and go unpunished.

I repeat, I'm all for them being done. The league can send them to the moon for ten years for all I care. I'm not arguing that they don't deserve punishment...but that isn't on the club to administer.

[Vazman]

50 minutes ago, filbertway said:

Christ.

 

Everton should be punished and rightfully so.

 

We don't deserve anything though. We were gash and got what we deserved. People making out that Everton signed Mbappe, Rodri and Bellingham with cheat money and that's what cost us.

 

Nah, us being absolutely gash is what cost us. As Daggers says, it's akin to people suing fast food chains because they shoved so many burgers into their gobs.

 

It wasn't a remotely difficult target to hit. I'd rather sue Rodgers for gross negligence than Everton.

 

 

I get your sentiments and yes we got what we deserved, but 2 points is all it was, we have to live with it now. 

 

They should be punished, and not by us, it must be dealt with for what it is, by the authorities that make the rules, if they wont then why shouldn't we highlight the issue that everyone is aware of, if nothing  else it will make clubs think twice, the fast food example has no bearing or resemblance on this example, whatsoever.

[Daggers]

9 minutes ago, Vazman said:

I get your sentiments and yes we got what we deserved, but 2 points is all it was, we have to live with it now. 

 

They should be punished, and not by us, it must be dealt with for what it is, by the authorities that make the rules, if they wont then why shouldn't we highlight the issue that everyone is aware of, if nothing  else it will make clubs think twice, the fast food example has no bearing or resemblance on this example, whatsoever.

Seeing as our owners set up a bogus marketing company in order to funnel additional funds into the club, I don't really see them having the moral authority to sit in judgement over others and their rule breaking.

[Foxxed]

12 minutes ago, Daggers said:

 

I repeat, I'm all for them being done. The league can send them to the moon for ten years for all I care. I'm not arguing that they don't deserve punishment...but that isn't on the club to administer.

The Premier League should administer it. But they won't because they won't want to hurt brand Premier League.

[Foxxed]

2 minutes ago, Daggers said:

Seeing as our owners set up a bogus marketing company in order to funnel additional funds into the club, I don't really see them having the moral authority to sit in judgement over others and their rule breaking.

Lol yes. There is that. However, "we cheated so we'll let you cheat" makes us complicit and hypocrites rather than just hypocrites. I'm all for incremental improvements.

[jonathan_ross]

I just dislike everything about Everton and there fans and wish relegation on them. I don’t care about the compensation.

[oadby.fox]

Been keeping an eye on this thread and wanted to chip in.

 

Firstly, I think we all already know that Everton will not face any kind of punishment. It would set a precedent and harm other clubs (e.g., Man City), and tarnish the legitimacy of the league itself. Secondly, we all know that we were awful this past year and we should never have even been at risk of relegation.

 

Despite that, I don't find the willingness to sweep these violations aside compelling at all. At the end of the day, football is a game and every game has rules. In fact, when you think about it, it's only because of particular rules, objectives etc., that we end up with a particular game. The rules which govern the league are ones which all the clubs consent to. If Man City don't want to be fettered by financial regulations, then they are free to leave the league and join the MLS. What makes the game procedurally fair is the fact that people abide by the rules, are treated impartially, and are punished proportionately whenever a rule is broken. It is fine to disagree with the rules and suggest that there should be no financial regulations but no one will sincerely make that argument because they don't truly believe it. So either you have some kind of financial constraint and appropriately enforce it (irrespective of who is breaking the rules) or you get rid of the constraints and take an entirely laissez faire approach. This odd middle ground of having rules, recording violations and knowingly letting those who commit them go unpunished is bizarre. These things do have a tangible effect on outcomes. Man City were awful before the oil money, look at them now. The idea that these things don't make any difference is dumbfounding. Regarding Everton, a similar case can be made if they are guilty of breaking the rules and they should either face a fine or a points deduction for the period of infringement. Personally, I prefer the latter because the motivation for going outside of the financial constraints is to gain some competitive edge and so points deductions remove that incentive whereas fines mean nothing to the Man City's of the world. I realise that nothing will happen but in that case why are we not petitioning to get the laws removed entirely? If, when it comes down to it, they won't be enforced then what is the point? It's like having a referee that will never blow his whistle no matter how bad the foul is.

[urban.spaceman]

I honestly don't get why people find it unsavoury that we might sue Everton or Man City.

 

For me it's unsavoury that they've explicitly cheated over multiple seasons and until now got away with it, and has had a direct negative impact on us in that time. Man City's case in particular has taken 4 years for the Premier League to bring, after being obstructed at every single stage just like they did with UEFA.

 

YES we should look at ourselves and our own mistakes and try and put right what went wrong.

 

But we've had our progress restricted at every stage in the last 9 years by a competition designed to exclude us and it's time we took a ****ing stand against it.

[trooky]

Sport should be settled on the field of play, not in the courtroom with litigation IMO

Edited 15 June 2023 by trooky

[shen]

5 hours ago, MPH said:

 

well, I DID say the season just gone would be the one we really have a case for…

You did, but I would argue the feeling of deserving it does get changed by the Everton case. We were atrocious, but technically we did not deserve to go down if our direct competition played dirty.

[urban.spaceman]

1 hour ago, trooky said:

Sport should be settled on the field of play, not in the courtroom with litigation IMO

The field of play has been tilted in the direction of the opponent's goal. We were literally not on a level playing field. That makes litigation necessary.

[trooky]

1 hour ago, urban.spaceman said:

The field of play has been tilted in the direction of the opponent's goal. We were literally not on a level playing field. That makes litigation necessary.

It's a difficult to judge if the playing field is level or not, FFP doesn't work, favours the historically larger clubs with larger turnovers etc and is extremely complicated and easy to manipulate.

 

Our owners and club are an example of how stupid FFP is. We've borrowed against future TV revenue, the owners wrote off £192 million of debt with some kind of legit loan. I don't see how this is any different to Everton's situation.

 

We're not really in any position to sue anyone, and we need to be dam sure we're squeaky clean because  Everton will no doubt come after us at some point.

 

If we really want a level playing field then the league should set salary caps and maybe some kind of maximum transfer spend for each club based on turnover and the previous season financial reports.

 

I for one would prefer that the whole FFP is scrapped and clubs are left to manage their own finances and if a club goes out of business so be it.

[Bluearmyfox28]

17 hours ago, Daggers said:

We weren’t relegated because of anything Everton did. We went down because of the choices the board, Rodgers and the players made. 
 

I hate cases like this. Loathe them. I hope the judge laughs in the faces of the club’s briefs and tells them to fvck off. 

100% agree, this whole case is slightly making me cringe and a bit embarrassed to be apart of. I completely understand that clubs should be sanctioned for taking the piss, but at the same time it just has that vibe of a school kid walking away with his football when his team doesn’t win.

[sacreblueits442]

On 15/06/2023 at 07:29, shen said:

True, but when you factor in Everton were just as bad, but didn't play fair on top of that, it starts to change the picture a bit.

A season finishing 16-17th for a club of our recent history would be bad enough, relegation is an extra gut punch.

...three teams were going to finish in those bottom positions,  Evertons actions contributed to at least one of these teams being there!!!

  Irrespective of the stewardship of the clubs finishing in the bottom 3 positions, a rule that all the clubs had signed up to, and aware of the possible repercussions of failing to adhere to those rules, have been broken.

 As I  have said previously, I  believe points deduction will take place the coming season,  and this will not help any of these three teams who were relegated. A team, which will struggle next season, and has no involvement in this matter, will benefit from the F.A. decision. 

  Seeking a recourse through the court maybe a prudent decision, it may dissuade other clubs from taking the Everton stance,  as the law is based on precedent. 

 

[shen]

10 hours ago, Bluearmyfox28 said:

100% agree, this whole case is slightly making me cringe and a bit embarrassed to be apart of. I completely understand that clubs should be sanctioned for taking the piss, but at the same time it just has that vibe of a school kid walking away with his football when his team doesn’t win.

Each to club to its own. If we had stayed up, would we sue? Probably not, although we and the rest of the league's clubs should.

The argument remains the same, so I agree that it feels forced because we, Leeds and Southampton suffered the ultimate consequence this season.

[urban.spaceman]

On 15/06/2023 at 19:26, trooky said:

It's a difficult to judge if the playing field is level or not, FFP doesn't work, favours the historically larger clubs with larger turnovers etc and is extremely complicated and easy to manipulate.

 

Our owners and club are an example of how stupid FFP is. We've borrowed against future TV revenue, the owners wrote off £192 million of debt with some kind of legit loan. I don't see how this is any different to Everton's situation.

 

We're not really in any position to sue anyone, and we need to be dam sure we're squeaky clean because  Everton will no doubt come after us at some point.

 

If we really want a level playing field then the league should set salary caps and maybe some kind of maximum transfer spend for each club based on turnover and the previous season financial reports.

 

I for one would prefer that the whole FFP is scrapped and clubs are left to manage their own finances and if a club goes out of business so be it.

I don't want anyone to take this personally but I feel that not enough people quite understand the ways in which we've been held back since we won the league. It's not just about Everton and Man City's antics - to add to the unlevel playing field analogy we've also quite literally had our arms tied behind our back by a system that treats the "big" with deference and everyone else with nothing but contempt, including us fans as consumers.

 

The TV deal for UK consumers is quite literally the worst in the world for non-"top 6" clubs and consumers. It's what sustains the "big" clubs and prevents smaller clubs from ever developing and breaking into the top 7 places on a long term basis.

 

If you are a British consumer and you want to access every single Premier League match, then you have absolutely no legal right or means to do so.

 

In most other countries you can.

 

In the UK you are expected to subscribe to Sky, BT and Amazon and yet you only get access to 52% of the matches. A rough estimate on my part is that this will cost you £775 per annum, although I can only find a minimum 18 month contract with Sky and 24 month contract with BT.

 

I've said this before, but for the last 6 months of our title winning season I was living in Cape Town then spent 2-3 months living in Botswana and travelling around the region. I could either pay for DSTV/Supersport at £360pa and get access to every single Premier League match, or walk in to any pub to get access to it.

 

My dad lives 8 miles away from the King Power and had absolutely absolutely no legal right or means to watch us play on tv.

 

A few weeks ago there was a gang of Brits jailed for decades for providing access to "illegal" streams for UK consumers.

 

Or to put it another way, the Premier League managed to prosecute people for making their product actually accessible to people who wanted to access it. 

 

-------

 

But here's why it's bad for clubs like us.

 

Football has had a Saturday 3pm broadcast blackout since the 60s, which is why UK based consumers can't watch the games. So matches are selected by broadcasters and moved away from the Saturday 3pm slot to get around that rule. Clubs are given "facility fees" - £1.2m per game as it stands - for every match selected for UK broadcast. They have viewers to attract, so the broadcasters pick the clubs they feel will bring in more viewers, which is what tips the eventual earnings in favour of the biggest clubs.

 

To give you an example, in 2014/15, we were selected for broadcast only 8 times.

 

In 2015/16, we were selected for broadcast 15 times (just 12 in 2016/17). Newcastle 16. Everton 18. Spurs 21. Chelsea 22. Liverpool 23. Man Utd 25. Man City 26. Arsenal 27.

 

In total prize money, we were the 5th highest earners with £93m. Spurs £95m, Man Utd £96.3m, Man City £96.8m and Arsenal £100.8m.

 

That right there is evidence of football not being a meritocracy.

 

And that's before you even get to the extra exposure for sponsors which sends their 'earnings' skyrocketing - Man City have certainly been using it as an excuse to inflate their deals, hence the constant investigations.

 

And that's just part of the issue. One of the FFP measures they brought in in 2013 was called Short Term Cost Control (STCC). It was basically, they said, designed to keep clubs spending within their means {directly controlled, see above} and not have wage bills spiralling out of control.

 

Clubs were restricted from increasing wage bills by more than 7% each season.

 

That in itself is designed to protect the bigger clubs IMO.

 

We won the league with a squad that had been promoted 2 seasons earlier and had finished 14th the previous season. So despite being the actual Champions, we were restricted from spending money {that had already been stifled} on players to compete at the top where we found ourselves.

 

We were the reigning Champions but effectively only had the spending power of 14th place club.

 

(Side note - STCC ended in 2019 which is why Newcastle were able to spend £300m in the last year despite circa £30m the previous)

 

-------

 

In summary, you've basically got a company (the Premier League) colluding with participants (the "big" clubs) and restricting access (via broadcasters) in order to restrain competition (the "other 14") and prices for consumers (us).

 

That, my friends, is the dictionary definition of a cartel:

 

cartel

noun

a group of similar independent companies who join together to control prices and limit competition

 

-------

 

Miguel Delaney did a fantastic article in The Independent in early 2020, about a month before lockdown. It begins:

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

These were the words spoken by a senior figure from the Premier League’s ‘big six’ clubs, in the kind of high-end London hotel you can easily imagine.

“Football history suggests fans like big teams winning,” the official continued, to the group of business people and media figures present. “A certain amount of unpredictability is good, but a more democratic league would be bad for business.”

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/champions-league-superclubs-liverpool-man-utd-barcelona-real-madrid-a9330431.html

 

That was about 9 months before Man United and Liverpool tried to bring in Project Big Picture, which involved reducing the teams to 18, giving the 9 clubs with the longest time in the league (but in reality allowing 'any six clubs' and we all know who they are) more voting power on competition issues, and especially distribution of broadcast revenues. citation

 

That was 14 months before they announced the European Super League which as we all know would have bankrupted everyone but themselves.

 

-------

 

We absolutely should not have been allowed to win the Premier League. It shouldn't have happened. They let their guard down expecting that one of the six (well, four; Liverpool hadn't won a title in 25 years and Tottenham are, well, Tottenham). They had controlled the finances and fortunes (in every sense of the word) of the competition for so long that a club ACTUALLY WINNING IT ON MERIT was utterly unthinkable.

 

As far as I'm concerned, with our relegation, they got exactly what they wanted. This is our punishment for humiliating them without buying in.

 

Clubs like Manchester City and Newcastle are so wealthy that they are unaccountable. Man City's CEO is literally on record saying he'd rather spend £50m on lawyers suing UEFA than pay a £30m fine. They refused to cooperate with UEFA for years, were allowed to appoint 2 of the 3 CAS judges who - lo and behold - declared that their rule breaks were "time barred". The Premier League spent 2 years investigating Man City before they were even allowed to report on it. Just look at the trophies they've won in just the 4 years they were being investigated.

 

Football is broken to such a level that only government action will fix it. The problem we have with that is that we don't have a functioning government, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is a vocal Man City fan who expressed disappointment after the UEFA ban.

 

Football in this country is beyond broken.

 

And it won't get 'fixed'. Because it already is.

 

-------

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

[urban.spaceman]

Apologies for the ultra long post, I really needed to get that information out of me and onto the page.

 

I'm honestly starting to fall out of love with the game - the competition demonstrably is stacked against my club, as a consumer I'm extorted and treated with contempt, and as a fan I'm a working class guy having to sit and watch multi millionaires compete against Uber-multi millionaires while I can barely afford a ticket let alone a TV deal that I know for a fact can get better in Sub Saharan Africa.

 

I honestly don't know if I want us to go back up to just be part of that again.

[Lambert09]

Everywhere you look there’s seems to be more corruption. But the saudi chelsea link really is beyond disgusting. 

 

They have a vested interest in their success and you can bet for sure similar deals will happen for newcastle when it’s needed. 

 

My eyebrows slightly raised when kante got that move, yes he’s a legend, but does he really have that world wide appeal, i couldn’t quite work it out. But  just figured his agent played a blinder. 

 

But hudson-odoi is ridiculous. Not a chance the average glory fans even know who he is.  

Its just a clear favour to a club they have a stake in. 

 

Im genuinely excited for this season and having a level playing field again. It’s really not stinging me as much as i thought it would. In fact, part of me is worried about the league we would be returning to if we succeed.. the magic of reaching the prem has faded for me now 

[Guest Col city fan]

6 hours ago, urban.spaceman said:

I don't want anyone to take this personally but I feel that not enough people quite understand the ways in which we've been held back since we won the league. It's not just about Everton and Man City's antics - to add to the unlevel playing field analogy we've also quite literally had our arms tied behind our back by a system that treats the "big" with deference and everyone else with nothing but contempt, including us fans as consumers.

 

The TV deal for UK consumers is quite literally the worst in the world for non-"top 6" clubs and consumers. It's what sustains the "big" clubs and prevents smaller clubs from ever developing and breaking into the top 7 places on a long term basis.

 

If you are a British consumer and you want to access every single Premier League match, then you have absolutely no legal right or means to do so.

 

In most other countries you can.

 

In the UK you are expected to subscribe to Sky, BT and Amazon and yet you only get access to 52% of the matches. A rough estimate on my part is that this will cost you £775 per annum, although I can only find a minimum 18 month contract with Sky and 24 month contract with BT.

 

I've said this before, but for the last 6 months of our title winning season I was living in Cape Town then spent 2-3 months living in Botswana and travelling around the region. I could either pay for DSTV/Supersport at £360pa and get access to every single Premier League match, or walk in to any pub to get access to it.

 

My dad lives 8 miles away from the King Power and had absolutely absolutely no legal right or means to watch us play on tv.

 

A few weeks ago there was a gang of Brits jailed for decades for providing access to "illegal" streams for UK consumers.

 

Or to put it another way, the Premier League managed to prosecute people for making their product actually accessible to people who wanted to access it. 

 

-------

 

But here's why it's bad for clubs like us.

 

Football has had a Saturday 3pm broadcast blackout since the 60s, which is why UK based consumers can't watch the games. So matches are selected by broadcasters and moved away from the Saturday 3pm slot to get around that rule. Clubs are given "facility fees" - £1.2m per game as it stands - for every match selected for UK broadcast. They have viewers to attract, so the broadcasters pick the clubs they feel will bring in more viewers, which is what tips the eventual earnings in favour of the biggest clubs.

 

To give you an example, in 2014/15, we were selected for broadcast only 8 times.

 

In 2015/16, we were selected for broadcast 15 times (just 12 in 2016/17). Newcastle 16. Everton 18. Spurs 21. Chelsea 22. Liverpool 23. Man Utd 25. Man City 26. Arsenal 27.

 

In total prize money, we were the 5th highest earners with £93m. Spurs £95m, Man Utd £96.3m, Man City £96.8m and Arsenal £100.8m.

 

That right there is evidence of football not being a meritocracy.

 

And that's before you even get to the extra exposure for sponsors which sends their 'earnings' skyrocketing - Man City have certainly been using it as an excuse to inflate their deals, hence the constant investigations.

 

And that's just part of the issue. One of the FFP measures they brought in in 2013 was called Short Term Cost Control (STCC). It was basically, they said, designed to keep clubs spending within their means {directly controlled, see above} and not have wage bills spiralling out of control.

 

Clubs were restricted from increasing wage bills by more than 7% each season.

 

That in itself is designed to protect the bigger clubs IMO.

 

We won the league with a squad that had been promoted 2 seasons earlier and had finished 14th the previous season. So despite being the actual Champions, we were restricted from spending money {that had already been stifled} on players to compete at the top where we found ourselves.

 

We were the reigning Champions but effectively only had the spending power of 14th place club.

 

(Side note - STCC ended in 2019 which is why Newcastle were able to spend £300m in the last year despite circa £30m the previous)

 

-------

 

In summary, you've basically got a company (the Premier League) colluding with participants (the "big" clubs) and restricting access (via broadcasters) in order to restrain competition (the "other 14") and prices for consumers (us).

 

That, my friends, is the dictionary definition of a cartel:

 

cartel

noun

a group of similar independent companies who join together to control prices and limit competition

 

-------

 

Miguel Delaney did a fantastic article in The Independent in early 2020, about a month before lockdown. It begins:

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

These were the words spoken by a senior figure from the Premier League’s ‘big six’ clubs, in the kind of high-end London hotel you can easily imagine.

“Football history suggests fans like big teams winning,” the official continued, to the group of business people and media figures present. “A certain amount of unpredictability is good, but a more democratic league would be bad for business.”

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/champions-league-superclubs-liverpool-man-utd-barcelona-real-madrid-a9330431.html

 

That was about 9 months before Man United and Liverpool tried to bring in Project Big Picture, which involved reducing the teams to 18, giving the 9 clubs with the longest time in the league (but in reality allowing 'any six clubs' and we all know who they are) more voting power on competition issues, and especially distribution of broadcast revenues. citation

 

That was 14 months before they announced the European Super League which as we all know would have bankrupted everyone but themselves.

 

-------

 

We absolutely should not have been allowed to win the Premier League. It shouldn't have happened. They let their guard down expecting that one of the six (well, four; Liverpool hadn't won a title in 25 years and Tottenham are, well, Tottenham). They had controlled the finances and fortunes (in every sense of the word) of the competition for so long that a club ACTUALLY WINNING IT ON MERIT was utterly unthinkable.

 

As far as I'm concerned, with our relegation, they got exactly what they wanted. This is our punishment for humiliating them without buying in.

 

Clubs like Manchester City and Newcastle are so wealthy that they are unaccountable. Man City's CEO is literally on record saying he'd rather spend £50m on lawyers suing UEFA than pay a £30m fine. They refused to cooperate with UEFA for years, were allowed to appoint 2 of the 3 CAS judges who - lo and behold - declared that their rule breaks were "time barred". The Premier League spent 2 years investigating Man City before they were even allowed to report on it. Just look at the trophies they've won in just the 4 years they were being investigated.

 

Football is broken to such a level that only government action will fix it. The problem we have with that is that we don't have a functioning government, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is a vocal Man City fan who expressed disappointment after the UEFA ban.

 

Football in this country is beyond broken.

 

And it won't get 'fixed'. Because it already is.

 

-------

 

“We don’t want too many Leicester Citys.”

I did say quite a few weeks ago that I thought quite a few clubs/fans would be (possibly secretly) quite happy to see Leicester relegated as ‘we shouldn’t have won the Premiership’. I was shot down, yet again, by the usual suspects……

[jmono84]

6 hours ago, urban.spaceman said:

Apologies for the ultra long post, I really needed to get that information out of me and onto the page.

 

I'm honestly starting to fall out of love with the game - the competition demonstrably is stacked against my club, as a consumer I'm extorted and treated with contempt, and as a fan I'm a working class guy having to sit and watch multi millionaires compete against Uber-multi millionaires while I can barely afford a ticket let alone a TV deal that I know for a fact can get better in Sub Saharan Africa.

 

I honestly don't know if I want us to go back up to just be part of that again.

Bravo 👏 

 

I’m gonna cut and share this with my friends and family.

 

With all this info and Covid arguably affecting our owners more than any other it shouldn’t be no real surprise we’ve struggled financially.

 

 Is love to boycott football but being realistic I couldn’t stop going to Leicester games. I do boycott sky and especially SSN because all that does is brainwash fans into supporting the bigger clubs.

[mod hero]

33 minutes ago, Col city fan said:

I did say quite a few weeks ago that I thought quite a few clubs/fans would be (possibly secretly) quite happy to see Leicester relegated as ‘we shouldn’t have won the Premiership’. I was shot down, yet again, by the usual suspects……

Another I told you so post.

 

another “I was shot down by the usual suspects”

 

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

[Finnegan]

On 15/06/2023 at 10:05, Daggers said:

And that's the attitude I loathe.

 

I hate shifting the blame, I hate litigation culture, I think you and I have similar ethics in that regard. I also don't disagree that our own board shouldn't escape a reasonable amount of blame for letting Rodgers spiral unchecked. 

 

All of that said, two things aren't mutually exclusive. "Leicester were shit last year and shouldn't be making excuses" is still compatible with "Leicester were cheated by Everton last year."

 

Everton gained an unfair advantage last year, probably for the Nth year running, and without it we'd still be a Premier League team. We can be extremely angry that we were ever in a relegation scrap in the first place as a should-be top 8 (or so) team and demand the board are held accountable without rolling over and letting Everton also fvck us. 

 

If it was a really tenuous claim and we were clutching at straws I might be inclined to agree but Everton have  been massively, massively over spending beyond their means chucking money they don't have around for absolutely years now. They've spat in the face of the rules. Clever accounting is one thing, they've openly taken the piss and it's lead to their unfair survival directly at our expense. 

 

If we were in Southampton's position and we'd been absolutely dire and we'd obviously have gone down anyway then I'd agree with you, it'd be stupid trying to sue. But we literally went down on goal difference on the final day. 

 

We absolutely should be demanding compensation. I wouldn't just be demanding it directly from Everton, either, I'd actually argue the opposite of you and say that WE should be demanding it from the league as well. If it had been investigated in a timely manner they'd have had an appropriate points deduction for that season. Juventus got found out, investigated, had points deducted, appealed, had them given back, got reinvestigated and got a second points deduction all in the same run of time since its been announced Everton broke the rules. It's a disgrace. 

[st albans fox]

3 hours ago, Lambert09 said:

Everywhere you look there’s seems to be more corruption. But the saudi chelsea link really is beyond disgusting. 

 

They have a vested interest in their success and you can bet for sure similar deals will happen for newcastle when it’s needed. 

 

My eyebrows slightly raised when kante got that move, yes he’s a legend, but does he really have that world wide appeal, i couldn’t quite work it out. But  just figured his agent played a blinder. 

 

But hudson-odoi is ridiculous. Not a chance the average glory fans even know who he is.  

Its just a clear favour to a club they have a stake in. 

 

Im genuinely excited for this season and having a level playing field again. It’s really not stinging me as much as i thought it would. In fact, part of me is worried about the league we would be returning to if we succeed.. the magic of reaching the prem has faded for me now 

Kante?

he left on a free at the end of hIs contract ????

 

has CHO gone anywhere ?  

 

and btw, remember summer 2016 when we saw seven’s Chinese club offer £35m for ngolo. This set a base for us to ensure Chelsea paid £30m+ for him. His release to a CL club was £20m.