General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

Kit sales don't really count towards clubs revenue though, about 10% ish of any revenue from kit sales goes to the club. The manufacturers pay the clubs for the rights to sell those kits and that's why they pay the 50-70m a year to do it, as they then get the remaining 90%.

Some clubs, like Liverpool for example, have accepted a lower payment per year from Nike but a much higher commission (around 20-25% iirc) on the jersey sales and I think it's higher on some LFC branded items. Arsenal might have a similar set up but don't know the figures.

One of the drivers of why Liverpool broke their contract with New Balance and instead moved to Nike, a year early, is because New Balance regularly sold out of kits and couldn't keep up with the demand. This was at a time where Liverpool won the CL & PL in successive seasons. Nike were able to keep up with the demand after that, and posted record kit sales at the start of the 20-21 season. Having shops regularly sold out of kits might sound a good thing, but in reality it's not for the massive clubs. And the levels might be different. Man City kits 'sold out' could be 50 but Man Utd's 'sold out' could be 500. We don't know those numbers but I would assume that they are not the same.

The term fair market value is a bit of a cover up though.

If a made up shell company comes in and gives Luton 60m a year to put their logo on the front of their kit, just because Man Utd get it after years of commercial success, they can use the term 'fair market value'. But is it fair? Or just using one deal as the barometer.

That's what Man City is built upon. Ethiad came in and looked at the deal that Arsenal had with Emirates at the time. Arsenal, who at the time were consistently in the CL and challenging for the PL, were receiving x million for stadium and kit sponsorship. Arsenal were somewhat successfully commercially and a recognised name across Europe. Man City were not a recognised name, were not in the CL consistently and were not challenging for the PL, but were able to use this Arsenal Emirates deal as the base value, throw a few million on top, and call this 'fair market value'. Newcastle have used this and done the same recently.

It's why Man City abstained in the PL vote around Newcastle and related party sponsorship. They knew what they built the (recent success of the) club on.

There are lads half following the debate and jumping in on points without following whats been said already and what the point of the discussion is.

Anyway I already said I was done on this topic so am definitely bowing out now.

Scary how the indefensible can be defended.

He's no different than most managers in that regard. They pretty much all carry on like that.

Its ridiculous, City get one 12.30 kick off on the Saturday after the international break and Pep starts making noise. Watching everyone of those "injured" players to be togged and flying it on Saturday morning.

This may sound like a stupid suggestion but is there any reason why they cannot say move forward with Citys charges and potential punishments say 5 cases at a time or something?

I have read a few times that it will take so long because there are so many and Everton just had 1.

I don't follow... Was your point all along that City cheated at the start but are now fully legit?

You can't rob a bank, set up a business with that money and then claim that the business is fine because it came afterwards. That is absolute lunacy.

I've seen nothing to suggest that the City sponsors are legit now either - the numbers just don't add up. As has been said here many times I would love to see the other bids for sponsorship that failed to the conveniently owned companies willing to sponsor. What were they valuing the market rate at?

there is a reason a lot of City fans make a lot of noise about their present financial health - it's a tactic to drown out the noise about cooking the books in the early years. 

i don't think even the most one-eyed rival fan could argue that City aren't NOW a massive club.  new City fans are popping up in schools everywhere, and when they go on overseas tours all over the world, they are followed by a huge amount of fans.

Nobody with a brain really disputes where they are in the football period now.

But how did they get there?  

and this is the thing ... they KNOW they cooked the books.  so many will say 'how else could we compete?' or 'if we didn't, it would be the same teams competing' - and those are used as justifications for whatever they did in those early days.  and they are weird justifications - because the implication is blatantly that cheating is allowed because other clubs are too strong after years of success.  well, tough.  nobody has a divine right to success.  it is earned.  does the local grocery store have a divine right to compete with Tesco?  no, it doesn't.  The Premier League is already incredibly equitable, hence we're seeing how competitive the likes of Villa, Newcastle (even with more financial restrictions than City had), Spurs etc can be.

This argument of ‘the same 4 teams are awesome, so we should be allowed to cook the books in order for that to stop’ is a mental one.

That's sportswashing in a nutshell.

It's why @POKERKING asking "well what's wrong with this years accounts?" is diversion tactics (I don't think he's knowingly doing it).

Basically, forget all that stuff previously, what's wrong now? That's the end goal of sportswashing. For fans of The Wire, it's no different to Stringer Bell laundering drug money.