TheBrownBottle

I wouldn’t argue that, but if Arsenal’s increase at 29% p.a. and ours by 40% p.a. then we wouldn’t be catching them any time soon.

100% mate, agreed on all points

I think there’s something in that, personally. Look at the divvies who turned up at Staveley’s Barclays case to offer support - and the numbers in ours who’ll bend over backwards to blow smoke up the arse of PIF, despite what they are. You buy yourself a horde of loyal, angry and unquestioning nutters online.

There’s no difference - related party transactions is a standard term in commercial procurement; any second company which had links to PIF would under an FMV test. It has no difference to what was meant by associated party. The rules were tightened and made less opaque in 2021, but FMV was already in place. We couldn’t just get a £100m ground sponsor - which is why Man City didn’t.

Do you mean the sportswashing that’s usually pointed at fans of clubs who end up defending the indefensible because the indefensible are funding their favourite football club? Not sure, but it’s at the very least a positive externality for the club’s owners.

Yeah, on this one, you’d be wrong - unless of course FMV could be proved. Man City are up on charges for manipulation and breaching the FFP rules and regs - including potentially illegal actions to circumnavigate them. Of course just as today the club could bank the money, but it wouldn’t ‘Hit the books’ for FFP purposes. Here’s an extract from the PL Handbook for 20/21 - the season before the takeover (rule E.46):

To close any remaining gaps - but FMV already existed. It was the APT rules which closed the remaining gaps. It was never possible for PIF to come in and chuck huge sums of money about. If they (or Staveley) thought that it was, then they were guilty of doing the same amount of due diligence as Mike Ashley did.

Many of the rules were already in place - it wasn’t possible to ‘do a Man City’ when PIF bought the club. The football press misled an excited fanbase tbh.

I thought it was the case when we bought him, as well as when we sold him. Tbf I wasn’t the only one based on the start of this thread. I don’t think we’ve lost a world beater - and even if we have, we look daft whining about it. I’m sure Chelsea look back at the sales of Salah and De Bruyne and think ‘maybe we should have kept them’, maybe Man City think the same re Cole Palmer. I’m not especially convinced that Minteh is in that category.

Yep - the season the takeover occurred we posted £180m to Arsenal’s £369m - a £189m delta. Arsenal has just posted £616m - given our income is likely around £315m, we’re likely 60% further behind today than when the takeover took place. We’ve actually lost a lot of ground on Arsenal over the last three years! It doesn’t take this long - and the commercial dept isn’t the one actually doing any of the running. We could’ve had no-one there and still got the Sela and Noon deals (both are PIF companies).

It went from £466m to £616m - a £150m revenue increase.

No-one said anything about booing him - it was more than a significant portion of the support are being the biggest fannies imaginable about a winger who was bought precisely for this reason; to be sold for FFP headroom.

Arsenal’s revenues have grown more in one season than ours have in total since the takeover - this is the problem NUFC has, the increases we’ve had are not seeing us substantively gain ground on the ‘Big Six’.

Yep, doesn’t exactly pass the ‘smell’ test, does it? If I walk into a shop and offer £100 for an item I want, and the shop keeper says ‘it isn’t worth that, you can have it for £50’ my response isn’t likely to be ‘my money isn’t good enough for you? I shall take my custom elsewhere!’

It’s hard not to feel disgust for the KSA govt and the House of Saud tbf. PIF funded Musk’s Twitter buyout, one of the key vehicle’s undermining US democracy - and I don’t doubt that they knew what they were doing. They’re a delightful bunch.

Swinging his Big Horn around as usual …

The PL cannot block sponsorship deals which pass both the APT and FMV rules. Simply not true - ‘ties’ don’t matter. KSA has a significant private sector. The rules are absolutely clear - they are pretty much standard procurement rules for proving FMV; multiple quotes. Any idea that PIF couldn’t leverage this is daft.

Because they hate us too. And we hate them, the cunts.

Hard to see how that would or could’ve been blocked - if you don’t allow competitive market tenders what can you allow? Or bids from the same nation as the owners - can’t see that being popular. PIF haven’t even used their position within KSA to ‘encourage’ these kind of deals. Everyone seems to be waiting for the dominos to fall and then they spring into action. To date, that hasn’t occurred.

No, if there was no direct link to PIF (ie they are private companies) and / or there are multiple bids then there is no issue under the rules. KSA companies could have done this at any time.

Aunt Sally looking good

There was nothing stopping this from occurring previously.

You’re dead on - that’s precisely what it is. It’s not a payment - it’s the amount of the original cost of a property which is amortised for accounting or tax purposes across a fixed period (usually as a percentage of the original cost). Spurs’ actual repayment costs could be a different sum.

It’s a reasonable point, though I’d ask - who amongst our real competitors (Forest, Bournemouth, Villa, Fulham, Brighton) would you say has either a better first XI or squad than us? I don’t think we have a better XI or squad than Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City or Chelsea. But I think several of our competitors would swap their teams for ours - and given we’ve spent in some cases a lot more than them, I’d hope that would be true.

Spot on - I think you’re absolutely right re this. It really does boil down to how good you think our side / squad is - which is all opinion, of course. For me, I think we’ve got about four-fifths of a really, really good side, and an ok squad when fully fit. We’ve good options for some positions; less than good for others. Basically, I think we’ve got a talented side which should be comfortably top six / seven. Anything above that is overperformance. Which is why I think Howe is doing a good, not a great, job at the moment - but I do think he did a great job in his first season and a half. This last season and a half has been good, with some issues (some more serious than others - for me, the increasingly ‘streaky’ nature of performances is becoming a worrying trend - we jolt from looking invincible for long runs of games, to looking like the players have never met before for long runs of games). I think a side with the likes of Isak, Bruno, Tonali, Gordon, Botman (when fit) etc already has five or six players who would walk into any side other than two or three in the division (Isak into pretty much any side). There’s talented young’uns like Hall and Livramento who would walk into any team outside of the top six or seven sides. And then players like Joelinton and Murphy who are solid PL players who - thanks in no small part to Howe’s coaching - are playing well above their ‘level’. So I think that the talent is there to be doing what we’re doing, and I wouldn’t expect any half-decent manager to have that squad outside the top half of the table. I’ve no issue with folks who think Howe is performing wonders (I disagree at present, though I think his coaching of young players breaking in remains second to none). I’ve no issues with folks who think he should be doing much better (I disagree with this, with the caveat that the performances have been more poor than good on average this season). All eye of the beholder stuff.