Man Utd have shown Man City how to face FFP charges: Take your punishment

The Mailbox still has plenty on Saudi Arabia and women’s football but first, Manchester United have taken it on the chin.

Send your views on this and other subjects to theeditor@football365.com

Man Utd guilty on FFP but they paid up
There are fair few sticks with which to beat United but signing Onana for cash is probably not one of them. United could’ve signed him last summer on a free except they couldn’t. He agreed his deal with Inter in January 2022 way back when United we’re being coached by a man with a radio link to Moscow.

We hadn’t even decided to hire Ten Hag at this point and absolutely no one was suggesting that De Gea was the weak link in the absolute omnishambles that was Ralf Rangnick’s United. So whilst it fits the narrative signing Onana this summer rather than the previous one is more of a sign of progress for United than a mistake.

On the subject of FFP, fair enough United have broken the rules and been caught. Where United differ from City here, Levenshulme Blue, is that we seemed to have admitted our mistakes, accepted the fine and moved on. Contrast that with City’s response which was to deny everything, refuse to cooperate and generate conspiracy theories. And also there’s nothing to asterisk us with as we’ve been dogshit in Europe during that time. “Perennially the bitch of Spanish Clubs*” doesn’t have much of a ring to it at all.

We have of course won a domestic trophy but haven’t been accused of any domestic breaches by the Premier League, EFL or FA (yet). Another way in which we differ to Manchester City 115.

They won a treble and they’re still bitter! LOL.
Ash Metcalfe

…Oh Levenshulme Blue you beautiful oil state puppet, thank you so kindly for teeing up this response.

Man United did indeed receive a fine for an FFP infraction described as “a minor break-even deficit”. We know the details of exactly what happened, the club had to report a loss of more than the allowed €15m each year due to the total €334m lost in revenue over covid. The Premier League had given clubs a little more leeway for the covid years in their FFP calculations but UEFA hadn’t and thus the fine.

Thing is United knew there was going to be a breach and there wasn’t anything that could be done, enough money hadn’t come in to cover costs. What they did next will shock you to your very core. They were honest about it. They submitted clean accounts to UEFA knowing a charge would come, they accepted the charge when it arrived and will pay the fine if they haven’t already.

United didn’t lawyer up to fight the governing body even knowing its own guilt. United didn’t start a PR campaign falsely protesting their innocence and accusing others of bias. United didn’t generate fake revenue through sponsors linked to the owners. United didn’t report an increase in revenue over covid when every other club was losing money. United didn’t buy a few feeder clubs so they could move players like cattle and generate inflated transfer revenue. United didn’t secretly pay staff off the books because they couldn’t afford that talent legally. United didn’t skew the global transfer market with unjustified money making it harder for everyone to compete. United didn’t intentionally and systematically subvert the rules and thus competition for 15 years and make a mockery of the sport we all love.

Manchester City did all of this and more. Perhaps that’s why it got a bit more press coverage.
Dave, Manchester

…I’m very glad The Man City Fan In The World believes that breaking financial rules resulting in a punishment that is accepted without question agrees with the rest of the world that is how football clubs should go about their business.

I can’t see that opinion changing in the near future AT ALL.
Tim Sutton (It’s not racist to be uninterested in Norwegian men’s football, John)

On moronic Chelsea
The news of Wesley Fofana’s latest surgery is incredibly disappointing for him. A young player plagued by injury is always terrible.

I’m glad Chelsea will be paying for his recovery, because no other club on the planet would pay £70 million for an injury prone young player with only a years worth of premier league experience, only for that player to miss most of their first season and now seemingly miss the rest of next season due to injury.

But it’s fine, it’s not like Chelsea sold Guehi and Tomori and now want to sell Chalobah. All players who were better than Fofana in the first place and were academy players and there for free.

Just because Chelsea have got Poch and sold a load of players doesn’t mean the owners are any less moronic than they were last year.
Will

Conor Gallagher to the Championship?
What he needs to do is say goodbye Chelsea and thanks for nothing! Then find a top-four Championship club.

Go in there like the messiah become a God and LEAD that club into the promised land.

I’m talking Dave Mackay or Roy Keane( for the kids).
Mo

Defending BT
Now that F365’s philosophical steakhouse (or should I say whataboutery eatery) on womens’ football, Saudi money etc is closed until lunch, I’m about to defend the morally indefensible.

BT Sport. The Channel that took our Champions’ League away.

BT’s been defined by the quip that they could double their subs if they added a mute button for Steve McManaman. Harsh but true. I don’t deny Macca is annoying, especially with his three former clubs dominating the Champs League in recent years.

But in all fairness BT was cheapish, the presenters were good and they rarely oversold anything like certain other channels. The documentaries could be decent too.

The Europa Nights theme tune idea was a banger and it had an decent range of European leagues – plus the UEFA comps – giving the continental football a bit of time to breathe with Jimbo and his preppy but always informed mob of wine-please pijos. Why they couldn’t have added La Liga to the mix I’m not sure.

So there was generally one Premier League game but really. How much football do you want? Are you really going to watch 5 Premier League games over a weekend, every weekend? Leave the house, mate. Give your mum a chance to pick up your hard tissues with dignity. Get some life into your puckered flesh. Go to the pub?

Ian Darke’s occasional butchery of the Spanish tongue was a price worth paying.
Quarantino, ITFC, Chairman of the Bored

READ: Ranking the TNT Sports punditry team from the dull Michael Owen to effervescent Joe Cole

A mail on all of the things
I know this has been a pretty tough summer for Liverpool fans. Two of their heroic club captains past and present are jumping aboard the Saudi gravy train and the fans seem to be coming to the realisation that maybe Liverpool captains are fallible after all. Maybe the sun doesn’t shine out of their arses and they follow the money like everyone else? It’s hard to stomach, but here we are.

Ed’s suggestion yesterday that Liverpool point-blank refuse to sell to Saudi clubs is akin to swimming in the face of a tsunami. The Gulf states are coming for football, big-time and by now I’m pretty much resigned to my club becoming just another Sheikh’s plaything. I am already at that acceptance stage of grief because, well, what can we do? And in any case, if Mr Jassim doesn’t succeed in buying United, he’ll simply go and pick up another Premier League club for a fraction of the cost, be it West Ham, Spurs or Everton. It is inevitable.

Anyway, a couple of other random thoughts, seeing as nobody asked for them: if Harry Maguire can’t be moved on this summer, I feel he’d be worth keeping because he would look so much better with a confident, dominant goalkeeper behind him. De Gea’s jitters seemed to spread through the whole defence, with Maguire the worst-affected, but he could be a totally different player with Onana’s effortless cool transmitting calmness to his defence. Or Maguire could be the same old lumbering lummox he’s always been. Just that he surely won’t be as bad as he looked with the hesitant de Gea behind him, is all.

As for this week’s hot topic of women’s football. I see it as very much like the Formula E to the men’s Formula 1. It looks and feels kind of, sort of similar, albeit newer, quieter and less ostentatious. It’s alright and I’ll watch from time to time, but it just doesn’t capture the imagination like its noisier, longer-established and more widely-followed counterpart. But that’s not to say it never will, Mr Nicholson! Or perhaps women’s football is just one of those things that has to capture your imagination in childhood for it to take hold permanently, in which case I’m unfortunately far too old…
Lee, staring middle-age in the face, ie the mirror

Why the Saudi Arabia fuss? It is just racism?
I’ve been reading about all the mental anguish and hand wringing over Saudi Arabia suddenly spending their billions on bringing big name footballers to their country and the point that I feel isn’t made is this:

Why are we so up-in-arms about this when there wasn’t nearly the same level of public outcry when footballer “sold their souls” to go play in Russia or China? I don’t remember Roberto Carlos receiving anywhere near the same level of scrutiny when he decided to go accept money from a Dagestani billionaire and play for Anzhi Makhachkala, a club based in an area of Russia with extreme homophobia.

Or when a whole host of players left during their peak years to go earn megabucks in China, a country that has suppressed the Uighur people for decades and paid adults so little in such awful conditions they commit suicide, as well as utilising child labour to build iPhones and other electronics. Where was the revilement then?

We really need to face facts and come to terms with the simple idea that we don’t mind all of our national treasures being bought out, as long as it’s not by brown people. Remember when everyone was going on about corruption being the reason Qatar got the World Cup? Don’t seem to remember anyone saying boo to a goose when Russia did the same.

Maybe the Saudi pro league will fall by the wayside just like the Russian and Chinese leagues did after a huge initial injection of money to try become a competitor to the established European leagues. I reckon it probably will. But the pernicious tone people are taking when talking and writing about the newest player in the world of league football demonstrates yet again our small-minded, little Englander mentality.
Anonymous

Letters to Aman
Aman decided to list a raft of crimes he has experienced in the west. I ask him this, what would Saudi do if those acts were committed there? Ah yes, execution. The price worth paying apparently.

How is Saudi currently building their cities and infrastructure? Ah yes, with the previously lambasted slave labor!

Countries can make their own rules, but name a western country dominated by a religion? That applies religious fundamental laws to its entire population? A country that deems a woman not a full person? A country that executes and murders dissidents and journalists? This is what you praise? Why do they execute dissidents if it is such a ‘TREAT’ as you proclaim?

I have lived in the UAE. I have had many first-hand conversations with Indians, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and more who have detailed their existence in the Middle East.

What do they detail? Being paid sub optimal, abusive work hours, working in obscenely hot temperatures, crammed bedrooms, abusive bosses, abusive customers,7 day work weeks, passports being held, no choice to return home, beatings, and murder. When asked about his day off, a taxi man replied “My day off is when my shift ends”. I met construction workers who worked in 50 degree weather for 100 dollars a month, 7 days a week.

Would a man living in the slums in India consider this a better deal? I cannot say. But most of the people I met were normal everyday people who were lied to to convince them to go there. They were offered double or triple, with accommodation and food included, to support their families. Families they would not see for years. Family they do not get to decide when they can go back. Many of them are then abused, tortured, financially stolen from and treated as sub-human.

You say the only ones who will suffer are “white western elites”, which just goes to show how you actually view those suffering in Asia. All you can say is that it’s only a minority of them and it “sucks”. Again, weird how it’s so miniscule that they have to kill all of those who speak up about it.

The west has a long history of crimes and atrocities, I will give you that. Even today, the US is currently(partially) attacking LGBTQ folks, and women. I will give that too. You honestly don’t care about this though. Their crimes then are used as justification for Saudi crimes today, so it is not the crime that bothers you, it’s who’s the finger pointed at, and who’s pointing it.

Many here who disagree with Saudi, also disagree with how the US was formed, how the UK ruled the world, what Germany did in WWII and what France has done to Africa. That’s not what’s being disputed, it’s what’s happening now, and is it acceptable? It appears for you at least, it is. Just as long as you get to see Ronaldo walking around a Mumbai pitch.

Fair enough, deciding to live in India and getting excited that good players will be coming to a stadium near you, but let’s not try to balance evil with evil, and act as if those you disagree with are all here for “Pretentious” reasons. Your “dream” is to see good footballers in India. Then accept it will come true because an oil rich nation who utilizes slave labor, is the conduit to make it come true. As said before, at least in my eyes from you, that this is the price worth paying, which I assume, was what those westerners you lambast, thought back then and think now.

Just because everyone has their price, doesn’t make it right.
Calvino (FYI, the pilgrims were the mass murderers)

…A thought experiment for dear Aman – if the so-called slave labor jobs in Saudi Arabia were so great that they could only “DREAM OF”, why would the Saudis & Qataris need to confiscate their passports and force them to stay against their will? Also, I hope you see the irony in your own words that “many” get scammed and suffer, but that’s a “small minority”.

Meanwhile, I see JN is continuing his hot streak of being the only one who can really drive traffic to the F365 mailbox other than Man Utd. Kudos to that, I guess.
Gaurav MUFC Amsterdam (also lived in India and seen drunk Britishers in Europe)

…Oh my, that was just hilarious in it’s absolute ignorance, and very revealing in it’s race-obsessed worldview, Aman, as those types of rants usually are.

Glad that question is answered guys, remember all the stories of disgraceful labour conditions and of brutal sexual abuse of females from India and other countries in these roles do not matter even if they are totally true, as per Aman, but only because the Saudis have more money than the local Indian economy for those people!

I am not sure that the rest of your community would agree with your assessment of what the price of the dignity of your people is worth, but thanks Aman, apparently as long as they are paid more than living on the streets of India, you can treat them however you want.

Now, it is in no way perfect, and that extremely strong stance, erm, I mean pathetic throwaway phrase, is no doubt Aman’s so-called defense to the above conclusion on his mail, no doubt a race-filled-rant while at it, but he immediately reverts back to blatantly implying that Saudi’s pay good money for the humiliation and abuse they dole out to workers from India and other South East Asian nations, and the money means everything apparently, just because more is more.

Oh Aman, shall we just pretend then for you, that you would even think of applying the same employment privileges and discretion to the “elite white” countries you despise so much when they employ Indian people, despite claiming I have no doubt, when you don’t feel safe around like-minded others like yourself, that you are all about “equality”?

Yeah, sure you would.

Lastly, the notion that prices will stay the same, as the Saudis run out of that valuable oil and have to start relying heavily on these investments such as sport to generate continuous masses of money to sustain their lifestyles is also just beyond stupid, I am not sure how an adult arrives at that conclusion, trying to make a price prediction for locally produced and owned content is already one thing, predicting “forever” when the product and its distribution rights are owned/controlled by a different nation with an insane need for more revenue soon, well that just betrays an outrageous ignorance of absolutely everything about modern business and commerce.

If they decide cricket is commercially viable and can be bothered with it, it would be the short format surely, with money spinners like the IPL, I wonder what we would see as the reaction from the sub-continent when cricket is hijacked and transplanted to the middle east, actually no one wonders, everyone can assure you it will be anything but calm and reasonable, and everyone knows that, it isn’t even worth trying to deny that mass hysteria to say the least would unfold.

Suddenly when the world class level sport isn’t being brought to your region, but taken from it, maybe you will catch on.
Manc In SA (In the interim feel free to stop watching EPL Aman, please stop CRYING, as you would say, and making out as if you are forced to do anything by anyone from England, really, it’s disgracefully dishonest ok. You are very free.)

Not turning on the women
To demonstrate that the women’s game is inferior to men’s have a look at when the tv rights to show it were agreed in the UK.

15th June – a month ago.

Do you think they’d wait for a month before the mens world cup to secure the TV rights??

It’s called the broadcasters knowing it wouldn’t be a big deal if it wasn’t shown with their main interest being driving down the price.
RJ

…A lot has been said in the last few mailboxes about women’s football and its quality etc etc, and whilst I agree with most of the reasons for not watching my own personal one is the commentators. They insist on calling everything “fantastic, brilliant, unbelievable”, it riles me when watching football at any level but is more apparent when what you are watching is clearly not a very high standard.

But what really boils my p*ss at the moment is the women’s teams seeking parity of pay with men and threatening to boycott the upcoming World Cup if they don’t get it!

The facts are that the men’s game generates a huge amount of money globally which dwarfs that of the women’s game. The two last World Cups saw the women generate £300 million but the men generated £3 BILLION, that’s 10 times more. Now obviously a lot of this is due to the Broadcasters and sponsors willing to pay what FIFA demand, but supply and demand are behind this.

Did Rick Astley get paid the same as Sir Elton John at Glastonbury? After all, they do the same job, singing, and were even performing at the same venue to a lot of the same people (presumably). Does the head of Monzo get the same pay as the head of HSBC? I doubt it. I could think of lots more examples but what it boils down to is how much money do they generate and are subsequently rewarded in relation to that.

Now I know my examples are of people who are ridiculously paid (except Rick) but that is not the point. And please don’t quote Wimbledon as an example because that defies logic.
Howard (I get paid the same as my female work colleague….we do the same job, to the same standard!) Jones

…I read Jonny Nicholson’s latest bollocks about misogyny being the sole reason for not watching the Women’s World Cup, what about plain old racism Jonny? Did you even consider that?

The BAME population of England and Wales is about 18%. Now I know this includes Wales but the population of both countries is about 60 million, with Wales accounting for 3.2 million or so of that amount. Even if we knock off the 3.2m Welsh folk, I don’t think that 18% figure will move too much – in fact it might even go up slightly – but let’s say 15% as a compromise for England alone?

Looking through the England Women’s squad I can see only 2 players from the 23 of a BAME heritage (Lauren James and Jess Carter)…I make that 8.7% representation.

I believe in 2023 that racism victim points still score more than misogyny victim points…so that is why I cannot watch this Women’s World Cup because the powers that be can condone this rampant racism and expect me not to care.

You might view me as misogynist Jonny but at least I’m not racist like you.

What’s next anyway? An article on the gender pay gap? I look forward to your deep dive into how the women’s team should get a sizeable, unearned chunk from the men’s generated revenue and how this should also apply to fat, ugly blokes who should also get a slice from the “ladies” generated income on OnlyFans.

Or, better still, stop virtue signalling, admit that your best articles were written a long, long time ago and just stop.
Will, Cumbria

Alternatively…
So far we have had dozens of mails from people about why they won’t watch the Women’s World Cup. It’s perfectly fine not to be interested of course, but I figure for a change we can have a mail about those like me who intend to watch it. Below are some reasons:

– It’s an underdog story. Women’s football was banned and suppressed and ignored and given very little investment for so long so it’s inspiring to watch how they have struggled to reach this point. We all love some kind of underdog story don’t we?

-The last women’s world cup was a lot of fun and had a lot of quality so I’m back for more.

-I don’t have the same in-depth knowledge of the women’s game that I do of the men but that makes it intriguing for me. Having fewer preconceptions and biases gives it an unpredictability that I find appealing.

-I know it’s a cliche by now but it’s so much less cynical than the men’s game. It’s not completely free of it of course, but the difference is absolutely huge.

-The fan culture is so much less toxic and so much more welcoming and pleasant whether on twitter or below the line comments on articles.

-It’s football and I just bloody love football in all its forms. An international tournament? Yes please.
Turiyo Damascene, Kigali, Rwanda