Leicester City

8 Point gap between 2 and 3rd already is quite something

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Preston, rather tellingly, had 2 games against the top 2 in the last 5 days and got beaten in both.

This time last Friday, Preston were unbeaten in the league! Things can change quite quickly in the Championship.

The Ipswich- Leicester clash isn’t for a while, I believe.

Well I don’t know about actually winning the league, but Burnley broke the record last season for earliest promotion. So if Leicester do it quicker - which they won’t - it won’t actually be that impressive now.

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https://twitter.com/SamWallaceTel/status/1770875449129726372

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Premier League not fucking about with these changes. It’s not even certain Leicester get promoted this season given the lead they’ve squandered.

Potential Dewsbury-Hall bargain buy scenario

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Strange timing. Winder if they uncovered something they tried to keep hidden…

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Let’s hope the “not fucking about” includes the Autumn hearing over City’s 2,000 breaches.

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Yeah not fucking about unless it’s Chelsea or City.

Everton, Forrest and Leicester don’t bring eyeballs to the league. Let’s see if they’re willing to drop the hammer on those other two.

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To be fair to the PL the process is they do an investigation, make the charge and then hand the process over to an independent commission. Its kind of out of their hands at that point. If that commission says they need more time what can they do but agree to that.

If and when Chelsea and City have sanctions applied the strong nature of the process will likely ensure the punishment sticks.

Yes, there’s far more for the PL’s lawyers to investigate with City.

The Everton and Forest ones are like fixed penalty notices for road traffic offenses, There’s nothing subjective, the evidence is out there, here’s your punishment.

City’s is more like a financial crime case with forensic and financial experts picking over the labyrinthine company structure, lawyers with different specialties looking at the various strands of the alleged breaches and possibly a KC sitting over it all co-ordinating things and providing the EPL with frequent merits assessments for each of the 115 breaches.

Wouldn’t rule out the HMRC’s involvement as there’s more than a wiff of money laundering.

It’ll be a miracle if it’s wrapped-up in 2024.

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If one breach is worth 4-6 points, 115 breaches…

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With Everton, Forest and Leicester all being punished quickly, it must mean that because FFP are taking so long over Man City and Chelsea, they’ll both be getting relegated as well as a transfer ban. :grinning:

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The City case was always going to take years to resolve. Theirs goes way beyond FFP.

I know you’re just joking but it can’t work like that for city and hopefully won’t.

If we simply do 115x4 all it will do is ensure a single relegation and they’d bounce back immediately.

Needs to be something more severe, even if it’s stripping certain titles. I can’t really see what the options would be outside of that, you can’t arbitrarily drop them to a certain division and a fine seems incredibly ironic and pointless.

Man City should be docked points at the start of every season until it makes up the difference/total for the 115 charges (assuming they’re guilty of all, which they won’t be - they’ll appeal each one).

e.g. the charges spread over ~8 seasons right? Assuming 4 points per charge: 460/8 = 57.5 points deducted per season for 8 years, plus relegation to League 2.

Though I imagine even with this, they’ll be back in the EPL in a few years. Not even sure this is harsh enough for these bastards.

If they were relegated multiple divisions, then you would have to imagine that players would not all hang around and they would have to meet the financial restraints of the lower divisions, so simply coming back up would not be as simple as it sounds I dont think.

For example being relegated to EFL league one, would mean no stars would stick around for 2 seasons there. So feasibly they could then be reliant on academy players - would the top talents stick around? Such a punishment would have consequences and ensure a rebuild likely necessary…

Can still see them getting off far more lightly than that though

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The most effective punishment for Man City and Chelsea should be a complete transfer ban for several seasons and relegation because fining them is pointless.
It would be good to see their titles stripped from them but it won’t happen.

If the PL are lenient and don’t give them a transfer ban and relegation, then the clubs that have already had points deducted for far less, have every right to ask why.

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Agreed with you both there.

I recall the Everton CEO/Chairman saying that “we will be watching how cases with other clubs will be handled with great interest”.

Need to get the popcorn out, this is going to be juicy :popcorn:

I just hope that we don’t get caught by FFP one day, I heard we were at the limits of FFP this year due to our spending & lack of UCL football and poor player sales for the past 3 seasons till now.

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I’d expect at least 50% of those charges get dropped. That’s still around 57 charges. Let’s be generous and drop another 50% percent—thats around 23 charges.

23 x 5 (average point deduction) = 115pts

Could it be possible that Man City get hit with this many charges and NONE OF THEM stick!?

The most serious charges they face are essentially fraud, rather than falling foul of FFP.