Tebas keeps up the heat on City

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Spanish league president Javier Tebas is keeping up the heat on Manchester City.  He has threatened to complain to the European Commission if Uefa do not take action against Manchester City as well as Paris Saint-Germain for an alleged breach of state aid rules.   If that complaint does not succeed, they will resort to the courts.

However, he has also opened a new front over five players loaned to Girona, which is part-owned by City. For their part, City have described some of Tebas’s comments as ‘pure fiction’ and they are taking legal advice.

No FFP investigation into City

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Manchester City are not to be the subject of a special investigation under Uefa financial fair play rules unlike Paris Saint-Germain.  In an unusual intervention, Javier Tebas, the president of La Liga complained that City were ‘irreparably damaging the football industry’ by creating an inflationary spiral. His intervention had the backing of Barcelona and Real Madrid.

Giving it large in Billericay

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From the age of nine until I went to university I lived in Billericay.  Billericay Town played on the Archer Hall field and had an annual dinner-dance in the Archer Hall. One player from the 1950s remembered playing a German team, Emmerich Rhine, there. ‘Billericay’ almost sounds like an Irish place name, but I think it is a corruption of the Norman-French ‘Ville de Cray’.  Other explanations are available.

The Billionaires Club

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James Montague has brought out a new book called The Billionaires Club which is about ‘the unstoppable rise of football’s super-rich owners.’   I have only dipped into it to so far but he is a journalist and can tell a story well.

It starts with a chapter about Crewe Alexandria and finishes with one about Portsmouth.  The main body of the book is about owners from Eastern Europe, America, Asia and the Middle East.

Uefa launches investigation into PSG

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Uefa has launched a formal investigation into whether Paris Saint-Germain has breached financial fair play rules following ‘recent transfer activity’.   There has been concern that the effectively state-owned super club has taken financial competition in European football on to a new level.   

There are indications that Uefra president Aleksander Ceferin is inclined to take a harder line on such matters than his predecessor Michel Platini.

Transfer window records are broken once again

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The fact that transfer window records have been broken once again is hardly a surprise.  Spending by Premiership clubs on the closing day was £210m compared with £155m last year as they scrambled to close last minute deals.  Overall spending was a record £1.4bn.

Some widely predicted transfers did not go ahead and some players are stuck in clubs where they are clearly unhappy, leading one commentator to describe the final day as ‘anti-climatic’.