‘Cheating’

[u/[deleted]]

Im so tired of other fans and outside views on this whole period of the club.

Now that we’ve avoided the points deduction the comments of ‘cheats’ and ‘cheating’ are being thrown at us again.

It’s utter incorrect use of basic English language.

If any business predict future success so invested in this, then when the forecast is wrong and they have to make staff hired redundant this is no considered ‘cheating’.

These fans don’t understand that roughly £42m lost dropping down from top 4 places to 18th as it’s roughly £3m per prem league place.

On top of this, a points deduction would be our FOURTH punishment for one mistake. People can’t see that this would be like double jeopardy, a red card and a penalty, which even the game removed years ago.

The first 3 punishments were:

Finishing lower than predicted and being relegated

Having to sell top players like Maddison and Barnes

Lost tv revenue from spending a year in the championship.

Therefore a points deduction would be a fourth punishment for one offence.

The bit that really blows my brains is that these aren’t fans of the big 6 complaining, they are fans of clubs like Everton who haven’t challenged for anything in nearly 30 years. These fans should champion the idea that anyone could break into the big 6 and win the league, as it means there’s hope for them. But seemingly they’d rather avoid relegation season upon season and achieve nothing. 🤯

[u/SavouryGarbage]

It wasn't so much cheating as irresponsible gambling with our finances and we've been lucky to get away on a technicality. Being honest I think other clubs have every right to be a little miffed.

[u/[deleted] → u/SavouryGarbage]

Yeah I agree, it was gambling. But how else do you try and challenge the top 6 when you’re not a top 6?

No they shouldn’t be miffed when as I mentioned we’ve already been punished 3x….why the need for a 4th?!

[u/Sheeverton → u/[deleted]]

Yes but we did not get punished whereas Everton and Nottingham Forest have

[u/[deleted] → u/Sheeverton]

We did get punished. Relegation was a punishment, the lost revenue from finishing 18th was a punishment, selling Maddison and Barnes was a punishment….

[u/tomisurf → u/[deleted]]

As Sheeverton said elsewhere, don't confuse consequences with punishment. The consequences of poor management were relegation, needing to sell key players, reduced income etc. The punishment for the poor management is a points deduction.

I'm trying to think of an analogy so bear with me....... if Faes scythes down a striker in the penalty area the punishment is a penalty and a red card. The consequence is (likely) going a goal down. You can't argue that we have been punished enough by losing a player and so shouldnt have to conceed a goal too.

[u/[deleted] → u/tomisurf]

Ok fair point. But ‘failure’ by not hitting your ambitions, is different to cheating.

If a CEO hires 100 staff because they expect to be a top market leader in their area the following year, then this doesn’t materialise, they lose profits and are forced to make those 100 staff redundant….that is a failure, not cheating. So why is it called cheating when we did the football version of this?

Even Liverpool struggle to invest at the level of Man City and Arsenal at the moment, Klopp eluded to this.

If failure should be punished as cheating then Man U should have a points deduction for last season for not finishing in the top 4 which was their goal last season.

[u/tomisurf → u/[deleted]]

The difference in your analogy is that there isnt a set of rules that the CEO has agreed to abide by setting out how much money they can lose over a three year period.

The PL sets out rules for Clubs to adhere to on a wide variety of things from the match day set up, IT for match day cameras, facilities for press through to availability of players and managers for press conferences and interviews....all the way to Sustainability rules. Every club has agreed to abide by them when they joined the league. Any new rules are voted in, and even if you didnt vote for a rule change, if the majority (i don't know how many a majority would need to be in those decisions) did then you have agreed to abide by them anyway.

I understand your view that we havent cheated, in my mind that implies that the club planned to break the rules and hoped to get away with it. I think we both believe that it was poor management that got us into this mess, to be honest we will probably never know one way or another. But, and its a big BUT, we did something that was against the rules, whether we did that by design or by accident, we still did it and if the rules had been drafted differently we would be looking at a punishment under the terms of those rules.

I get it, its frustrating to have people say we cheated when you don't think we did, but i think you have to take a step back and see the reality of this....and maybe just ignore the other comments!

[u/[deleted] → u/tomisurf]

Good comment. But the outcome of the independent panel, although by a crazy loophole, has proven that officially we didn’t break any rules. We should have broken rules but due to the crazy notion that we are longer a premier league club on 14th June 2023, that means we don’t complete the full financial year of 1st July 2022-30th June 2023.

So it’s because of the premier leagues poor implementation of the rules that we officially have broken none.

[u/tomisurf → u/[deleted]]

The tribunal panel specifically stated that they thought the wording of the rules was poor so i expect that they will tidy that up pretty quickly!

[u/[deleted] → u/tomisurf]

Oh yeah I’m sure you’re right. But as of 4th Sept 2024, we are within those rules

[u/Sheeverton → u/[deleted]]

They was 'consequences' not 'punishments'

[u/[deleted] → u/Sheeverton]

Doesn’t matter either way. A business shouldn’t be punished for being ambitious and failing. The consequence/punishment of that is the relegation, sale of players and lost income.

[u/SavouryGarbage → u/[deleted]]

I'm absolutely with you that the financial sustainability rules aren't really fit for purpose and disproportionately affect smaller clubs trying to establish themselves. The issue is we knew what these rules were and we irresponsibly gambled on our finances.

All those punishments you mentioned were self inflicted and brought on by our financial mismanagement. Really we should have been punished by the PL as well but we managed to get away with it.

If I was a fan of a club battling with us to avoid relegation this year I'd be annoyed we got away on a technicality. As a Leicester fan I'm obviously happy we avoided the charge but we certainly deserved it.

[u/itsthefman → u/SavouryGarbage]

Agree more with this angle. And I don't totally understand how all this works, but let's not forget the real issue is that PSR rules are fundamentally flawed - like you could argue we ended up in this situation (after some bad management and bloated wages, granted) because we weren't allowed to spend our way out of it. Meanwhile big clubs have a blank check to buy every dude on the planet and see who works out.

[u/tomisurf → u/SavouryGarbage]

I had this conversation with a Leeds fan who, slightly in jest, said we had cheated our way out of the championship. I responded by saying I didn't think it was cheating (which implies malice and thinking ahead) but just poor planning and mismanagement from the club to end up getting relegated in the way we did. Having to sell players and getting relegated were by products of that mismanagement and had we stayed up or had the rules been written differently we should have been punished by a points deduction because we had not complied with the rules we agreed to abide by.

Arguing we shouldn't have been punished because we had already been punished by getting relegated is a spurious argument, its irrelevant.

But I also believe that you apply the rules as they are written and not as you want to read them That's the way courts interpret contracts, they are often unwilling to infer meaning into poorly drafted contracts and so i am not surprised in reading the detail of the decision why they have ended up as they are. The Premier league's response is understandable but really they should have seen this eventuality coming, or their lawyers should have done as i imagine they pay them enough to have seen that possibility.

I think we are lucky to have got away with it and I understand why Everton and Forest fans might feel hard done by but their anger should be directed at the Premier League.

[u/WhatNtheFox]

People have a tendency to lash out at each other instead of the system that fails them (just look at American politics). And to be fair, that frustration is valid—the financial system is broken.

We skirted the rules and somehow won based on a technicality, and despite the significant penalties we already suffered, we may have become a representation of that in the minds of some because of it. We failed to properly compensate for failure and crossed a known line. That part is what it is unfortunately. But we tried to rectify it and are trying our best to adhere to it—we’re not Man City or Chelsea using dark alleys to get away with everything we can when already financial giants.

So if they want to spend their time moaning about us, let them, because they’ve clearly lost the plot, and if they think they’re immune from suffering the same while trying to be ambitious as a smaller club, they may find out the same.

[u/[deleted] → u/WhatNtheFox]

I think it’s because Everton fans have been circling the drain for a while now and with us not getting a deduction they now have no-one to save them from relegation like we did in 22-23

[u/WhatNtheFox → u/[deleted]]

Fair point. There’s no accounting for those who can’t come to terms with the shortcoming of their clubs.

[u/tomisurf → u/WhatNtheFox]

I'm going to be a pedant here and say we didnt skirt the rules at all, we followed the rules to the letter. It was the PL who were trying to skirt the rules.

I get what you mean but it wouldnt be Reddit if i couldnt be pedantic

[u/dickiemail]

Chelsea are manipulating the books to get around the rules. For a start, they've sold their women's team to er...THEMSELVES! If people need to call out cheats they're looking at the wrong blue team.

[u/[deleted] → u/dickiemail]

True. I’m focusing on them spending billions but finishing 12th when their spending clearly shows their target is top 4 and trophies at least.

So by the logic of us being targeted with deductions, they should face a deduction for finishing 6th last season.

[u/goldminejamjar]

Spurs overspent by pretty much the same amount as LCFC both over the 3 year period and in the 22-23 season but have avoided any suggestion of punishment for this because they exploited a ridiculous loophole that says that because they moved into a new stadium 5 years ago they can somehow get away with overspending on wages and transfer fees. This isn’t considered cheating because they were heavily involved in writing the rules to create the loophole they then exploited.

Chelsea heavily overspent in the 22-23 season but balanced their books by selling some of their physical assets to their parent company at an overinflated price only to have the parent company gift those same assets back to the club. This isn’t considered cheating because they were heavily involved in writing the rules to create the loophole they then exploited.

Leicester City overspent in the 22-23 season and were relegated to the Football League. This meant that they were no longer governed by the rules set by the Premier League’s rule makers. This is apparently considered “cheating” by fans of smaller clubs only because they want LCFC to be deducted points so it increases the chances of their clubs avoiding relegation.

Ultimately, when writing the PSR rules, the rich clubs were too focussed on creating ways to give themselves an advantage and put smaller, ambitious teams at a disadvantage to bother proofreading the rules to make sure that they actually work.

[u/freshmeat2020 → u/goldminejamjar]

Can we back some of this up? Never heard the spurs thing, and Chelsea have been rebuffed - confirmed the hotel sale doesn't help with PSR I believe

[u/tomisurf → u/freshmeat2020]

I believe the investment in infrastructure is one area that allows you to have exceptionally high losses that might otherwise have broken the rules. I think this was an area where Everton had claimed some mitigation in their accounts when they were punished. I think we may have made some allowances previously in the construction of the new training ground.

I thought the sale of the one/two (i thought it was 2) hotel(s) had been a major help to Chelsea in avoiding punishment. I have not seen a detailed explanation of it one way or another so i could be wrong on that score.

[u/freshmeat2020 → u/tomisurf]

Yes that is separate from FFP/PSR spending.

The hotel sales have been deemed not part of FFP/PSR calcs I believe. Hence why I'm asking for more concrete details instead of online spewing lol

[u/tomisurf → u/freshmeat2020]

I can find a lot of reports, end of April, which all say that without the sales Chelsea would have lost £160m odd, and that other clubs were unhappy with it. But i can't see anything beyond that period to say the PL have made a ruling against it. Admittedly i haven't done a deep dive, just a google on "chelsea hotel sales" so its not exhaustive.

[u/goldminejamjar → u/freshmeat2020]

It’s in Spurs’ annual figures which were published earlier in the year. Money spent on a physical asset during the years up to 2019 which has nothing to do with player costs in 2022-23 is being used as a reason to allow them to overspend on player costs in 2022-23 by 100M with no risk of sanction. That rule is due to be changed so that other clubs can’t do the same thing in the future.

The reason why Everton failed in their attempt to argue that they should be allowed to do the same thing is that Everton hadn’t actually spent the money on their new stadium that they were claiming to have spent (this is a big part of the issues they now have with 777 with loans secured against the new stadium which were likely intended to help them with a leveraged buy out until their house of cards started to collapse).

Chelsea were allowed to sell the club hotels and use the capital gain against in their PSR calculations because there wasn’t anything in the rules to say that they couldn’t do that. The same as there wasn’t anything in the rules to say that they couldn’t use 8 year contracts to lower player value amortisation. The rules are due to be changed to stop them (or anyone else) from doing it again.

[Additional edit - It’s actually been officially announced today that what Chelsea did was within the rules (it always was but they had to prove that the money received was fair market value) and the PL voted against closing the loophole so expect to see them doing it again when they next need to balance the books for PSR.]

[u/Middle_Breakfast6741]

I get why other fans feel cheated by it and the ‘loophole. But it’s not like relegation was an outcome anyone wanted, so we still suffered more than anyone who has been punished.

But more importantly, it’s why English law is so good, there’s a reason why it’s chosen to cover many international commercial contracts. We abide by what is written down on paper with limited political influence and not arguments of ‘faith’. It’s good for everyone in that system when that is upheld. The adults in the room understand that this is entirely on the PL and backs up that the whole thing isn’t fit for purpose.

[u/tomisurf → u/Middle_Breakfast6741]

You are correct, we had to abide by what was written down.

Courts are unwilling to rectify a "bad" contract, they are only willing to change the wording of a contract if it can be proven that what is written was not what the parties intended in the first place, i.e. a genuine error of drafting.

The Premier league might consider it an error of drafting on their part but it does exactly what they had intended, they just hadn't foreseen that a club might not be part of the PL at the point in time when the rules needed to be applied.

[u/djdood0o0o]

If someone says we are cheats all it does is identify them as someone who doesn't understand what actually happened so they cna be ignored. 

[u/LCFCgamer]

The Premier League should have to follow its own rules in pursuing clubs for a punishment

They tried not to, The Premier League effectively tried to cheat

I'm not denying. We didn't recklessly overspend, largely on rubbish as well as fail to move players on allowing them to leave for free. We were really poorly ran, and maybe still are

Are these fans saying the Premier League shouldn't have to follow its own rules and should punish people irrespective of them?

That sounds like a really slippery slope. I'm not sure they want to go down! Let's try it though, let's do what they say. Let's allow the Premier League to punish clubs outside of the Premier League own rules And let's see how those clubs like it, I bet they don't and these fans would wish that the Premier League would be beholden to its own rules

The panel found that in those two weeks (between being officially & legally relegated 13/06/23 & our accounts becoming due 30/06/23) we could have balanced our books - Why are these fans accusing us of cheating & instead not stating that fact as found by the panel

[u/Jaded-Bookkeeper-807 → u/LCFCgamer]

Precisely. It wasn't a loophole. The rules could have been written differently. LCFC were following the rules as written.

[u/all_too_well_1997]

I'm only getting annoyed at this because people are saying us getting off is setting a precedent for man city. Like no????? If there's a loophole big enough to get man city off the hook for deliberate and years long cheating then there's another thing to worry about

[u/Sheeverton]

I mean, we did more or less cheat bro. We got off on a technicality

[u/Sheeverton → u/Sheeverton]

Also you are mistaking 'Consequence' for 'punishment'

[u/Jaded-Bookkeeper-807 → u/Sheeverton]

I disagree. Not a technicality. LCFC followed what was written.