By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions. We in turn value your personal details in accordance with our Privacy Policy.
Please log in or register. Registered visitors get fewer ads.
It is one possible way the Emiratis could punish the Premier League; by destroying it. If they can get the Qataris, Saudis and owners of the big clubs of Europe on board.
Right now, the people who run the Premier League will be feeling very nervous.
The Emiratis have enormous political and economic influence. Dubai is seen as the de facto capital of the Islamic World. If Britain upsets them, there will be consequences. If the other Arab nations back the Emiratis, those consequences will be even greater. You'd expect FIFA to back the Arab nations against the English Premier League every time.
Perhaps that's why the BBC has been taking a largely pro-Man City line in their reports.
The Emiratis going after the Premier League now: threatening them with legal action. What sort of punishment do you think the Premier League will get? It's certainly a battle of heavyweights: The UAE vs the Premier League.
They're complaining about leaks and damaging reporting in the media. Now, where have we seen that before? They're also saying the tribunal was not impartial and fair. It was a bit fairer than ours. There wasn't an ex-Man United player on it.
Have you noticed that nobody from Man City is saying sorry? I doubt they ever will as they'll never admit they did anything wrong. They want the Premier League to apologise to them.
Right now, they'll be thinking about what punishment they can dish out to the Premier League and anyone who supports their case against Man City.
Ironically, North American sports have sorted it out with their squad wage caps and draft recruitment system to create a level playing field for teams.
Although we can't have a college draft system here, we could do something similar and squad wage caps to be agreed by a majority of teams in a league would be possible. What it means in America is that teams have to share the best players fairly equally.
I posted this on another thread, but it seems pertinent here.
England had to change their flight plans to Mexico because if they didn't get there in time to make their final training session open to the public, they'd have been breaking the FIFA rule, which is the exact opposite of the EFL rule. So, is having a secret training session cheating? Having rules in the game which totally contradict each other shows how arbitrary and ridiculous this case is.
In the World Cup and Champions League, teams making their final training sessions open to the public is the norm. Meanwhile, the EFL has gone off in completely the opposite direction from all other football authorities and leagues. Sport should be fair and open; nothing should be done secretively. The FA should rein them in.
FIFA is a much higher authority than the EFL so perhaps their rule should be considered more important by the FA. FIFA gave Bielsa their Fair Play Award at the end of his 'spygate' season.
Ironically, England had to change their flight plans to Mexico as if they didn't get there in time to make their final training session open to the public, they'd have been breaking the FIFA rule, which is the exact opposite of the EFL rule. So, would you call having a secret training session cheating? Having rules in the game which totally contradict each other shows how arbitrary and ridiculous this case is.
FIFA is a much greater authority than the EFL so perhaps their rule should be considered more important by the FA. FIFA gave Bielsea their Fair Play Award at the end of his 'spygate' season.
You underestimate the lengths the legal profession will go to in order to drag out a lucrative case like this. The end may still be far away.
City have a very long history of financial cheating. Their first major trophy was won with it. After their punishment, it was 25 years before they won another one.
"in 1904 , after allegations of illegal payments, that year's FA Cup winners Manchester City had a former chairman, the secretary, two directors and 17 players suspended and fined."
City will continue fighting these charges, possibly for years to come. Eventually, the offences will seem less significant as they recede further into the past.
The Russians are enormously proud of their literature. Sholokhov, Turgenev, Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn are also worth exploring. I spent the COVID lockdown trying to improve my Russian, but it's nowhere near good enough to read Russian literature in anything other than English translations, and at my age, I doubt it ever will be. But, what motivated me was trying to learn the lyrics of these songs (not to sing them though!):
Many Russian operas are based on works by Tolstoy and Pushkin, including Joidevivre's favourite, Queen of Spades.
"The Road to Berlin, sequel to the Road to Stalingrad by Prof John Erickson."
It sounds like he's following in the footsteps of Antony Beevor's Stalingrad and Berlin, which are both very good.
I don't know if you also like first-hand Second World War accounts, but if you do, The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer and With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene Sledge are two of the best books I've ever read.
Let us know how you get on with A Confederacy of Dunces. It is one of the few books I started but never finished. It gets great reviews and is my favourite comedian Billy Connolly's favourite book, but I just couldn't get into it.
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk, so if I post anything stranger than usual, you'll know why.
The opening of A Strangeness in My Mind is indeed a strange one. A man writes from Istanbul to a beautiful girl he remembers in his home village and they decide to elope, so he goes to the village in the dead of night while she is brought to him in a car driven by a friend. It is dark and her face is veiled. After they leave he eventually sees her face and it turns out she is not the beautiful girl he thought he was writing to, but her ugly sister. He doesn't have the heart to tell her that he made a mistake and so it continues...
By continuing to use the site, you agree to our use of cookies and to abide by our Terms and Conditions.
