Zeb, thanks for some of the insight about FFP, particularly liked the argument you had with the City fan. It seems to me that the real issue here is the "related parties" clause and how oligarchs and sheikhs (especially) seem to by pass this due to the complete ignorance of the regions, I will speak a little more on the region which is a lot closer to home and the people that rule it. It is a complete a farce that Etihad or Qatar Museum Authority are not related parties to Sheikh Mansoor or Qatar Investment Authority respectively, indeed these have both set up separate companies with separate management etc.. At the end of the day the money comes from one pot and anyone who has spend any time in the region will know that the decisions lie in the hands of a maximum of 3 people and that the CEOs of all these companies would never make a major decision without their approval or more accurately their orders. This region isn't Europe or other parts of the western world, there is no such thing as "Emir accountability", they do as the please and have full and total control of their nations, so when someone tells me that Qatar Tourism Authority is separate to the Qatar Sports Investment, I ask them where the money comes from and the same goes for the Man City deals with Etihad. It is a big farce which has been carefully calculated by Magic Circle and White Shoe solicitors so that legally Uefa cannot do jack shit about it but they obviously know that this very French theoretical piece of Uefa Regulation was in fact only something that people will look back at and think "oh that was cute" but could never be applied to owners from countries who are quite literally owned by them as everyone is a related party in major transactions.
