ESL back on?

Btw, when I say Chelsea & City wouldn't have been involved I mean from the start. The rollout would've been two other teams to make up the 12

Because there’s a difference between creating a competition that excludes City, Chelsea and PSG, and creating a competition that threatens the existence of the CL - it’s why so many other clubs were invited. City and Chelsea add legitimacy to the competition - just as the Milan clubs do - but they are in no way clubs in which the existence of the competition relies on their inclusion - this is quite obviously not the case with Man United, Liverpool and Arsenal.

This isn’t about reform imo. Truth is these 3 clubs have all overspent their means in recent yrs and badly handled their finances. It’s all about satisfying egos and maintaining their status quo.

Depends how ambitious/greedy Perez is, and the evidence points to him being extremely ambitious... to insane degrees in fact

If his intention is the create a league which rivals the CL (not surpass it) to generate enough money so Real get out & stay out of their financial hole for the foreseeable, then yes it could stand without a few top clubs... as long as Barcelona & United are involved you've got a competition that'll draw. But if he wants it to bring football into the future & all that galaxy brain nonsense, Chelsea & City are essential. We just are. Unless you marketed it very specifically to exclude us, which would be theoretically achievable/play the history angle, we'd be omissions that can't just be swept under the carpet especially with Bayern having zero possibility to be involved.

Our position as the two clubs that hold the fate of it is solely predicated on the fact we'll be the hardest to convince, it's circumstantial.

I’m not saying it’s designed to exclude, I’m saying they aren’t essential. Especially compared to the three clubs that I’ve mentioned. Chelsea and City followed for fear of missing out. Which shows you weren’t that hard to convince to begin with. Chelsea, and especially City, just do not have the popularity of the other clubs. I really don’t get how you’ve come to such a bizarre conclusion about Chelsea and City’s importance in this whole thing. The actions of all the clubs just do not place City and Chelsea in any position by which they’re deciding its fate.

And the fundamental issue here is that the fanbases of United, Liverpool and Arsenal were so against it that it facks it before it’s even started - City and Chelsea dropping out first wasn’t the major issue. If you cannot get those fanbases on board - collectively by far the biggest in the country - then it’s not getting off the ground, and this is what happened.

Different interpretations of the same information. The fear of missing out is valid in the sense both of us participating in competitions without the other 10 clubs involved would affect our bottom line because those competitions would be weaker. That's got no correlation of our importance to the project's legitimacy without us both, all it shows is we were both too stupid to foresee this idea was never going to be received well.

We're hugely successful clubs today who play in the most watched sporting league in the world, without us the competition's ability to draw interest & money diminishes regardless of the size of our fanbases. More Real/United/Arsenal, etc... will tune in to watch their teams vs. Chelsea/City then to watch them play a team like Roma (random example). We have degrees of name credibility the league simply wouldn't get with a substitute.

You're also overestimating the role fan backlash played in stopping this I think. The political backlash was the kicker, pressured by the fan backlash I'm sure but without political intervention I think this thing's happening. The younger fans (the one's they wanted to grab with this) would've moved on & pumped money into it, and those very fans understand a world where Chelsea & Man City are monster clubs.

Btw I'm off to work. Feel free to reply if you want but I'll be off for approx 4-5 hours

But if Chelsea and City are the monster clubs, that decide its fate, they wouldn’t have just fallen in line for fear or missing out. They’d have been key stakeholders in the formation of the league, but they weren’t because their importance to the project wasn’t as big as the big three. If fear of missing out was all that was needed to convince them, a position on the board wouldn’t have been passed up. There’s just nothing that has happened that suggests they have the importance you are saying. And I think you’re taking giant leaps to make out they are.

I’m not overestimating the importance of the fans. I don’t think they were the deciding factor, but they had a huge influence on it - and populist Bojo doesn’t get involved without that backlash, it was a political open goal for him - plus you’ve got to consider that without the three largest fanbases (Chelsea obviously play a part in this as well) having an interest in this project it loses its wider appeal.

And I wouldn’t pay much heed to Perez’s PR bullshiiiiit about attracting young fans. It’s just another thing he’s thrown out there to legitimise his bogus claims of saving football.

Henry, The Glazers, the Kroenke's & the Juventus guy got the board positions because it's their baby, their project along with Perez. If any of those guys were owners at Chelsea or City they still would've got those positions & been at the forefront of it's creation. Barcelona needed this more than anyone, more than Real, and the concept certainly needs them to work, and they didn't have a representative on the board. I don't attach any relevance to that what so ever.

I repeat, if Perez thought this thing could take off without Chelsea & City, knowing we'd be reluctant to sign up for it cos Chelsea don't need it & the last thing City's ownership desires is negative PR, it would've! He's had aspirations of forming something like this for approx 20 years, you think he's allowing two potential flight risks to put their names to it if he didn't need us? We both panicked and massively underestimated the negative response.

It's really simple. Perez needed Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea & Man City in this thing, the standings in Europe of all four today are too big not to have them, Arsenal's a grey area but certainly wouldn't hurt. Luckily for him United, Liverpool & Arsenal have owners who've wanted to pioneer a project like this since taking business stakes in football clubs so they're no problem. Chelsea & City don't, they have owners not against the principle (they signed after all) but who'll need a reason. Fear worked 1st time, it won't work a 2nd (you'd think anyway). But because of that in the fight to prevent it we've become the de facto most important players.

The young fans (of all clubs in & out of the SL) would've been the only one's who'd swallow this with time, the older fans never will. I'm sure even Perez isn't out of touch enough to know that.

Bartomeu was on the board, he just got kicked out of Barca. The reason these clubs are at the forefront is because they are needed the most, it’s just simply not the case with Chelsea and City, and it wasn’t hard to convince them to join clearly.

The whole point is to get as many of the biggest clubs in Europe as possible to join, but there’s clearly a hierarchy and clubs which are fundamental to the project. I’m sorry but you’ve not put across any convincing arguments that City and Chelsea are two such clubs, and that they are somehow kingmakers in the project.

Perez is certainly out of touch, and you only have to listen to crap he spouts to realise this. But even if he isn’t, we know he’s a liar. The whole thing behind attracting young fans - like this gives City and Chelsea more importance to the project - is a load of nonsense, because there’s no truth in it.

But whatever, you’re welcome to believe what you like. We’re obviously not going to agree on this.