‘Nothing short of destroying’ Manchester City ‘is acceptable for what they’ve done’
If the Mailbox had its way, Manchester City would very possibly be entirely scrubbed from history altogether. Force them to do a Wrexham.
Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.
‘Good on Manchester City’
I’ve been following the Man City furore like everyone else. And I must say I’ve done a 180 in the last few days. I’ve revisited some of the documented concerns about FFP rules themselves. The rules state that any club can spend 85% of revenue on new players.
Assuming Manchester United has a revenue of £666m that means they can spend £566.5m a year on players. By the same token, Nottingham Forest has a revenue of £222m so they can only spend £188.7m a year on players.
WTF?! Manchester United can consistently spend THREE TIMES more than another club in the League on players, and this is meant to be “fair”? How are Forest or anyone else ever supposed to catch up to the Big 4? It’s perverse for “smaller” clubs to be cheering FFP given that FFP disproportionately affects them in other ways too: Forest overspent by ~£30m and got 4 points deducted! £30m is an amount that Manchester united could consume with ease under FFP.
This is all while the same teams are trying to compete with one another in the SAME League.
Good on Manchester City, a Championship club at best, for challenging the Elite Clubs at the top who don’t want such plucky little upstarts upsetting their cushy little protectionism racket. And for all those elite club’s fans now bemoaning the “joy “ they were robbed of by Man City “cheating”, you had nothing to say about your protectionism racket when everything was rosy did you?
Regards,
Colin.
The Red Cartel
Let’s play a game and pretend we’re intergalactic football loving aliens and describe two ownerships and the clubs they took over and they have to figure which one is part of a cartel.
The first club was bought for 200mil in 2009 and sat in 6th place in the premier league. The owners proceeds to spend over 150mil in their first season in charge and 3.64 billion on transfers since then bringing them an unprecedented period of dominance winning 25 major trophies and 8 premier leagues.
They have been found out to have been fraudulently funding their club by an independent committee to the tune of billions of pounds, keeping payments off the books, flying premier league referees to the owners country and paying them passive sums of money to referee meaningless games weeks before massive premier league fixtures where said referees have highly contentious decisions in favour of their club.
So far so plucky minnows right?
Next up is a club who was bought for 300mil in October 2010 in 19th position in the premier having nearly run into administration the previous year.
These owners (much to the chagrin of their supporters have followed a strict policy of only spend what you earn spending approximately 2billion across their ownership and winning two premier leagues and one champions league in the process.
Both clubs now boast 180 and 200 millions followers on social media collectively.
Can you spot the plucky minnow’s challenging the elite?
I’m honestly getting sick of this. The better part of me wants to give City’s supporters the benefit of the doubt in all of this but S.’s email yesterday did it for me.
Now that City are finally caught out in nearly two decades of lying, cheating and fraud, consistently acting in bad faith with regards to the other clubs in the league, the league and all football fans, their PR machine cranks into gear and trys to portray this as some sort of Robin Hood attack on the Sheriff of Nottingham.
But they’re not Robin Hood, they’re not even the Sheriff, they’re the king and Queen and everything in the country, in their fans eyes 3.64 billion is little more than 1.2billion. Cheating hundreds of millions of rival fans out of some of the best moments of their lives is justifiable by some flimsy cartel fantasy (the only cartel Liverpool were part of when their cheating started was one of incompetence.)
I’m done with people who think they’re above the rules, above the laws, above countries and who can just do whatever they like. We might never see the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk, Trump or Putin get their comeuppance in our lifetimes but maybe just maybe these guys will and that for me gives me hope that maybe there is some justice left in this world which sometimes feels like the truth belongs to the man with the most money, the best PR company, the most powerful algorithm or the most weapons.
I’ll say it again, you guys suck.
Dave LFC
Hi
In all the fallout from the Man City saga the red cartel gets referenced as the big bad fiend the brave blue clubs were fighting against.
I have always assumed this is Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal. Liverpool have won the league twice this century (and nearly went bust), Arsenal have won 3 (and spent around 15 years paying off their stadium which reduced their spending power), Man U were dominant in the first decade but have won none in the last 13 years (and needed to sack the tea lady to stop going bust, according to Sir tax exile).
It doesn’t strike me that they have nailed this cartel thing to allow the plucky little upstarts (and Leicester) dominate the league for nigh on 20 years.
Mel – Dublin, Berlin, Athlone Town
It’s all nonsense
I understand. The club you support is the closest thing to you. Through familial, friendship and relationship breakups your club had always been there.
I can’t look down on people for whom thier club is so central to thier life. Through good and bad times, the club is a constant.
This City stuff seems to be brining up alot of what the vast majority of football fans would say is bullshit. The former City players endlessly rimming the club’s owners get no sympathy. They’re clearly doing it so that they don’t cut off a very profitable source.
Fans who still protest the club’s innocence. Or think that they just broke a few admin rules. The newly released info that City hid over £800,000,000 in contracts means that that opinion should be viewed only as being gaslit.
City fans who cry foul against Chelsea. Fans who belive its all a conspiracy. I can’t feel anger against. These are the same circumstances that popularist political parties prey on people and thier innate emotions. And guess what is fulled by emotion more than most in this country. Sport.
At the end of the day City seem to have quite extravagantly and extraordinarily broken the rules. Admin or no, this goes far beyond anything football has seen since Calciopoli, but worse. At some point you need to recognise that your partner has been abusive. They’ve lied. Everything you thought about this constant has been a lie for years. Thats an insanely difficult thing to past. If this was your club think for a minute and ask your self if you wouldn’t be acting like City fans are.
TLDR. City seem to be deeply, deeply corrupt. Were for a long time. They should absolutely have the book thrown at them however that looks. But as hard as it will sound to any non City fan, they have been decived and lied to. I agree you cant take away the feeling of thier success. Taking away titles would be pointless, but City fans will gain nothing by continuing to give support to the ownership. And let’s be honest, there isnt much schadenfreude to be had. They won those titles. We’ve moved on. Hopfully City fans can too.
Will (If Rio Ferdinand can fit the Premier league trophy up his arse then sure, let’s give that one to utd.)
Rules are rules
I don’t agree that the speed limit on motorways is 70. Having driven in Germany I feel sure that there should not be a limit.
So I used to drive 120 plus. The rules are nonsense. Designed to keep me under someone else’s control. Designed to make sure I drive like everyone else.
I say I used to drive. Because I got pinched. In court I argued that the limit is nonsense. Apparently that was not a defence.
So I used to drive. But I’m not allowed to drive anymore. Ever.
Limit is still nonsense. I’ll maintain that for as long as I ride my bike
Johnno
good morning
Read S Manchesters mail and whilst F365 set them up a bit, they certainly managed to hang themselves with what they wrote.
Take Manchester United, who were described as one of the elite pulling up a drawbridge The point is, United did not need to. Until the summer of 2005, when the Glazer takeover occurred, United were traded on the London Stock Exchange where annual accounts most definitely need to be honestly declared.
As of 2005 they had zero debt and annually traded as a profit making company. Hardly a business model of spendthrift spending.
City cheated, end of. They signed up to rules they had zero intention of following. They were then found to have lied when giving evidence. Also the only reason UEFA’s charges did not stick was due to the statute of limitations, not that city did not cheat. UEFA also found that they did.
Regards
Ged Biglin
War and peace
To whom it may concern,
Why did Lindsay have to write a Tolstoy-esque word salad to tell us what has been happening since the dawn of time. Some clubs are richer than others. Is it unfair that Manchester United are richer than Bolton Wanderers? That Everton have more money than Tranmere? Since the dawn of the football league, clubs with richer owners have generally been more successful that clubs with poorer owners. What a revelation!!
The central premise of this argument is backwards. Football has always been dominated, disproportionately, by the clubs with the biggest financial resources.
I’m guessing Linsdsay is a fan of one of the top clubs and thinks, ‘what’s the problem with the status quo, some clubs are just bigger than others, mine is a big one, I don’t see what all the fuss is’.
Financial power has always, repeatedly, helped determine which clubs become dominant. Villa/Everton et al are not competing against City in some infinite money auction, they are competing in a football league in which clubs already have radically different revenues, wage budgets, commercial power, global fanbases and infrastructure. And these differences existed long before Abramovich or Saudi Arabia. The Big 6 didn’t get their financial advantages from FFP, it’s a product of decades of being the richest and most successful teams.
FFP/PSR doesn’t create equality. United will still have massive commercial power, Liverpool will still have a huge global fanbase, Arsenal/Spurs will still have some of the largest revenue generating stadiums in Europe. Villa/Everton will still have substantially more resources than Hull or Coventry. Football before PSR wasn’t some dystopian wasteland. The argument being presented essentially imagines an unlimited spending contest between Aston Villa and Manchester City and concludes that Villa cannot win. But Villa don’t need to have more money than Manchester City to win a football match. They need to build a better team. They need better recruitment. They need better coaching. They need better development. They need to get more value from their resources. And occasionally, they need the sort of luck that Leicester had. That’s what sport is.
Rich clubs dominating football isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s practically the history of football. The biggest difference today is that the source of wealth has changed. Once it was industrial magnates. Then it was wealthy local businessmen. Then it was commercial revenues like SKY and huge global fanbases. Then came Abramovich. Then came Abu Dhabi. Then Saudi Arabia. The hierarchy changes. The mechanism doesn’t.
Scrap PSR, bring in a rule that any money that an owner who wants to pump money into his club cannot use that same money to saddle the club with debt, that money can only be gifted to the clubs to stop them for going belly-up. Tie owners to contracts they give out so that they can’t walk away and watch a club sink. But being anti-competition so the bigger clubs don’t get usurped is not sports, and it’s not fair.
Weldoninhio, BAC
Criminal v sporting sanctions
With the Premier League confirmation that Man City have been found guilty of all charges in respect of their financial reporting, amongst the various statements was the accusation that they both artificially inflated revenue through sham contracts and also that they knowingly gave inaccurate information to their auditors.
Premier League & PSR to one side, there are two more fundamental questions to be answered:-
Why is the SFO/CPS not taking a more serious interest in this? There are others more expert than I (but I have served as both a chairman and director of sizeable companies) and I certainly would have realised that these things fly dangerously close to the line of misconduct/illegality.
It shouldn’t be treated as an entirely sporting matter – there are potentially very significant criminal offences here.
When the dust settles, all the executives involved are subject to OADT (owners and directors test), which includes clauses for specific ‘disqualifying events’.
Irrespective of fines, points deduction, demotion or any other sanctions, it’s seems fairly clear that if found guilty of deliberately orchestrating and then attempting to conceal the largest rule breach in English football history, they should all be disbarred under OADT.
Pete, Shropham
Well, the Premier League statement was as damning as it could be. And whilst I (like many others), have had a laugh flicking through the various memes (there’s a brilliant Simpsons-themed EFL account on Instagram worth checking out), what Man City have done is way more serious than I think we first thought.
Effectively, it’s bordering on (if not actually), a criminal offence. You cannot overinflate revenues, and your accounts must provide a true and fair view of your financial position. What sort of Keystone Cop auditors did they have reviewing their accounts? They’ve basically used shareholder funding as revenue through nonsensical sponsorship revenue! Yes, this is all a regulatory breach and not a criminal investigation but if the right people wanted to, this could be investigated under the Fraud Act.
Forget about points deduction, transfer bans etc. This club should have the book thrown at them. Sent down to the National League. And to the Man City fans, the genuine ones. The ones who have a glint in their eye when talking about Georgi Kinkladze, who were there to see Jamie Pollock score the greatest own goal of all time, who’d argue that Shaun Goater is their greatest goal scorer of the modern era. They should be the most angry. Their club has been used and abused by the Abu Dhabi Group. They’ve had success, and memories that’ll last a lifetime, but is it really worth it to lose the club you loved from a young age?
If they’re not, and they’re defending their owners to the hills, then unfortunately the City experiment is a great example in how sports washing works.
Hey, at least we’ll be able to pick up Haaland for the price of a Freddo.
Regards,
Ronson, AFC
Realistic punishments
1. Striped of all the English domestic trophies from 2009/10 to 2018/19 = 9
2. Merit payments to runners up, now awarded winners of all the English domestic trophies = £8 million
3. Loss of Europa League qualification and gate receipts for Sunderland 2014 = £12 million
4. Loss of Champions league qualification and gate receipts for Tottenham = £100 million
5. Loss of Champions league qualification and gate receipts for Arsenal, Man Utd, Everton and Chelsea = £25 million each
5. £180 million player arbitration fund
6. £100 million paid to Premier league for legal fees
7. 8 year shirt sponsorship ban for the 54 breaches of sponsorship rules
8. 70 Points deduction for the 7 PSR Breaches this season (Relegate them to Championship)
9. 50 Points deduction for the 5 FFP Breaches applied next season (Relegate them to League 1)
10. The club pays £450 million+, not the owners
11. More importantly the owners (A foreign state subsidiary asset) committed fraud on a grand scale and should be given 1 year to sell Man City or the UK government take over like they did with Chelsea
Anon
So, the bottom line from here is that this cannot be a fudge. The Premier League and the FA can’t mess about with slaps on wrists. The only appropriate and proportionate response to Manchester City’s cheating is to basically destroy them.
1. Expunge all their titles from the record. “No title awarded”. Don’t reallocate the titles. Leave the record books blank for those years. So that people never forget what they did.
2. Upper nine figure fine, to be shared out to all teams who can reasonably evidence direct negative impacts during the period concerned.
3. Expulsion from the Premier League, with a solidarity agreement with the EFL that they will not admit them either. Leave it to the National League to decide if they want to admit them at a level of their choosing.
4. A 5-year transfer restriction restricting them only to free transfers, academy signings and mandating they break even on sales v incomings.
Anything short of that would be, to use the PL’s own language, “a sham”.
They have basically wasted a decade of everyone’s time through industrial scale cheating. They’ve wasted their own fans’ time, they’ve distorted reality for other teams, players and managers. They’ve ripped off all the TV companies who have paid for TV rights to what we now know to be a sham, and they’ve ripped off those who subscribed to those TV companies. They’ve destroyed a decade’s worth of English football history by rendering it utterly redundant; a mirage.
Nothing short of destroying them is acceptable for what they’ve done.
Andy H, Swansea.
So Everton were deducted 10 points for breaching the rules, reduced to 6 on appeal. Sounds to me a commensurate punishment for City would be a 500 point deduction (although the maths suggest 690 on appeal), carrying forward the points total each season. This would almost certainly see them tumble all the way down the pyramid, and, assuming they would claw their way back up to the top again (at the first time of asking) would take around 10 years, which is equivalent to the length of time of their (cheating) success.
Alternatively, any club affected by their cheating can cherry pick a City player. (Ala your list…) we could see Haaland up front for Swansea.
Cheers
Somerset Dave (Brackets)
How do the worms get back in the can?
Good lord, that report from the FA is absolutely damning. My mind had previously been baffled by emails like the one kicking it off this morning, but now it’s just stuck on: what can the FA possibly do? ADUG and the City leadership – who are still there – deliberately produced false financials, for a decade, to independent auditors, the premier league and presumably other UK authorities. By all accounts, they also stood in front of the panel and deliberately lied (apparently unconvincingly).
Forget point deductions or fines – how can the other Premier League clubs – and us fans – allow that set of people to keep running City? How can they convince us that any of this stopped in 2018? The only reason the case ends there is that is when the leaks ended. Are we to believe that having been hacked, these same people suddenly changed?
The owners have to go. That is the only possible solution. They have, by their own actions, failed the fit and proper ownership test. I know that’s a different body, but how can anyone argue these people can be allowed to own a football club?
36 game season. City results annulled. This is already a farce, cut the limb off now.
Ryan, Bermuda
Given how much the amount added in to Man City’s pot by their owners grew, year-on-year, why are we stopping at 2018?
They clearly thought they were getting away with it and were becoming increasingly brazen, so what have they hidden since then?
The only answer is to rip it all up and start again. Full blown reset and start the new Manchester City, with new owners, in non-league and let them rise up. If they truly are the global brand they believe they are, sponsors will be all aboard. Look at Wrexham. It’s all there if they really are a ‘proper’ football club with a real fanbase. They really can prove all the doubters wrong. It’s win-win for everyone.
Stew, London
De-entitle them
It’s always interesting to see how clubs, (ex)players, managers and fans defend their team when caught doing something naughty. It always seems the pushback is directly proportional to the severity of the crime.
Man City, as a club run by oligarchs, has been particularly vitriolic in fighting its corner. This seems to spill over onto some of its fans. I suspect mostly the neo-fans who came on board after all the success. After all, those fans who had been with the club through all the years in the wilderness probably knew better from the beginning of the takeover.
Man City thought they could bulldoze their way out of trouble, as the entitled class have always done, and even more so in this age of ‘enshittification.’ When you have more money than whole other countries, you can treat everyone else however you want. Let’s exploit migrant workers to build large projects, withhold their passports, essentially enslave them, because you can. No one can touch you. Want to slave-wash your brand? Buy a Premier League club, use financial doping to un-level the playing field, and use the success to wipe away all smearing.
From the fans, it’s the ‘red cartel’, the ‘Premier League’, trying to keep us down. Chelsea got away with it… so we should too. But UEFA really drove the rules. The same UEFA that City fans boo during Champions League games – games that fans from other clubs would love their team to be involved in. Because why not become as entitled as the owners when your team has won so much? City voted for PSR, quite happy now that their previous financial doping got them their success, the same way Chelsea happily voted for FFP and PSR once they moved to a higher level.
What I haven’t heard from any fans, ex-players, or managers is that City should just show us their books, their emails, to prove without a doubt that they didn’t cheat.’ Not that we should all just attack the rest of the world.
No, it’s far easier to attack everyone else, attack the rules, the EPL, the red cartel, UEFA, all the opposition lawyers and so on, than admit City may just have been the biggest cheaters we have ever seen in the EPL.
Do they deserve everything that will be thrown at them? Absolutely. It was a deliberate plan to cheat, obfuscate, and attack over many, many years. In this current environment, it would be good to see entitled individuals get their comeuppance.
Paul McDevitt
Can the Premier League continue?
What I have yet to see (or have missed seeing) is a discussion on how the Prem can possibly continue this season until the City punishment is resolved. A couple of scenarios;
They play their next away game, mass fan unrest.
They eventually get kicked out the league and the previous result are void. Why would anyone play their first team against them?
They get a massive points deduction but not quite enough to guarantee relegation. The whole dynamic is a million times different than their first 5 games, how is this “fair”?
They stay up by a few points. Manchester Derby corruption? Prem League humiliation. A team goes down and sues?
Only a fine and transfer ban. They probably win the league this year.
First dodgy VAR in their favour since the Prem statement. Or against them. Mass hysteria.
I could go on and on. They have not just ruined ten years of the Prem they are ruining this one. If we even get to the impact on the clubs, the fans and the players, how do you even organise a tournament under these conditions?
F365 will know, when Lewis Hamilton was blatantly cheated out of an 8th title, whether you love him or loathe him, F1 lost a massive number of viewers and fans. This is a bigger deal than any of us even imagined. Either they pause the league and kick them to the bottom of the professional tiers or they lose massive audience figures and make a total mockery of this year at a minimum. Fans can put up with crap refs and they can disagree with VAR and they can be bitter about their bigger neighbours. But none of us are accepting this is minor. They need to go now.
David, J Stand Barmy Army.