Why only Premier League expulsion or ten-year transfer ban will work on ‘cheating’ Man City

Man City have cheated their way to an elite infrastructure, permanently enlarged global fanbase and higher profile; punishment must be severe.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

The Etihad exodus?
Many of City’s star players will now ask for transfers.

Cheers.
Mick Maher

Maybe Cityitis was never cured
There’s something almost poetic about Manchester City fans now worrying about relegation.

“City’s going down with a billion in the bank” was always a brilliant bit of self mockery. They sang it when City were stumbling around, then kept singing it while the trophies started piling up. That was the beauty of it.

Now, for the first time, it doesn’t sound quite so ridiculous.

Nobody knows what happens next. There will be appeals, arguments over punishment and the inevitable debate about whether trophies should be touched. For all we know, City could come through it and carry on as normal.

But surely this is the ultimate Cityitis.

For years, the joke was that City would somehow find a way to ruin everything just when life was going perfectly. Except they never did. They won the lot.

And then they finally found a way to make the old joke relevant again.

Imagine spending billions building one of the greatest teams English football has ever seen, only to end up worrying about a Tuesday night in the Championship.

At least they’ve already got the song.
Gaptoothfreak, Man. Utd., New York (Curses are like young chickens; they always come home to roost.)

Don’t feel for the fans
City fans have been gaslit. City fans don’t deserve this. It’s the fans I feel sorry for….

Behave, it’s the same fans who didn’t deserve 20 years of success. 20 years of seeing the best players play the best football with the best manager. 20 years of building a worldwide empire, cultivating a full generation of glory hunting ‘fans’.

They are essentially a Championship club with a Champions League and the fans wouldn’t swap it for anything. If you would have told them 20 years ago it would end like this, every single one would have taken it. They’ve lived the dream for 20 years and will end up in a place far better than where they started.

Regardless of any punishment, they will inevitably return to a position of power simply because of the owners vast wealth, the infrastructure in place and the new found media interest in them.

They might have been found guilty of robbing a bank, but they’ll live well from their ill-gotten gains long after the punishment is served.
So let’s not feel for the fans, all they’ve really lost is a pub argument and a bit of respect, but let’s be honest, they didn’t have that in the first place.
Paul – Oldham

City wouldn’t have won (as much) without cheating
I know this is a bold statement. Titles are won by players on the pitch, managers and coaches on the training grounds, physios in the treatment room. Even if City used illicit means to hire those players and managers and coaches, their achievements are valid. This is the argument Rodri has made, and one many City (and some non-City) fans echo.

That ignores the counterfactual: if the rules didn’t exist, City couldn’t have hired all the people who made them successful. There would be at least 4 or 5 state-owned clubs in the league spraying cash everywhere. That team would never have been assembled.

Strip their titles and cups. Claw back the prize money, with interest. And, though I’m biased as a Man United fan, award them to the runners-up.

That was Juventus’s punishment after Calciopoli..

Taking away trophies rights historic wrongs but it isn’t punitive enough as a deterrent. A future club owner might accept the risk of having to pay 10 years’ interest. Even if they’re caught and punished, they retain the permanently enlarged global fanbase and higher profile that comes from winning trophies. The only strong enough sanction is relegation or perhaps a 10-year transfer ban. Remember: Juventus didn’t just have a Serie A taken away; they got sent down.
Jay, MUFC

This feels like it needs saying for those bizarrely trying to say spend has nothing to do with the actual football: City cheated so that they were able to win on the pitch. We may never know if Agueroooo would have been at City if they hadn’t promised him payments off the books. We do know that the ability to churn through players that didn’t work out and build an immense squad of two internationals at every position was only possible because they cheated. How could City possibly have managed to compete across 4 competitions every season? By cheating.

Look at their amazing facilities, the youth academy! Do you think other clubs don’t want that? They’re not able to because they don’t cheat.

It’s extraordinarily simple. City signed up to the Premier League (and CL) rules. It then deliberately, knowingly and willing broke those rules, for many years, then lied about cheating for many more. That’s all that matters.

Anything else is irrelevant. PSR being moral, United’s owners, the price of milk – City cheated, lots, lied about it and are still lying about it. And now they must face the music.
Ryan, Bermuda (does anyone actually believe that the punishment will fit the crime?)

When the findings against Manchester City are confirmed and they have not survived annother appeal, the other Premier League clubs should stop debating points deductions and fines.

Expel them.

The Premier League is a competition built on a contract between its clubs. Nineteen clubs cannot be expected to obey financial rules while one breaks them and remains entitled to the same seat at the table.

Everton lost points. Nottingham Forest lost points. Clubs have sold players, cut spending and weakened squads to stay within the rules.

So what possible message does a fine send if the reported findings against City stand?

That cheating is expensive?

That isn’t punishment. It’s a price list.

And forget some pathetic points deduction designed to make everyone feel that justice has been served. If the final findings establish widespread breaches and bad faith, this wasn’t one dodgy invoice or an administrative cock-up. It went to the integrity of the competition itself.

Titles were won. Champions League places were taken. Prize money moved. Managers lost jobs. Clubs made financial decisions because they believed everybody was playing under the same rules.

You cannot replay those seasons. But you can decide what happens next.

Rangers discovered in 2012 that being enormous, historic and commercially valuable did not guarantee a place in Scotland’s top division. Scottish football survived. Rangers survived.

The Premier League would survive without Manchester City.

And the clubs are not powerless. They collectively constitute the Premier League, and its rules contemplate the ultimate sanction of expulsion for serious breaches.

No negotiated slap on the wrist. No fine disappearing into accounts worth billions. No carefully engineered points deduction that hurts for a season and is forgotten the next.

Out.

Because if systematic rule-breaking cannot ultimately cost a club its place in the competition, stop pretending they are rules.

They’re just rules for everyone else.
Sheik en Not Stirred, Yabadabadooville 

Swoop in, Sir Jim
Now that City have been found guilty of cheating, I have an idea. GLINEOS should now knock on Pep’s door and offer him a chance at managing United. If he does take up the job, we will find out whether he’s a bald fraud (which I think he is) or a genius who is capable of raising a giant from its slumber.

Pep gets to redeem his tarnished legacy, GLINEOS get to show that they actually have some sort of  ambition for this club and the fans can genuinely look forward to an exciting appointment.
Novi.

Trophy strife
Man City need a punishment, but I can’t see that re-issuing trophies would be worthwhile or helpful. I just read the BBC article Tony Pulis saying he feels cheated by Man City over Stoke losing the FA Cup final. I totally understand that feeling, but why would Stoke get the trophy? Surely Man Utd can lay claim, as they could have got through the semi final and surely beaten Stoke? There would be so many more claims that will never be suitably resolved that I think a financial and points/league based punishment needs to be sorted quickly and then we can all try and move on.
Henry ‘Forest Fan’ Wade

IMO most football fans are not overly arsed about City being stripped of their titles and hence said titles being divvied out amongst the various runners up. We don’t look at football like that. It would be just silly and pretty meaningless. City won on the pitch fair and square. Off the pitch they clearly didn’t so punish them accordingly. And severely if needs be. But don’t be thinking that you can suddenly change how football fans of all teams felt at the time of each victory/defeat and how they will continue to feel about them. It happened. Punish them. Move on.
Shunt LFC

Well done Ian Watson, the first sensible suggestion I’ve heard.  Man City’s titles cannot be handed out to others, who knows what would have happened had they not cheated.

I read today that Tony Pulis hopes he will receive an FA Cup winners medal as a result of the City v Stoke final, but what about the earlier rounds? What about Leicester or Man United? The whole tournament was tarnished, not just the final

Stripping City of their titles but not awarding them to others preserves  sporting integrity and leaves the correct sporting legacy. “Who won the league in 2012?”, “No one, it was one of the years in which City cheated”. A fitting reminder.
Rob

What is the charge?
Dear Editor,

I’m very happy City finally got exposed as the cheats they are (especially after years of their fans being unpleasant to anyone bringing it up). I hope the punishment handed down by the Premier League is severe but this could get much worse for City and their owners because some of the charges, “failure to provide accurate financial information” could amount to criminal fraud under UK law.

Under the Fraud Act 2006, a person commits fraud by:

False representation (s.2) — dishonestly making a false representation with intent to gain or cause loss

Failing to disclose information (s.3) — dishonestly failing to disclose when under a legal duty to do so

Abuse of position (s.4)

If someone at the club deliberately inflated sponsorship revenue or disguised owner investment as income with the intent to deceive the league, that conduct could be prosecuted as criminal fraud by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) or the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), carrying up to 10 years’ imprisonment and unlimited fines.

Lets hope the CPS and SFO get a case started soon. City’s corrupt owners deserve it.
William, Leicester

Know when to fold ’em
Well fair play to Man City. When their wrong doings were discovered they had two choices: fight it tooth and nail or admit to it and beg for mercy. With the benefit of hindsight they definitely ought to have gone with the latter because dragging this out has undeniably made things worse. One only has to look at Chelsea to see how things would have been had they gone with the other option. Not ideal but probably miles better than what City faces now.

My hope is that they get expelled from the PL and the EFL shows its stones to land them in the National League. Not out of spite but because if they can earn their way back from the bottom it will be a good redemption arc and help them get some legitimacy back. The governing bodies also need to make a shining example that such antics are not to be repeated. I doubt they’d be in the wilderness for too long anyways.

Optimistically,
Rex Lusaka, Zambia.

*Insert that 50 Cent gif here*
So you guys made Ian Watson write a piece about how Man City gaslit all the fans over the years. For me the entire world was gaslit about all this by ManCity. I don’t blame the ManCity fans for buying into this gaslighting. If your club is winning trophies you will support anyone who is helping the club achieve it. May it be the Sheikh from Abu Dhabi or an oligarch from Russia.

What i wonder most is you lot from F365 left no chance to glorify ManCity. There were articles praising its titles and the way they play football and how amazing their transfer business is etc etc. And during all this time all the fans of other clubs kept insisting that ManCity have cheated but there never once was an article by you guys even acknowledging the possibility of any wrongdoing. And during all this time you have never held back on writing ill about any other club.

Now at least after the guilty verdict is rendered i thought there will be an article on my once beloved website criticising ManCity and how the owners have ruined football but there is absolutely no such thing that was published nor do i think you guys have the guts or wish to do that.
Shame on you all at F365 !!!
Swapnil,Mumbai

I didn’t want to bite this weekend, but Ian Watson has sent me over the edge; ‘how success is seen by others matters’ and ‘Achievement without recognition means nothing’ – seriously?!

I feel sorry for you that success, achievement, and in this instance, pure joy, can only be so if others recognise it. I think most sane City fans (like most fans at other clubs), don’t need external validation for the high points in their life. Guilty/not guilty, I don’t care. Big punishment/small punishment, it doesn’t matter to me, this is football – highs and lows off the pitch as well as on, I’m just along for the ride.

Now excuse me whilst I go and divorce my wife because strangers didn’t congratulate me for finding someone to share my life with.
Gav