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Man City - the new bitters?


Naz17
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If I’m reading this right, then either

1) the airline paid City through massive illegal subsidies from the govt, ie City are okay but the airline is in massive shit that will be jumped on by their US competitors 

or

2) the govt paid City and the airline are in the clear but City are in the shit with UEFA

 

Bit of a Catch 22. My money is on 2 - if they could prove the airline paid City then they would have done so during the UEFA investigation 

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On 16/02/2020 at 14:03, 3 Stacks said:

They wouldn't award someone else their titles, surely? A points deduction next season would make more sense, if it came to that. Start them on -10 points or something like that. Like they did to Chievo Verona in Serie A a few years back. 

Minus 102 points would be more appropriate. 

23 hours ago, Leyton388 said:

 

City have also been taking note of transfer deals between some leading clubs that would appear to have benefited both parties.

David Luiz between Chelsea & PSG probably on that list! 

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1 hour ago, Bjornebye said:

If anyone would like to read the most embarrassing thread on the internet then have a look through some of the posts on here.

 

https://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/threads/anti-uefa-demonstration-at-madrid-game.344661/

 

"injustice" "Klanfield" it goes on. They honestly think anyone looks at them other than the lottery winning shitebag no-marks that they actually are. 

"A few thousand ref whistles will drown out their jingle. And a few thousand Catalan flags will show that twat from Madrid that we do not accept non-democratic bodies - that includes UEFA and the Spanish fascists (I'm sure Pep would like it too ;-)"

 

Absolute fucking lunacy.

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First time I've looked at that forum -- I took all the jibes at it with a pinch of salt, as its the internet and I presumed that -- it being City -- half the lunacies being ascribed to them are probably just juvenile writings of 10-16 year olds. Funniest thing about that thread posted above is that many of the writers have join dates of the mid-late 00s -- which means they both arrived on the scene before the millions got quite so cranked up, and also are presumably in their 20s and upwards. Which really does make one step back and think just what the fuck do they put in the water over there.

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1 minute ago, Alex_K said:

First time I've looked at that forum -- I took all the jibes at it with a pinch of salt, as its the internet and I presumed that -- it being City -- half the lunacies being ascribed to them are probably just juvenile writings of 10-16 year olds. Funniest thing about that thread posted above is that many of the writers have join dates of the mid-late 00s -- which means they both arrived on the scene before the millions got quite so cranked up, and also are presumably in their 20s and upwards. Which really does make one step back and think just what the fuck do they put in the water over there.

If they're from the mid 2000s, that's the time they were gifted a spanking brand new stadium for the derelict Maine Road. If they're late 2000s that's when mansour and his filthy money rocked up.

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2 hours ago, Bjornebye said:

If anyone would like to read the most embarrassing thread on the internet then have a look through some of the posts on here.

 

https://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/threads/anti-uefa-demonstration-at-madrid-game.344661/

 

"injustice" "Klanfield" it goes on. They honestly think anyone looks at them other than the lottery winning shitebag no-marks that they actually are. 

 

 

gordondaviesmoustache

Joined:
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Location:
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We should boo their anthem.
 
 

 

That'll fucking learn 'em!!

 

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6 hours ago, Anubis said:


Fair play. They’ve collected nearly £5k for banners when they don’t even know what they’ll say.

Should buy them a few more flat screens, then they can each have a go at drawing something and putting it on a slide show so they all get a turn. 

1581861433742.jpg

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https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/feb/17/manchester-city-backers-are-not-the-sort-to-take-punishment-lying-down?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

Manchester City backers are not the sort to take punishment lying down

 

There is resentment among City fans about their treatment and word is that Abu Dhabi will be fighting back against Uefa

 

 

In 2011 Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the emir of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, received a letter. It came from a group of Emirati intellectuals inspired by the recent wave of pro-democracy protests sweeping through the Middle East and north Africa, and requested a range of modest reforms, including an extension of the voting franchise which at the time encompassed just 2% of the country’s population.

 

No marching on the streets. No popular unrest. Certainly no disorder of any kind. Just a letter. Nonetheless, with a regime petrified to the point of paranoia by the spectre of political Islamism, the reprisals would be swift and merciless.

 

Within weeks the arrests had begun, rounding up most of the 160 letter’s signatories, who were designated as “terrorists” plotting to overthrow the regime. Citizenships were revoked. Hefty prison sentences were dished out. In 2014, Abu Dhabi enacted Terrorism Law No 7, reclassifying peaceful opposition as a terrorist act punishable by death, and criminalising a whole range of hazily-defined acts, from “antagonising the state” or “stirring panic among a group of people” to “carrying explosive crackers for a terrorist purpose”.

 

Now: does this strike you as a group of people that is going to be intimidated by the fine print of Article 56, section (a) of the 2018 edition of Uefa’s Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations?

 

Does a regime serially defying a United Nations arms embargo in Libya – according to the UN’s own reports – strike you as the sort that places a high premium on bureaucratic process? Does the family that bought itself the world’s largest super-yacht – a $600m behemoth two-thirds the size of the Titanic and reportedly equipped with its own missile defence system – strike you as the sort to take a swingeing punishment with humility and good grace?

 

These are just some of the ways of understanding Manchester City’s current dispute with Uefa, one that for all its clear footballing repercussions carries far more sinister overtones. Trawl the City messageboards in the wake of Uefa’s decision to ban the club from the Champions League for two seasons, and it won’t take you long to stumble across the rhetoric of scorched earth: of traitors and revolutionaries, violence and purgation, shady cartels and subhuman scum.

 

This is the language of existential threat, the register of total warfare, and it is fed by the incendiary invective coming out of the club. One little snippet to emerge is the fact City’s appeals to the court of arbitration for sport have been dubbed “Cas One” and “Cas Two”, as if they were military campaigns, rather than ringbinders being delivered to a courtroom by clerks in TM Lewin suits. Witness, too, the assertion of the club’s lawyer Simon Cliff in the Der Spiegel leaks of 2018 that “Uefa doesn’t respond to anything other than aggression”, that a lawsuit against their auditor could “destroy the entire organisation within weeks”. City talk about their footballing enemies the way Abu Dhabi talks about its real ones.

 

This, perhaps, was the most persuasive argument against allowing cherished footballing institutions to fall under the control of entire states. It wasn’t the lack of transparency or the potential for financial distortion, grave as those are. But in hindsight it was perhaps inevitable over time clubs would come to resemble state actors in their own right, that sporting problems would impel geopolitical solutions, that the cut and thrust of footballing sabre-rattling would increasingly take on the character of the real thing.

 

There has always been a slight misconception about the concept popularly known as “sportswashing”, the attempt by autocratic regimes to embed their soft power through sport. It is never purely a PR exercise: there are PR firms for that, and they tend not to go to the trouble of spending £1.5bn on footballers or rebuilding large parts of east Manchester.
 

Rather, it helps to think of the sportswash as some vast, pointless infrastructure project: a man-made glacier, a giant bridge to nowhere, a Nando’s visible from space. The objective is to create something so iridescently perfect that it generates its own innate shock and awe, a timeless monument to beauty, wealth and the power to do whatever the hell you want.

 

And so there is a rich double irony at work here. Firstly, for all the eye-watering sums lavished on the brilliant Guardiola sides, it is instead the years of faltering ascent, the 2012-16 era, for which City are being punished: not the years of £50m full-backs, but your Mangalas and Rodwells and Wilfried Bonys. Secondly, that one of the world’s most meticulously-crafted sporting projects could be undone by simple naivety: an apparent belief the rule of law could be subverted by force of will alone, a failure to build any sort of political or diplomatic contingency against it. While the Qataris at Paris Saint-Germain made it a priority to infiltrate the corridors of power, City find themselves adrift: friendless and alone, with only their money and their hubris to protect them.
 

It may yet be enough. The word is City are stockpiling a cache of inflammatory evidence against other clubs, in anticipation of an epic fight. Perhaps, armed with a battery of lawyers and accountants, they will get their ban overturned. Perhaps, as some of the more bellicose voices insist, they will even destroy the apparatus of football as we know it, which definitely feels like a proportionate response to not being allowed to sign Stevan Jovetic. Either way, you sense for City the ends will always justify the means. After all football, like geopolitics, is very much a results business.

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5 hours ago, Aventus said:

Should buy them a few more flat screens, then they can each have a go at drawing something and putting it on a slide show so they all get a turn. 

1581861433742.jpg

Am I the only person who had no idea about this? I'm looking at that thinking "nah, no way" but I'm guessing it's real. Seriously? Jesus. Placcy flags is bad (Norwich last weekend anybody?) but LED screen flags is a whole new world of excruciating. 

 

When we got into the stadium at Kiev a couple of years ago, seeing the LFC banners draped over the stands, covering at least 2/3rds of the perimeter, was gobsmacking. Like "wow". And then I see those City banner sceens up there? Please. Never. 

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12 hours ago, Josef Svejk said:

"A few thousand ref whistles will drown out their jingle. And a few thousand Catalan flags will show that twat from Madrid that we do not accept non-democratic bodies - that includes UEFA and the Spanish fascists (I'm sure Pep would like it too ;-)"

 

Absolute fucking lunacy.

 

6 hours ago, Sugar Ape said:

In 2011 Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the emir of Abu Dhabi and president of the United Arab Emirates, received a letter. It came from a group of Emirati intellectuals inspired by the recent wave of pro-democracy protests sweeping through the Middle East and north Africa, and requested a range of modest reforms, including an extension of the voting franchise which at the time encompassed just 2% of the country’s population.

 

No marching on the streets. No popular unrest. Certainly no disorder of any kind. Just a letter. Nonetheless, with a regime petrified to the point of paranoia by the spectre of political Islamism, the reprisals would be swift and merciless.

 

Within weeks the arrests had begun, rounding up most of the 160 letter’s signatories, who were designated as “terrorists” plotting to overthrow the regime. Citizenships were revoked. Hefty prison sentences were dished out. In 2014, Abu Dhabi enacted Terrorism Law No 7, reclassifying peaceful opposition as a terrorist act punishable by death, and criminalising a whole range of hazily-defined acts, from “antagonising the state” or “stirring panic among a group of people” to “carrying explosive crackers for a terrorist purpose”.

 

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That’s a great article from the Grauniad. Sort of sums up exactly what City are about these days.

Their attitude stinks of what a dictatorial regime would be like, the “We’re Manchester City, we’ll do what we like” stance that United had not so long ago, but with more threat.

Cross us and we’ll fuck you over, if you like.

Over the the last few days I’ve heard more than a few pundits and commentators say how much they sympathise with City, including ex-reds who should know better, because they could only break into the elite by doing exactly what they’ve done, thrown money and resources in gigantic amounts at becoming an elite club.

All missing the point completely that while the FFP “laws” have been broken, it’s the manner of the subterfuge and lying to UEFA that’s been the main problem, and that once Der Spiegel put it into the public domain, UEFA had to act or be seen as a toothless body deferring to power and privilege.

Add to that the implicit threat from City that they would bankrupt UEFA through costly legal challenges if they dared to impose punishment and UEFA could do nothing else but take the course of action they have done.

The sanctions could have been greater, or lesser, but are still defeatable in a court where mitigation might be claimed and so I wouldn’t hold my breath about a two year ban being served, more likely some kind of agreed suspended sentence, which might explain why Guardiola has insisted he’ll be staying regardless of the outcome.

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