Man City - the new bitters?

[ZonkoVille77]

14 minutes ago, Aventus said:

Looks like it's down. 

 

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1DXxyvodNDvKM?s=20

 

[ZonkoVille77]

Just now, ZonkoVille77 said:

 

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1DXxyvodNDvKM?s=20

 

 

That works for me.

[Aventus]

22 minutes ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

 

That works for me.

Might just be me. I got banned a while ago for saying I wish someone would set kelvin mackenzie on fire, but I'm still able to view stuff and I couldn't be arsed making a new one. Maybe I'm not able to view spaces while I'm banned. 

[TheRedMachine]

5 minutes ago, Aventus said:

Might just be me. I got banned a while ago for saying I wish someone would set kelvin mackenzie on fire, but I'm still able to view stuff and I couldn't be arsed making a new one. Maybe I'm not able to view spaces while I'm banned. 

 

Seems reasonable to me. I got banned for calling Priti Patel a cunt's cunt. Can't say anything these days. :)

[No2]

7 minutes ago, Aventus said:

Might just be me. I got banned a while ago for saying I wish someone would set kelvin mackenzie on fire, but I'm still able to view stuff and I couldn't be arsed making a new one. Maybe I'm not able to view spaces while I'm banned. 

I don't have a twitter account and it works for me, maybe try it in an incognito tab.

[Aventus]

1 minute ago, No2 said:

I don't have a twitter account and it works for me, maybe try it in an incognito tab.

That's sorted it, cheers. 

[Pete]

I'm listening now on the original link posted.  Very interesting and they could find themselves in a whole world of trouble. 

[No2]

Just now, Pete said:

I'm listening now on the original link posted.  Very interesting and they could find themselves in a whole world of trouble. 

The funny thing is he's getting grief on bluemoon for feeding the media and opposition fans. The Bluemoon way is to follow the script, no matter what. It's fascinating to watch, you're a rag or a dipper if you even hint at everything Manchester City not being the bestest of the best.

[Pete]

9 minutes ago, No2 said:

The funny thing is he's getting grief on bluemoon for feeding the media and opposition fans. The Bluemoon way is to follow the script, no matter what. It's fascinating to watch, you're a rag or a dipper if you even hint at everything Manchester City not being the bestest of the best.

I keep getting the 'but it was our money to spend as we like' argument thrown at me.  They don't seem to understand what the actual issue is.  If they spent 30  minutes listening to that podcast they'd totally understand and be exceptionally worried.  Anyway it's all ok because the best times they've had in recent years was when they where in Division 2.  I hear this a lot too. 

[Carra_is_legend]

17 minutes ago, Pete said:

I'm listening now on the original link posted.  Very interesting and they could find themselves in a whole world of trouble. 

Could you post that link again please? I seem to have missed it. Thanks.

[Pete]

7 minutes ago, Carra_is_legend said:

Could you post that link again please? I seem to have missed it. Thanks.

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1DXxyvodNDvKM

It's on page 361 of this thread. 

[Carra_is_legend]

4 minutes ago, Pete said:

https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1DXxyvodNDvKM

It's on page 361 of this thread. 

Nice one thanks. Its the same link Zonko posted above. Cheers. 

[Bobby Hundreds]

14 minutes ago, Pete said:

I keep getting the 'but it was our money to spend as we like' argument thrown at me.  They don't seem to understand what the actual issue is.  If they spent 30  minutes listening to that podcast they'd totally understand and be exceptionally worried.  Anyway it's all ok because the best times they've had in recent years was when they where in Division 2.  I hear this a lot too. 

Their money to spend is such a dumb arguement. There's rules and you don't get to opt out of them because you don't agree with them.

[Barrington Womble]

3 hours ago, JohnnyH said:

 

I (respectfully) disagree with some of this. 
 

I agree with the first party that the PL couldn’t shelve it. It’s worth remembering that UEFA threw them out of European competition for 2 years. It was CAS that let them back in and changed it to a fine due to statute barred issues. They were guilty and UEFA did their job. CAS softened it.  
 

Yes, the brand comes first, but a brand that’s now known for being won by cheats or not a good brand. Again, they’ve been proven as cheats by UEFA once already, and now the PL have come out with the most extraordinary, unprecedented list of charges. They must be confident in what they have as either City are fucked or the Premier League are fucked. 

You understandably say you can’t see them erasing parts of their history, but what’s the alternative?  Find them guilty of even some of the charges and leave them as champions? Leave that Aguero moment as a key marketing tool while everyone that sees it shaking their heads thinking ‘but they cheated?’ They’ve said it now. Not some outside group. Not some journalist. The Premier League itself has said the most dominant club for the last 12-13 years have been cheating at an unprecedented level. The brand itself is saying the brand has been massively stained. That’s massive. There is no one to try and wheel it back. They are saying it. 
 

As for the final part about just charging them with minor issues, again I don’t see it. The 116 charges are broken into 5 headings. All extremely serious. For example, they just have to make one charge stick from the huge list in heading 1 and that means they lied to the Premier League and they’re fucked. Same applies to the other headings. Effectively, they can find them guilty of just 5 issues from the 116 and they are guilty on all counts. 
 

 

 

I get what you're saying. However, the battle with uefa was completely different. Firstly like FIFA, uefa believes it is unchallengeable (probably a little like the UAE rulers). When city made it clear they thought they could do what they want, uefa were determined to fuck them. This is public knowledge I think and came.out as part of the last case. UEFAs incompetence and arrogance allowed for the perfectly correct overturning at CAS. 

 

However the PL is a difference kettle of fish imo. It sees itself as an old men's club, something that the sanctity of the club comes before anything. I really don't think the league wants anyone guilty of anything. They've been bending over backwards to help Everton and nobody really even knows they exist. 

 

I don't believe outside of some fans of big clubs in this country anyone sees city as cheats. I think they see them as rich and something to aspire to. Outside this country, I don't think any of the PL generation of fans cares at all. They weren't found guilty, so they're not guilty. 

 

The PL aren't saying City are guilty in this case. They're saying they believe there's a case to answer and they're putting that case forward to the independent panel. City may just find another technicality out of it. The PL might even know there's a loophole there. And city's lawyers aren't doing their job if that's not the 1st defence they're looking at. But if city get off again, don't kid yourself the world of football will think "city are cheats". The Abu Dhabi PR machine will be in full throttle and make them to be the victims here. They have no shame, they've tried to pull the race card on klopp this season and they've pretty much got away with that. 

 

 

3 hours ago, No2 said:

Man City are one of only a couple of clubs publicly in support of the government white paper? Why do you think that is? I reckon it's because they knee this was coming and could brief the media to almost repeat word for word what you have said. Their voice adds no real weight when 17 others oppose it, its pure show.

 

I strongly recommend you listen to the podcast I posted yesterday,  the first 20 minutes will change your mind.

 

I think city publicly support the white paper because they believe they have enough government influence to benefit from any "independent" regulator. They believe an independent regulator will be more pliable than their partners in the PL. 

[gkmacca]

I know Martin Samuel has made lazy gainsaying (along with Olympian levels of eating) his trademark, but his obsession with trying to re-cast this (and Newcastle's) controversy as merely old v new wealth is downright weird. I wonder what he has to hide, he must have some interesting allegiances tucked away:

 

Quote

It was at this point that the City project went into overdrive. Sergio Agüero, Yaya Touré, David Silva, Roberto Mancini. The FFP drawbridge was shutting and they escalated recruitment rapidly to get inside the castle. The accusation remains that, in doing so, they were not honest.

 

Maybe. But, paradoxically, they kept the league honest, because standards improved and have never been higher. City have helped make the Premier League the place to be, because the best players are here, the best managers and the best football. Still, watching mediocre United teams win title after title; that would definitely have been fun too.

 

[Pete]

I see the fat cunt has thrown his hat into the ring saying FFP is there to protect Liverpool & Manchester United. 

[Creator Supreme]

50 minutes ago, Pete said:

I see the fat cunt has thrown his hat into the ring saying FFP is there to protect Liverpool & Manchester United. 

Who's said that, Samuel?

 

Fat wanker!

[manwiththestick]

2 minutes ago, Creator Supreme said:

Who's said that, Samuel?

 

Fat wanker!

Say anything for a burger that cunt.

[TheHowieLama]

3 hours ago, Barrington Womble said:

I don't believe outside of some fans of big clubs in this country anyone sees city as cheats.

 

Do you see Juventus as cheats?

[gkmacca]

57 minutes ago, Creator Supreme said:

Who's said that, Samuel?

 

Fat wanker!

 

His basic position appears to be: those nice, kind, decent people, who just happen to come from places where other people do the odd nasty thing, have bought a few PL clubs and made the whole league much more exciting as a result, but these old entitled English clubs don't like it and so are being beastly to them. That's it. And he actually seems to have convinced himself that's the whole story. Sadder still, some of the loons who read his drivel appear to accept it. 

[Megadrive Man]

1 hour ago, Creator Supreme said:

Who's said that, Samuel?

 

Fat wanker!

 

 

https://archive.is/2023.02.07-185105/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/yes-manchester-city-broke-the-rule-but-the-rules-protect-the-old-elite-ftr25q2lp

[Vincent Vega]

This podcast is an interesting listen from Rob Harris, Martyn Ziegler and Tariq Panja who have all been happy to report on City’s unique way of operating for years.

 

[Vincent Vega]

Another one from three Irish journalists that I haven’t got round to listening to yet. Ken Earlys is usually very good, and Miguel Delaney isn’t afraid to share his thoughts.

 

[Vincent Vega]

I found this an interesting read from Ian Herbert who writes for the Mail, especially the bits I've bolded.

 

IAN HERBERT: Grubby emails, an army of lawyers and a flagrant contempt for rules... When will Man City take a long, hard look at themselves and realise how deeply unattractive they've become?

 

•  Man City have been charged with over 100 alleged breaches of regulations
•  Charges relate to the period from 2009-10 all the way up to the present season
•  Club have faced questions over their financial dealings for a number of years

 

By IAN HERBERT FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 22:00, 6 February 2023 | UPDATED: 10:51, 7 February 2023

 

Where along the line, you have to ask, will Manchester City take a long, hard look at themselves, put aside their sense of victimhood, and realise how deeply unattractive they have become?

 

Not because this is the third time they have been charged with secretly channelling extra Abu Dhabi cash into their coffers, through fake sponsorships, to dodge financial spending rules.

 

Not because paying manager Roberto Mancini twice — once on the books, once off the books — was a joke, given how deeply unpopular he had become inside the club when they finally got shot. But because of the flagrant contempt they show for the system, the rules and the administrators whose competitions they are so eager to play in and dominate.

 

That was laughable. So impossible has it been to extract the necessary documents, that the Premier League were forced to go to court last year and launch an arbitration process to get them.

 

City employed barristers to challenge that process, arguing that the arbitrators would be biased against them. A judge ruled against them. City employed barristers to challenge this publisher’s right to report that judge’s conclusions and to be in court when a decision of publication was being made — even though we had undertaken not to publish anything from it. The judge ruled against them.

 

It was Lord Justice Males, in that case brought by Associated Newspapers, who saw through City’s obfuscation and backsliding, in a case which was then heading towards its third year. ‘It is surprising, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made after two and a half years — during which, it may be noted, the club has twice been crowned as Premier League champions,’ the judge said.

 

When a cache of emails published by Football Leaks in 2018 led UEFA, for the second time in five years, to charge City with deliberately inflating sponsorship deals, the club said the evidence was ‘incomplete’ and invalid.

 

It certainly seemed quite exhaustive. The emails included City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano’s missive, suggesting that the club raise cash to avoid an FFP breach in 2013 by getting sponsors to pay bonuses for winning the FA Cup — even though City had lost to Wigan. 

 

That was the match which saw Mancini sacked, requiring a £9.9million pay-off, which would blow another hole in attempts to pass FFP. In another leaked email, non-executive City director Simon Pearce suggested ‘an additional amount of AD (Abu Dhabi) sponsorship revenues that covers this gap’.

 

City lawyer Simon Cliff insisted that the whole commercial deals operation be called ‘Project Longbow’ in tribute ‘to the weapon the English used to beat the French at Crecy and Agincourt’. 

 

That’s how City felt about UEFA and their rules. And there was the obscure-sounding company called ‘Fordham’ to which the club sold their image rights income stream to earn themselves a £24.5m lump sum needed to pass the same financial sustainability rules. Despite selling off that revenue stream, it transpired the club were actually earning from it.

 

The Fordham story will perhaps seem arcane and dry but it was fundamental to City’s attempts to comply with the rules set out for any teams wishing to compete in the Champions League. 

 

When I wrote it, in 2017, the full force of City’s wrath was unleashed. A demand from a specialist internet law firm that it be removed, that an apology for it be published and that I tweet out that apology.

 

It would have been an unprecedented level of ‘contrition’. But our detailed 1,500-word defence of the story was sent by return. We heard no more from City or their lawyers on the matter. 

 

Eighteen months later, the Football Leaks cache showed that we actually had only half of the story. City’s owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group, were in fact bankrolling Fordham, according to the leaks, as a way of paying part of the players’ wages. Not only were City boosting their income against the rules but reducing their headline wage bill as they did so.

 

The leaked emails saw City charged by UEFA four years ago and left facing a two-year Champions League ban. They successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which found that the alleged offences took place too far in the past to be investigated, under UEFA’s statute of limitation. City were still fined the best part of £9m for what CAS called ‘obstruction of the investigations’.

 

The consequences were minimal when they breached UEFA FFP rules in 2014, too: a £49m cap on spending in the next transfer window, a Champions League wage cap and four players fewer than everyone else in their squad for that season’s competition.

 

There will be no statute of limitation at the Premier League’s independent commission. There will be no recourse to CAS if the decision goes against City.

 

The Premier League are under pressure from their 19 other clubs to apply utmost rigour to this —and most of all Liverpool, already nursing a grievance having run City so close for so long. Those clubs have complied with FFP, cohering with the view that if you play someone’s competition, you abide by their rules — whatever your views on them might be. City are confident of legal success, as they always are. 

 

They are sceptical of the process, as they always are. They were quick to note yesterday that the timing of the charges ahead of this week’s Government white paper on football governance was likely to be used by the Premier League as evidence of it being able to deal with governance issues itself.

 

The next set of machinations will probably drag out long beyond Pep Guardiola’s tenure, as City’s lawyers will comb over every inch of the Premier League’s case. ‘They are going to mount a very robust defence,’ says Liverpool University’s Kieran Maguire.

 

Some would say the reputation of City and their owners are now on the line. Others would say that the grubby emails, the army of lawyers and the steadfast reluctance to disclose the documents to those who investigate have left it irredeemably tarnished already.

[Mook]

Fucking state of this...