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Gerrard: I am really interested in the Man City case for obvious reasons


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Steven Gerrard says he will be keeping an eye on whether the Premier League look to take further action against Man City following the ruling by UEFA that they will be banned from European competition for the next two years.

While nothing is concrete, there has been some speculation that Man City could be stripped of their Premier League title of 2013/4 which no Liverpool fan needs reminding of.

 

The Premier League have got a rule which allows retrospective action if severe breaches are seen to have taken place.

At this point of time, the period being looked at is between 2012-2016.


Gerrard was careful not to delve into the intricacies of the case, but naturally he was very interested.

The Daily Mail reported the club legend as saying:

“I read that myself this morning.

“We will wait and see. From a UEFA point of view, it is a real strong sentence or punishment.

“I’m sure they will appeal so we will wait and see what the outcome is on that. 

“Then we will see whether the Premier League act from there.

"I will give you a comment once I know that the Premier League decide to do. But if you look at the severity of the punishment from UEFA, something has gone badly wrong. 

“So I’m really interested to see the outcome of that. 

“Until I get the punishment from the Premier League, I won’t comment. 

“But I’m really, really interested in it… for obvious reasons.”

 

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Gerrard said to this point, he sees Man City as the trophy holders for the 2013/4 season.

“It’s all ifs and buts. It is what it is. Manchester City were champions. 

“As I sit here right now, congratulations to them. 

“Until things develop, if they develop, it’s all ifs and buts. I’ve got nothing to say on the matter.

 

"All I say is I’m very interested because of the severity of what UEFA have put out there.”



 


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Guest Pistonbroke

He should have just said 'If Man City have slipped up that is their problem.'

 

Showed a sense of humour and a nice little dig at the same time. 

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Where exactly has this idea of City having their 2013/14 title taken off them come from? I don't think I've seen a mention of it in any of the articles I've read regarding City's shenanigans this week prior to this Gerrard article. I've only seen discussion of it on our City thread.

 

I don't see anything wrong with what Gerrard has said here as clearly he was asked the question. Not surprising given how he was unfortunately at the forefront of events late into that 2013/14 season. He's repeated stated that he will only comment once he knows the outcome of whatever transpires from hereonin, and that's the only thing he can say as it stops the same question being asked, which it would be if he just attempted to "no comment" whenever it is brought up.

 

I also have no problem with titles and trophies being handed to the original runners-up if the original winners are found to be in breach of the rules to such a severe extent. Yes, the winning moment, the trophy presentation and trophy parades cannot happen as the moment has gone, but the sides that went unrewarded initially should at least have it on record. There is a potential minefield though. What happens re: win bonuses and performance bonuses? Would the club awarded the win then need to fulfil bonus commitments that they initially didn't have to given that they didn't win the trophy?

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I saw this article linked on Twitter from The Irish Times magnificent Ken Early written following City's FA Cup final win against Watford. It really does say it all about them and how hollow their success has been.

 

Ken Early: City’s domination has been bought – and they’re paying the price

It’s time to accept that oil-funded success and mass popularity will never go well together

The strangest moment of Saturday’s FA Cup final came in the seconds after Manchester City’s sixth goal, when the camera cut from the mob of celebrating City players to Pep Guardiola, who was slumped on the bench with his head in his hands.

Pep looked less like a happy football coach watching his side make history and more like an anguished scientist whose prototype civil defence robot has just run amok at a trade show, slaughtering several bystanders. It looked as though he understood that the very scale of the victory had begun to devalue it, that City were now in the territory of negative marginal returns, that the reaction to this turkey shoot would go beyond appreciation and congratulation, towards accusation and perhaps even condemnation.

And so it proved. The Cup-winning manager’s post-match press conference is usually laudatory, but Pep’s ended with a journalist asking whether he, like his predecessor Roberto Mancini, had ever received any extra payments from City’s ownership group on top of his regular salary.

Angry

Guardiola looked about as angry as anyone has seen him since he arrived in England. “Do you know the question you’re asking me?” he hissed. “If I ever received money for another situation, right now, today? Honestly, do you think I deserve to have this type of question happen – what happened with Roberto I don’t know, the day we won the treble – if I received money from other situations? Oh my God. Are you accusing me of receiving money?”

You could say he did not dignify the question with a denial. This was not supposed to be happening. For Pep, the whole point of moving to City was to prove that he could succeed at a club that seemed to lack the advantages of the established giants. “For a man who has spent his life in clubs steeped in history, Manchester City might indeed seem an unusual choice,” writes Martí Perarnau in The Evolution, his fly-on-the-wall account of Pep’s latter period at Bayern. “Perhaps the question answers itself... [Pep] feels attracted by a club less bound by tradition and custom... he knew that he would be able to work without feeling that he was shattering long-established customs and practices.”

Club legends

At Barcelona, he was carrying on a tradition of excellence inherited from Johan Cruyff; at Bayern he had to contend with club legends peering over his shoulder, commenting and criticising. At City, the history was waiting to be made and the only club legend he’d have to contend with was Noel Gallagher. “City was a blank canvas and he would be free to create as he saw fit... By creating a new brand of City football and the language that goes with it, he could begin to build his own unique legacy.”

It must therefore be frustrating to see that this new “legacy” has not won universal acclaim. Lately Pep has taken to complaining that the media in England are biased against City in favour of the traditional big clubs, Liverpool and Manchester United. When he noted in his pre-Cup final press conference that the Daily Mail website’s top story last Monday had been about Paul Pogba rowing with Manchester United fans rather than City winning the league, he was making, in more polite terms, the exact same point that an angry Man City fan shouted into the Wembley press box on Saturday: “We’ve done the domestic f**king treble, no one’s ever done it before, but you’ll all have Mo Salah on the back of the f**king papers tomorrow!”

On one level it’s obvious why media outlets might cover Manchester United and Liverpool more than City: these clubs have much larger fanbases and far more people are interested in what they’re doing. But it also needs to be acknowledged that, unlike the confrontation between Pogba and that enraged United fan, City’s story lacks the essential elements of drama. Whether they like it or not, most people see their treble as more transaction than triumph.

At Wembley, City brought on three substitutes – Kevin de Bruyne, Leroy Sané and John Stones – each of whom would have been the best player in Watford’s team. There’s no magic or mystery about why their squad is so strong. They have a net transfer spend of more than £1.2 billion over the 11 seasons since the 2008 takeover. That’s almost 50 per cent more than their closest rival over that period – the Qatar-funded PSG – and half a billion pounds more than the team in third place, Manchester United.

Closest comparison

Football has not seen anything like this before. The closest comparison is with Chelsea after the 2003 Abramovich takeover, but their spending was nowhere near as sustained or comprehensive. Yes, in the 11 seasons from 2003-4 to 2014-15 Chelsea were football’s biggest spenders, but their net outlay of £751 million was only 10 per cent more than City’s in the same period, even though City spent very little between 2003 and 2007. Chelsea’s net spend in those 11 seasons was 64 per cent of the total combined net outlay of Real Madrid and Barcelona, whereas City’s since 2008 is more than Real Madrid’s and Barcelona’s put together.

Guardiola might see the apparent obsession with City’s spending as yet more evidence of the pervasive bias against his club. After all, Manchester United under Alex Ferguson enjoyed a near-hegemonic position in English football, yet their financial power was not held against them as City’s has been.

The crucial difference was this: everyone knew that United’s power and success had grown out of years of intelligent decisions. They had the best manager. They were the first club to understand the commercial potential of their brand. They invested in expanding Old Trafford at a time when that was the best economic move a club could make. They turned youth team players into sporting and commercial stars. Even those who resented United’s domination understood that it had been earned.

Alleged rule breaches

City’s domination has been bought, and that would feel unfair even if they were not currently being investigated for alleged rule breaches by Fifa, Uefa, the Premier League and the FA. On social media their fans often respond to criticism with variations on the theme “We won the lottery, you’re just bitter”. But bitterness is a natural reaction in the circumstances. To neutrals, City’s success is not an inspirational sports story. It’s just another depressing example of the Matthew principle we see at work in almost every economic arena, with the rich leveraging their wealth and power to get richer, and the rest left further and further behind. Free markets might sound good in economic models, but in real life they always seem to end up getting cornered, and City have had this one where they want it for a few years now.

City victories are now the default outcome in this rigged game and there is not much left to say about them, so it’s not really surprising that the focus has increasingly turned to issues surrounding their funding and ownership. It’s enough to make you question the whole concept of sportswashing. Abu Dhabi might have got involved with City as a way to project and improve its global standing, but is that how things have played out? If you had polled football fans in 2007 about what they associated with Abu Dhabi, you’d probably have received a lot of blank looks. Now they’ll mention Yemen, slaves, the abuse of human rights and so on. Was it really worth it?

City do at least have an army of sky-blue advocates fighting their cause on social media. When the New York Times reported last week that Uefa’s investigatory chamber was set to recommend a one-year Champions League ban for City, the response from many fans was to lash out: Uefa were corrupt, Financial Fair Play was an establishment stitch-up, the NYT journalists were Liverpool fans, and this disgraceful hit-piece on City had only been published because the NYT owned shares in Liverpool (the NYT did at one point own shares in Liverpool’s ownership group, but sold them in 2012). Clearly, many fans would rather latch on to any conspiracy theory than wait to see if the stories had substance. You shudder to imagine what might happen if Saudi Arabia ever does buy Manchester United, and that enormous worldwide fanbase becomes weaponised along similar lines.

Angry

It’s been the most successful week in City’s history, and the pity is that their manager, fans and PR department have seldom sounded more angry. It’s time to accept that oil-funded success and mass popularity are never going to go together. It’s as though City are perched on the back of a dragon, peering down at a sullen populace, wondering incredulously why they are not loved. Shouldn’t it be obvious?

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3 hours ago, skaro said:

 

"As I sit here right now, congratulations to them".

 

Is this alluding to a possible default title win - and he'd want it?

It wouldn’t be a default win though, would it? It would be a title retrospectively awarded to the team that played by the rules in the given season. The word “default” implies an automatic-awarding — if City won that title by 2 points due to financial illegalities (which we all knew the case to be for years) then it rightly should be given to the side that did not commit a crime. The best legal team out of the 20 that competed.
 

Gerrard is probably bouncing off the walls; we were superb that season, the best team in the land, and he has fucking inbreeds throughout the land fixated on that slip while the team that beat us by a couple of points were pumping 10s of millions of illegal monies into a squad that beat us by 2 points. It was a robbery; you don’t catch the thieves then question whether you should return the loot to the deserving.

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As much as I'd love this title, especially for Stevie and the rest of the squad and Brendan, a big part of me feels they won the 2014 title fair and square on the pitch, even if off it they were cheating scum.

 

A more appropriate response would be a gigantic points deduction to send out a clear message. The irony is that if they are banned from Europe, it gives them a much better chance of winning domestically, even if the uncertainty may lead to Pep or some of their stars leaving. 

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But they only won it on the pitch because they were cheating off it. City’s raison d'être has been to keep enormous squads of internationally packed players - paid for with money criminally invested & illegally against the rules of the sport. Those huge squads have got them through the lean periods - such as being without Aguero, who only played 23 times that season. It’s all intertwined - we can’t separate on pitch from off pitch because the latter dictates the former.

 

Personally I wouldn’t take too much satisfaction as the moment is gone - but I was at Selhurst Park, at the Chelsea game, at Norwich when it felt like Sterling was sending us to the title ... and any player involved in that season who had to live with it ... I completely understand their reactions when City have now been shown up for what they are and always have been 

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Guest Pistonbroke
4 hours ago, andyj said:

if they stripped city of the title i wouldnt want a winners medal regardless of them cheating we threw it away that season we didnt need any help from city 

 

I'm not sure they'd send you one mate. 

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Better for Stevie to have kept quiet but I'd be absolutely over the fucking moon if 2013/14 title is awarded to us. City cheated to win that title and every other title since the UAE bought them. It's only fair that they be stripped off their tainted titles the way Juventus were when they were found guilty of cheating.

However I am 100% certain the FA and Premier League will take no action. FFP has always been an obsession of UEFA, the English authorities have never given a shit about where the money is coming from or whether clubs suffer due to dodgy finances. So unfortunately City's domestic success is not going to be taken away.

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10 minutes ago, Baltar said:

Better for Stevie to have kept quiet but I'd be absolutely over the fucking moon if 2013/14 title is awarded to us. City cheated to win that title and every other title since the UAE bought them. It's only fair that they be stripped off their tainted titles the way Juventus were when they were found guilty of cheating.

However I am 100% certain the FA and Premier League will take no action. FFP has always been an obsession of UEFA, the English authorities have never given a shit about where the money is coming from or whether clubs suffer due to dodgy finances. So unfortunately City's domestic success is not going to be taken away.

 

The Premier League has to take some form given they submit to UEFA's FFP rules. The question is how severe it ends up being. 

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