The only thing Man City are guilty of is ‘trying to level up the playing field’ after ‘blind panic’ of ‘cartel’

· Football365

Manchester City’s apparent rule-breaking practises were ‘simply not cheating’, but rather showing the panicked ‘cartel’ they can be caught.

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Fighting the good fight

Manchester City was taken over in 2008. The elite clubs led by Manchester United, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, pushed FFP through in 2009. Manchester City’s owners have only ever spent their own money, investment that would have been perfectly legal before the traditional elite pulled up the drawbridge in a blind panic.

City has spent around the same as United and Chelsea in that time and a little more than Liverpool and Arsenal. Their own money remember. All city did was try to level up the field. There was no actual doping, we didn’t squeeze an extra player on the pitch or bribe officials.

City just showed the traditional football elite what another club with similar resources could achieve. Not a single one of you wringing your hands over this, who have watched football since before 2008 gave a rubbery f where money came from until City got it.

It simply is not cheating unless you count cheating as a powerful cartel which is able to introduce a brand new set of rules designed to protect their status and then, miraculously, get the fans of smaller teams to somehow scream a defence of it.

Watching the coverage over the last few days one would think City were guilty of drugging opposition players. The club spent its own money challenging the elite, who did everything to change the playing fields. City won, that’s the crime.

What are other fans thinking? Demanding the etihad be burned down and all city fans walk naked through the streets to the chant of “shame, shame’. Where’s your own ambition or dream of a chance to do the same one day?

Get a collective grip. The trophies and memories are staying, no matter how much you scream at us.

S. Manchester.

Man City took the PSR and proved why those rules exist

Dear Ed,

I’ve read a lot over the weekend from supporters of other Premier League clubs, mainly Aston Villa, Newcastle and Everton, as well as Manchester City fans themselves, pushing the argument that, even if City are found guilty, all they really did was break rules that should never have existed in the first place.

The argument goes that FFP, PSR, or whatever derivation you prefer, was designed by the traditional elite, the Big Six, Red Cartel, Super League Six, or whatever cute name we’re using these days, to pull up the ladder and prevent anybody else from challenging them. In this telling, City weren’t acting in their own interests at all. They were altruistically fighting the good fight against the evil Empire on behalf of everyone else.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about why financial regulations were introduced. Were they intended to stop English football descending into an unsustainable arms race, with more clubs potentially going the way of Leeds and Portsmouth? Or did the established clubs recognise that spending controls would also protect their own positions and, particularly for the increasingly profit-conscious American owners entering the league, their returns?

I think there’s truth in both arguments. The big clubs were perfectly happy for the rules to achieve both objectives.

But the argument I find far more interesting, and much harder to understand, is the idea that abolishing FFP or PSR would somehow make the Premier League more competitive.

Competitive how, exactly?

Do Villa and Everton fans think abolishing spending restrictions makes them more likely to win the Premier League? A cup? Qualify for the Champions League?

The argument appears to be that these clubs have extremely wealthy owners who want to invest more money but are prevented from doing so. Fine. That’s a perfectly reasonable argument, and perhaps there should be greater scope for owners to invest.

But there’s a fairly enormous problem with the idea that simply removing the restrictions creates a level playing field.

You know who else has extremely wealthy owners who would like to spend more money?

Manchester City and Newcastle United.

Except their ultimate financial backing isn’t merely that of extremely wealthy businessmen. Their ownership structures are linked to Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia respectively — states with financial resources on an entirely different scale.

Do Villa or Everton supporters seriously believe that the Friedkins’ billions, or the wealth of Wes Edens and Nassef Sawiris, enables them to win an unrestricted spending contest against financial resources ultimately measured in the hundreds of billions or trillions?

That’s the fundamental flaw in the argument.

If your definition of “competition” is simply allowing owners to spend as much of their wealth as they like, Villa and Everton don’t suddenly become Manchester City’s financial equals. They potentially move further away from the top of the financial hierarchy.

And we’ve already seen a smaller-scale version of what happens when an owner arrives willing to spend without any meaningful concern about conventional football economics.

Roman Abramovich’s arrival at Chelsea transformed the transfer market. Kieran Maguire has estimated that, adjusted for football inflation, Chelsea’s spending during the first three Abramovich years would equate to around £1.5 billion today. Look at lists of the biggest transfer-spending seasons in football history and Chelsea’s early-2000s spending still stands out despite the enormous inflation in transfer fees since.

And that was one extraordinarily wealthy individual doing the ultimate Jack Walker.

Now imagine the same principle applied to entities backed by Gulf states.

In the financial free-for-all some supporters seem to be advocating, the obvious beneficiaries aren’t Villa or Everton. They’re Manchester City and Newcastle, because there is effectively no plausible level of football expenditure at which the resources behind those clubs become exhausted.

Even Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and the other traditional financial heavyweights would face the same fundamental problem.

However wealthy an individual owner or consortium might be, there is a point at which a rational private investor stops spending. Competing against a state-backed entity prepared to treat football expenditure as strategically worthwhile without requiring a conventional financial return is an entirely different proposition.

That’s why I think the debate about PSR so often misses the real issue.

There is a perfectly legitimate argument that the current rules constrain ambitious clubs too much. There is a legitimate argument that clubs should be allowed to invest more of their owners’ money. There is also a legitimate argument that the established elite benefited enormously from regulations that happened to restrict the ability of challengers to spend their way into that elite.

All of those things can be true.

But it does not follow that removing financial restrictions altogether creates greater competition.

Quite possibly the opposite.

The original sin was allowing football clubs to become vehicles for states while pretending that an investment fund or corporate structure somehow made the distinction irrelevant. Once the Premier League permitted ownership structures ultimately backed by resources on that scale, it created a competitive problem that ordinary financial regulation was never really designed to solve.

And that’s the irony in supporters of clubs like Villa and Everton cheering for the complete dismantling of spending restrictions. Their owners are extremely wealthy. Under a different ownership landscape, giving them greater freedom to invest might genuinely increase competition.

But that’s not the landscape they’re operating in.

Remove every restraint tomorrow and they aren’t entering a fairer fight with Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea.

They’re entering an arms race with Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.

And that’s a race almost nobody else in world football can win.

Regards, Lindsay

They cheated their own fans

Man Utd fan here. I think what a lot of people are missing here is how Man City have cheated their own fans.

Who knows how much the actual cheating translated into success that wouldn’t otherwise have been achieved, but you’d have to think a premier league title or two was not entirely out of reach had they acted properly. The manager and the structure behind the scenes would still have been there, and I’d back that to secure that more limited success with less money. So, what has been denied to their own fans is the legitimate and lasting joy of those hard earned moments – especially those fans that stuck around through the real lows.

They deserve those successes to be untainted. They’ve cheated everyone, but spare a thought for their own fans too.

Daniel

Crocodile tears

Naturally, most Man City players like Rodori, and also fans will come out and say they won it on the pitch and they cant take memories away.. well your right, unless they can all star in Men In Black III.

Now imagine if there was a full adult team in an under 8s tournament who would (understandably) win it. So everyone now has the memory of them winning it however just because they didnt bring their passports, nobody could physically prove they weren’t cheating (over 8). It doesnt make it right and still robs the other teams of their own success and memories. Its against the rules. Its not a level playing field. Its cheating.

Its the same principle for City.

I have no sympathy for any ManCity players or fans, or even Pep Fraudiola. In fact, his passive aggressive bitchy behaviour over the years is a good reflection of the clubs entitled behaviour of the past 15 years!

Relegated them. Strip them of titles. And let them rot until they all realise what they have done wrong.

G.

Sorry am I missing something – all the comments are saying – players will be affected, fans will be affected, staffing at the club will be affected, my nan will be affected – but what about the owners – they should be banned from ownership and stripped of Citeh as an asset.

No sell off – they can not sell the players they purchased nefariously – the true baddies can not profit from their ill gotten gains. Why is no one talking about removing the owners from ‘ALL’ soccer related operations at least in the UK (and would find it highly odd if they jumped to another club as rinse repeat) – surely the owners should be banned?

Also isn’t it just as bad to have the other half of manchester doing the same thing but from a perspective of debt – and that makes it all right then does it?

No it does not! Utd should also be dismantled and the owners banned – then amalgamate the clubs – someone in the comments mentioned this and I wholeheartedly support that concept – we could even call the new team Manchester City but play in Utd’s colours – oh the joy if that happened – then they could work their way back up – i mean it’s not like Manchester is big enough or populated enough to support two teams anyhow (bit like scouseland) – comments please??

Micky (AFC – can somebody think of the owners in all this…one club manchester is my vote!)

The punishment

The LA Clippers (NBA) have recently been caught doing similar irregular financing as Man City to pay their star player Kwahi Leonard offbook to circumvent the salary cap. Their on-court punishment? Loss of 5 first round picks. Whilst the Premier League do not have a draft, I think an adjacent punishment could work and make the Premier League more interesting.Man City must loan (paying 100% of wages) one player per team for 2026/27. Worst gets first pick.

Well done Spurs, you land Haaland.

Fulham – do you fancy Elliot Anderson pulling the strings in midfield. Or some Semenyo magic?

Coventry – let Enzo learn from an ancestor in Frank Lampard.

And so on.

As a Toon fan, I’ll take Guehi.

Televise it on a Thursday night, instant huge TV audience and massive social media ripple. It would fill podcast content for weeks.

Liam (Newcastle)

Surely the most appropriate way to punish City is to reverse their tactics and severely limit the percentage of their income/turnover they can spend on players. This means the club accrues money it can t spend and it would be amusing to see if they can be competitive on a budget maybe closer to a promoted club. This should be in place for maybe 9 yrs by which time the turnover will be likely halved and the glory hunter fans and the current owners long gone. The fans have had a great time on an inflated ride and can now have a decade of deflated decline to go closer to their historic status as a club,

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