‘Nothing short of destroying’ Manchester City ‘is acceptable for what they’ve done’

· Football365

If the Mailbox had its way, Manchester City would very possibly be entirely scrubbed from history altogether. Force them to do a Wrexham.

If the Mailbox had its way, Manchester City would very possibly be entirely scrubbed from history altogether. Force them to do a Wrexham.

Send your thoughts to theeditor@football365.com.

‘Good on Manchester City’

Assuming Manchester United has a revenue of £666m that means they can spend £566.5m a year on players. By the same token, Nottingham Forest has a revenue of £222m so they can only spend £188.7m a year on players.

WTF?! Manchester United can consistently spend THREE TIMES more than another club in the League on players, and this is meant to be “fair”? How are Forest or anyone else ever supposed to catch up to the Big 4? It’s perverse for “smaller” clubs to be cheering FFP given that FFP disproportionately affects them in other ways too: Forest overspent by ~£30m and got 4 points deducted! £30m is an amount that Manchester united could consume with ease under FFP.

This is all while the same teams are trying to compete with one another in the SAME League.

Good on Manchester City, a Championship club at best, for challenging the Elite Clubs at the top who don’t want such plucky little upstarts upsetting their cushy little protectionism racket. And for all those elite club’s fans now bemoaning the “joy “ they were robbed of by Man City “cheating”, you had nothing to say about your protectionism racket when everything was rosy did you?

Regards, Colin.

The Red Cartel

The first club was bought for 200mil in 2009 and sat in 6th place in the premier league. The owners proceeds to spend over 150mil in their first season in charge and 3.64 billion on transfers since then bringing them an unprecedented period of dominance winning 25 major trophies and 8 premier leagues.

They have been found out to have been fraudulently funding their club by an independent committee to the tune of billions of pounds, keeping payments off the books, flying premier league referees to the owners country and paying them passive sums of money to referee meaningless games weeks before massive premier league fixtures where said referees have highly contentious decisions in favour of their club.

So far so plucky minnows right?

Next up is a club who was bought for 300mil in October 2010 in 19th position in the premier having nearly run into administration the previous year.

These owners (much to the chagrin of their supporters have followed a strict policy of only spend what you earn spending approximately 2billion across their ownership and winning two premier leagues and one champions league in the process.

Both clubs now boast 180 and 200 millions followers on social media collectively.

Can you spot the plucky minnow’s challenging the elite?

I’m honestly getting sick of this. The better part of me wants to give City’s supporters the benefit of the doubt in all of this but S.’s email yesterday did it for me.

Now that City are finally caught out in nearly two decades of lying, cheating and fraud, consistently acting in bad faith with regards to the other clubs in the league, the league and all football fans, their PR machine cranks into gear and trys to portray this as some sort of Robin Hood attack on the Sheriff of Nottingham.

But they’re not Robin Hood, they’re not even the Sheriff, they’re the king and Queen and everything in the country, in their fans eyes 3.64 billion is little more than 1.2billion. Cheating hundreds of millions of rival fans out of some of the best moments of their lives is justifiable by some flimsy cartel fantasy (the only cartel Liverpool were part of when their cheating started was one of incompetence.)

I’m done with people who think they’re above the rules, above the laws, above countries and who can just do whatever they like. We might never see the likes of Zuckerberg, Musk, Trump or Putin get their comeuppance in our lifetimes but maybe just maybe these guys will and that for me gives me hope that maybe there is some justice left in this world which sometimes feels like the truth belongs to the man with the most money, the best PR company, the most powerful algorithm or the most weapons.

I’ll say it again, you guys suck. Dave LFC

Hi

In all the fallout from the Man City saga the red cartel gets referenced as the big bad fiend the brave blue clubs were fighting against.

I have always assumed this is Man U, Liverpool and Arsenal. Liverpool have won the league twice this century (and nearly went bust), Arsenal have won 3 (and spent around 15 years paying off their stadium which reduced their spending power), Man U were dominant in the first decade but have won none in the last 13 years (and needed to sack the tea lady to stop going bust, according to Sir tax exile).

It doesn’t strike me that they have nailed this cartel thing to allow the plucky little upstarts (and Leicester) dominate the league for nigh on 20 years. Mel – Dublin, Berlin, Athlone Town

It’s all nonsense

I can’t look down on people for whom thier club is so central to thier life. Through good and bad times, the club is a constant.

This City stuff seems to be brining up alot of what the vast majority of football fans would say is bullshit. The former City players endlessly rimming the club’s owners get no sympathy. They’re clearly doing it so that they don’t cut off a very profitable source.

Fans who still protest the club’s innocence. Or think that they just broke a few admin rules. The newly released info that City hid over £800,000,000 in contracts means that that opinion should be viewed only as being gaslit.

City fans who cry foul against Chelsea. Fans who belive its all a conspiracy. I can’t feel anger against. These are the same circumstances that popularist political parties prey on people and thier innate emotions. And guess what is fulled by emotion more than most in this country. Sport.

At the end of the day City seem to have quite extravagantly and extraordinarily broken the rules. Admin or no, this goes far beyond anything football has seen since Calciopoli, but worse. At some point you need to recognise that your partner has been abusive. They’ve lied. Everything you thought about this constant has been a lie for years. Thats an insanely difficult thing to past. If this was your club think for a minute and ask your self if you wouldn’t be acting like City fans are.

TLDR. City seem to be deeply, deeply corrupt. Were for a long time. They should absolutely have the book thrown at them however that looks. But as hard as it will sound to any non City fan, they have been decived and lied to. I agree you cant take away the feeling of thier success. Taking away titles would be pointless, but City fans will gain nothing by continuing to give support to the ownership. And let’s be honest, there isnt much schadenfreude to be had. They won those titles. We’ve moved on. Hopfully City fans can too. Will (If Rio Ferdinand can fit the Premier league trophy up his arse then sure, let’s give that one to utd.)

Rules are rules

So I used to drive 120 plus. The rules are nonsense. Designed to keep me under someone else’s control. Designed to make sure I drive like everyone else.

I say I used to drive. Because I got pinched. In court I argued that the limit is nonsense. Apparently that was not a defence.

So I used to drive. But I’m not allowed to drive anymore. Ever.

Limit is still nonsense. I’ll maintain that for as long as I ride my bike Johnno

good morning

Read S Manchesters mail and whilst F365 set them up a bit, they certainly managed to hang themselves with what they wrote.

Take Manchester United, who were described as one of the elite pulling up a drawbridge The point is, United did not need to. Until the summer of 2005, when the Glazer takeover occurred, United were traded on the London Stock Exchange where annual accounts most definitely need to be honestly declared.

As of 2005 they had zero debt and annually traded as a profit making company. Hardly a business model of spendthrift spending.

City cheated, end of. They signed up to rules they had zero intention of following. They were then found to have lied when giving evidence. Also the only reason UEFA’s charges did not stick was due to the statute of limitations, not that city did not cheat. UEFA also found that they did.

Regards Ged Biglin

War and peace

Why did Lindsay have to write a Tolstoy-esque word salad to tell us what has been happening since the dawn of time. Some clubs are richer than others. Is it unfair that Manchester United are richer than Bolton Wanderers? That Everton have more money than Tranmere? Since the dawn of the football league, clubs with richer owners have generally been more successful that clubs with poorer owners. What a revelation!!

The central premise of this argument is backwards. Football has always been dominated, disproportionately, by the clubs with the biggest financial resources.

I’m guessing Linsdsay is a fan of one of the top clubs and thinks, ‘what’s the problem with the status quo, some clubs are just bigger than others, mine is a big one, I don’t see what all the fuss is’.

Financial power has always, repeatedly, helped determine which clubs become dominant. Villa/Everton et al are not competing against City in some infinite money auction, they are competing in a football league in which clubs already have radically different revenues, wage budgets, commercial power, global fanbases and infrastructure. And these differences existed long before Abramovich or Saudi Arabia. The Big 6 didn’t get their financial advantages from FFP, it’s a product of decades of being the richest and most successful teams.

FFP/PSR doesn’t create equality. United will still have massive commercial power, Liverpool will still have a huge global fanbase, Arsenal/Spurs will still have some of the largest revenue generating stadiums in Europe. Villa/Everton will still have substantially more resources than Hull or Coventry. Football before PSR wasn’t some dystopian wasteland. The argument being presented essentially imagines an unlimited spending contest between Aston Villa and Manchester City and concludes that Villa cannot win. But Villa don’t need to have more money than Manchester City to win a football match. They need to build a better team. They need better recruitment. They need better coaching. They need better development. They need to get more value from their resources. And occasionally, they need the sort of luck that Leicester had. That’s what sport is.

Rich clubs dominating football isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s practically the history of football. The biggest difference today is that the source of wealth has changed. Once it was industrial magnates. Then it was wealthy local businessmen. Then it was commercial revenues like SKY and huge global fanbases. Then came Abramovich. Then came Abu Dhabi. Then Saudi Arabia. The hierarchy changes. The mechanism doesn’t.

Scrap PSR, bring in a rule that any money that an owner who wants to pump money into his club cannot use that same money to saddle the club with debt, that money can only be gifted to the clubs to stop them for going belly-up. Tie owners to contracts they give out so that they can’t walk away and watch a club sink. But being anti-competition so the bigger clubs don’t get usurped is not sports, and it’s not fair. Weldoninhio, BAC

Criminal v sporting sanctions

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