Manchester City have just ‘been singled out’ – Man Utd, Barca and Milan should be sweating too

· Football365

Manchester City could not cook the transfer books alone, even if they’re basically being picked out as a thief amongst a room full of robbers.

Manchester City could not cook the transfer books alone, even if they’re basically being picked out as a thief amongst a room full of robbers.

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Some rules should be broken ‘But they broke the rules’!!!!

We keep hearing in the mailbox. Waaaaaah.

City didn’t break the rules for when the Red Cartel rose to prominence, they broke the rules that were put in place in a specific time and have frozen the ambitions of all the challenger clubs at said time. Not when Everton were strong in the 80s, Newcastle in the 90/noughties, but at a very specific time when these red clubs were ahead.

It will take multiple decades for any non-red or Chelsea club to catch up. The rules are as wrong as anything City have done. They aren’t martyrs for justice or the ‘little guy’, but it’s no coincidence almost all the joy in the mailbox is from the clubs that benefited most from FFP/PSR. I hope they bog the Prem down in appeals for years and force some reflection on whether the rules need changing. But they won’t be changed as long as the leadership in the league can be vetoed by Man U, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Can’t wait for another 40 years of the same teams winning and any team that gets close immediately being stripped of all their stars and sent back to square one. If Brighton keep this up they’ll be raided in January too. Can’t have them doing too well can we, we don’t want too many Leicesters.

Tarqs NUFC – spending cap, spending cap, spending cap. The only fair and balanced approach to all this.

So much sanctimony over the City thing.

This is the sport where “taking a yellow” is applauded/encouraged. Cheating is cheating. City will take their punishment and we will move on. Their PL titles will mean no more or no less than any other one.

This falls under the “oil money” argument. As if there a “good” billionaire in the world. That one of them somehow made their money through legitimate wholesome means.

Please.

Relax. Enjoy the football for what it is. A distraction.

Dalian (a lot of this is from other Sky Six customers, about reinstating titles, just remember no one remembers Carl Lewis)

City have just been singled out

> “It would have been in breach of both the league’s and UEFA’s spending limits by a very substantial amount”

This sentence really sticks with me. Not for the fact that City have been dishonest and fraudulent but for the fact that all the other clubs weren’t a million miles away from city’s spending. The “very substantial amount” piece suggests that it should have been the equivalent of Elon Musk vs Del Boy, instead it felt more like Musk vs Bezos. Does this not raise more questions about the general health of the game?

I’m by no means defending City but it does feel a bit like they’ve been singled out for their corruption in an already grossly fraudulent game. The sums that they were paying for players were not beyond the realms of what other teams paid and yet we’re meant to just sit back and accept that other teams were paying hundreds of millions out on players because they’re “well run”, have a big international fan base or have been historically successful?

I always remember on a course I did years ago being told that when you’re looking for fraud don’t just look at what the numbers tell you, look at the visual aspects too for the full story. If the books are saying the business is failing but there’s a Bentley sat in the directors parking space then look a bit deeper. Conversely if the books say it’s making a roaring profit and there’s a clapped out old banger in the space then again look a little deeper.

You look at United as an example and they’re steaming through cash on player fees and yet they can’t even sort a leaky roof. Barca too, they’re counting the cost of a new stadium but have they missed a beat on player fees? Not a jot but we’re supposed to believe that they’ve pulled on their financial “levers” to alleviate the financial pressures? It does seem to be that one man’s fraud is another man’s financial acumen.

I honestly don’t think there’s a case to answer for City. They’re basically being picked out as a thief amongst a room full of robbers.

Anthony, Kilburn

Will there be repercussions for other clubs?

We know that a large part of City’s cheating was under-reporting transfer costs, but who’s to say they didn’t also inflate outgoing transfers? And what does this mean for clubs who did business with City and were (presumably) happy to conspire with them? There’s a reason we all marvelled at their amazing transfer business – it wasn’t real.

Hold your noses and let’s do a deep dive into their transfer business and see who else could potentially be sweating like a turkey at Xmas right now.

All transfer information was taken from Transfermarkt and converted using annual average exchange rates.

2009/10 – Look, everything about that Tevez (£25m from West Ham) transfer stank. Leaving a double winning team and CL finalists for new money was probably more a reflection of the player, and there was the whole economic rights issue, with his advisors being due part of the transfer fee. But that’s a fairly low transfer fee and it wouldn’t be a surprise if the advisors got quite a lot more from Man Cheaty. I usually hate those childish nicknames but, on this occasion, indulge me. Adebayor’s price (£25m from Arsenal) was arguably a little low too, given he was off the back of a decent season. Ronaldo went to Madrid for £84m that summer, for context.

2010/11 – Andy Carroll (11 goals the previous season) went to Liverpool for £35m that season, so fair enough with the Dzeko (£32m -10 goals) and Balotelli (£26m – 9 goals) signings. However, selling Robinho for £18m was a fantastic bit of business, given he barely kicked a ball the season before. One does raise an eyebrow slightly when you consider AC Milan’s next biggest transfer in that year was a £5m loan fee for Ibrahimovic. If, for example, I was wanting to cheat by overinflating the income I got from transfers, I might sell a player for “£18m” on paper and give the selling club £10m back through other means. Wasn’t Fly Emirates AC Milan’s main sponsor that season? Interesting.

2011/12 – £35m for the 3rd top scorer in La Liga (Aguero), finishing only behind Ronaldo and Messi? We bought Atletico’s GK and had to pay £22m. Yet they let their main man go for only £13m more? Notably there were two transfers out to QPR that season, Onuoha & Shaun Wright-Phillips, both for £4m. You know, the same QPR who suspiciously kicked the ball straight back to City when they were chasing a goal, then parted like the Red Sea to give us the Aguerooooooooo(oh shit we’ve been caught) moment.

2012/13 – A net spend of £12m this year (wink wink), for a team who had just won the PL under “Two Contracts” Mancini. They brought in a couple of new MFs (Garcia & Rodwell) and a CB (Nastasic) for the guts of only £40m. Yet sold off their unwanted dross (relatively speaking) such as Ballotelli (AC Milan again), Adam Johnson, Adebayor and Nigel De Jong (AC Milan again) for £33m. They are working miracles; meanwhile, United can only bring in £7m for Berbatov AND Ji-Sung Park that year.

2013/14 – They spent around £90m on 4 first team players (Fernandinho, Jovetic, Alvaro Negredo and Jesus Navas) which is a feat in itself. Then you look at two of those, Negredo and Navas – both came from Sevilla FC and both went back to Sevilla a year or two after signing. There’s a game of transfer hokey-cokey going on. Picture the scene, I’m in a laundromat watching money as it goes round and round and round until it’s sparkling clean. Money, what money? Look over here at our new training complex.

2014/15 is fairly uneventful. In truth, I’m getting bored of this. They spent £82m (gross) but it’s the line in the sand when the gloves come off and the spending subsequently starts to ramp up. In subsequent years they spend £150m, £177m, and £278m – greater success is leading to a snowball effect, allowing them to spend more as years go on. Even then, the prices that they are paying per player seem remarkably low at times, rarely paying over £50m for top players whilst recouping decent money for players they don’t want or need. These years coincide with the arrival of Pep, who has not been implicated for the sake of clarity. But the club obviously enticed Pep by promising a massive transfer war chest – no war chest, perhaps no Pep?

It doesn’t stop there, look at the Haaland transfer. £50m for one of the biggest talents on the planet? Now I know he had a release clause, but do we know how much of a signing bonus was actually paid? Other teams simply couldn’t compete with a seemingly limitless off-the-books cheque book.

Nevertheless, back to the original point, if we’re looking at dodgy transfer deals then there are two sides to that coin. Clubs have to be willing to work with City at those prices, knowing there’ll be a briefcase stuffed full of dirhams coming their way. Perhaps there needs to be an investigation into some of the clubs who have dealt with City in the past and held middle eastern sponsorships. Not pointing any fingers of course, just speculating and I’ll let your own imagination take you on that journey; but it shows where City’s lies and deception might take us and this is only transfer fees – what about the other financial transactions at the club?

This particular house of cards has only just started to topple.

Garey Vance, MUFC

Manchester City are like Donald Trump

- Rule Number 1: Attack, attack, attack. (Always go on the offensive rather than defending yourself.) - Rule Number 2: Admit nothing and deny everything. (Never concede fault or weakness to the public or opponents.) - Rule Number 3: Claim victory and never admit defeat. (No matter what actually happens or how bad things look, declare that you won.)

As a human being, one can get an occasional laugh out of Trump, one may ocassionally agree with one of his points or policies.

But fundamentally the white wolf inside us all knows with absolute certainty that he is not telling the truth, that he’s lying and that he’s guilty – and when you’re blessed with a moral compass, it will always and ever twitch around him.

I enjoy Joe Hart’s punditry and he’s always seemed a pretty straight shooting kind of bloke, but to come out and publicly support this regime after the outcome of the SECOND independent investigation into their industrial scale cheating can only be categorised as 1) deliberately dishonest out of self-regard or 2) naive/stupid to the point of condemnation.

It’s only a matter of time until a perpetrator of these crimes is overwhelmed by their conscience and publicly admits to the co-ordinated cheating they were part of to relieve the inner consequences.

Players will know, Pep will know, the chairman will know, I know whats true, you know whats true or is it all a conspiracy theory made up by the PL to punish one of the most exciting teams to ever grace the competition?

Please. I recall standing in Trump Tower years ago in New York City, seeing all the gold bits and bobs all around the building and thinking: “I don’t buy it”. 100 points you say? No team has ever done it yet. The one that did was deliberately cheating to ensure unfair competitive advantage. Domestic treble? IT HASN’T BEEN DONE.

It’s the dishonesty at the core that makes it rotten and the continued denial, obfuscation and deliberate aggression to flood the zone that makes everyone sick. Physically sick when I see City trying to lie their way out and threatening to use litigation etc. to defend their guilt and delay justice.

Good luck to Pep Guardiola with his conscience, to David Silva, to Ederson and Vincent Company, to Noel Gallagher and the hard core City fans that watched them in League 2 twenty-seven years ago.

You can have your ego, shielded by lies, or you can have a morsel of your morality back by not feeding the other wolf. I don’t envy you with that struggle.

Mark

Hi there,

Manchester City fans are famous for a celebration called the Poznan, where they join together and jump up and down making a lot of noise, while studiously not paying attention to what is taking place in front of them.

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