‘Genius’ and ‘greatest achievement in football history’ emerge from ‘brain dead’ Manchester City wreckage

· Football365

Another day, another raft on Manchester City and their ‘brain dead’ cheating – which has, at least, boosted the legacies of two opponents.

Some people have emerged from the Man City mess for the better

Another day, another raft on Manchester City and their 'brain dead' cheating – which has, at least, boosted the legacies of two opponents.

All in favour… I never thought I'd say this but could we have more on Cristiano being a little whinge bag, please? Jaimo

Ask and you shall receive Despite possibly the biggest controversy in the history of English or European football unfolding before our eyes, Manchester City should be ashamed of overshadowing poor old Cristiano Ronaldo (there will only ever be one real Ronaldo) walking out of the Portugal squad. The poor lamb was left on the bench and now "I will inform all of the Portugese why i decided to leave"…the only member of the squad and coaching staff not to applaud the fans after the game.Undoubtedly great player in his day, undoubted bllend of a man.

Regards Mark Jones, LFC, Liverpool

Give the fans time and space Although my personal thoughts about the Man City case are broadly in line with the majority of recent mails published, I just wanted to take a second to say that we should perhaps give a little more breathing space to Man City fans, and perhaps ex-employees, as they begin to process what has happened to the club that they love / have worked for.

We need to recognise that in many ways the default stance upon hearing something negative about your club is to question its accuracy and to develop a form of siege mentality to deflect criticism in some way.

I think back to how my club initially dealt with the Luis Suarez / Evra affair, making their players wear Suarez t-shirts in the warm-up for their next game (siege mentality). Thankfully, things moved away from that blinkered support as matters became clearer and there was eventually a broad acceptance.

For Man City, in some ways there are parallels to how a victim of a romance scam would react – denial that something is amiss would be the first emotion, followed by anger and frustration at having been deceived, before processing and moving on.

Let's recognise that Man City fans appear to have been the victims here, so let's not shout at them – let's instead try to persuade through reasoned argument.

Over a year ago I had a mail published on the topic of what I thought at the time would be an appropriate punishment for this case as I understood it at the time. My views haven't changed fundamentally – I am not for the redistribution of the trophies they gleaned and feel any punishment must have a multi-year impact, reflecting the timeframe of the offending – a simple relegation to the EFL would not achieve that goal. Now I am a little clearer on the scale of distortion that appears to have been caused by their actions, I would be a little more firm in what that multi-year punishment should look like, including the wiping of the titles won from the record books – I am in line with a comment made by someone else in the mailbox that this would serve as an ongoing reminder to others about the need to adhere to the rules that entrants have signed up to obey.

To me there is some sense in applying something like a 40 point penalty for each of the next 4 seasons, starting with this one.

The consequence of this is that they would not qualify for Europe this year but would likely avoid relegation. However, the key point is that their higher end players would not be happy to have zero chance of playing in Europe (lets ignore the conceptual headache that would be caused by them winning the CL this year for a second) and as such would likely trigger transfer movement, in theory weakening their squad. This would mean that the challenge of avoiding relegation with the 40 point penalty in the following season would be steeper (but admittedly achievable). I doubt that they would have enough about them to avoid being relegated across the course of the 4 seasons and would also be pretty much locked out of Europe comps for that time.

Now let me see how long this part of the process drags on for before we get a clearer understanding of the punishment to be applied … Sparky, LFC

City fan here.

What hasn't been mentioned so far is that, in 2008, City's Chairman and CEO sent an email to every supporter. The gist of it was this:

"Hey guys, us and the Board have an idea, and it involves us cooking the books BIG style! Upside? We could buy loads of great players and win sht tons of trophies. Downside? There's a teensy-weensy chance that it will lead to the destruction of the Club you love and the end of English football as we know it. What do you think?"

Problem is, my copy seems to have been sent straight to my 'junk' folder, so I didn't get to vote. I'm given to understand however, that the vast majority of my fellow fans said "Yay! Great idea! Let's do that and sod everybody else!"

As such, and as City fans are equally complicit in what those at top of the club have done, I suggest the following sanctions be added to the many and varied ones already suggested in the mailbox.

· All City fans to have their right ears lopped off, in public, so that any other fan can point and shout "Unclean!"

· City supporters to be publicly flogged and led, naked, through the streets of Merseyside, North London and Salford whilst being pelted with whatever the locals see fit.

· That it be mandatory for any City fan wanting to enter an away ground to be tarred, feathered, and charged £1,000 each for the privilege.

Seems fair to me. I mean, City fans should reap what they've sown right? Mark (Can't wait for the first moral high horse arshole to lecture me as to why I should stop supporting my club). MCFC since 1972.

10 Conclusions 1. Jose Mourinho was right. Finishing second in the Premier League with (a not very good) Manchester United, behind (a financially juiced) Manchester City really was a remarkable achievement.

2. Claudio Ranieri deserves a solid gold statue and a spot in the Premier League Hall of Fame. Winning the Premier League with Leicester, and beating both (a financially juiced, according to half the Mailbox) Manchester City and the (also financially juiced, according to the other half) Red Cabal + Chelsea, was the greatest achievement in football history.

3. Jurgen Klopp is a football genius. Imagine what Liverpool could have done with an extra £1 billion in the bank. They could have spent £800 million on Thibaut Courtois, won two more Champions Leagues, and still had plenty left over to buy Florian Wirtz.

4. Pep Guardiola is, after all, a Bald Fraud. Ask anybody who's played EAFC Career Mode: if you add £1 billion to your finances – over and above your non-cheating finances – then you are obliged to win everything, with a 100% record, every season. (The sad/scary part is, Guardiola really is very good, and could probably have won it all without the financial boost.)

5. English clubs benefitted from City's cheating. It's the ugly truth none of the Red Cabal + Chelsea is ready to face. Once we stop trying to decide which English clubs got screwed over the worst (Liverpool? Arsenal? Stoke City on a Saturday afternoon in May?), we'll realise that England got its extra Champions League spots partly on the back of City's performances. Domestically, they were robbed. In European competition? Not so much.

6. This is just the tip of the iceberg. We only know about City's dodgy deals because a hacker shared stolen private information with a newspaper. Imagine, just for a moment, what we DON'T know about what happens behind the scenes in top-level football.

7. City are too big to fail. Juventus bounced back quickly after being relegated, and even Rangers eventually crawled back up the ladder in Scotland. Even if they're booted out of the Football League entirely and are sent to the very bottom of the amateur pyramid, City will be back.

8. A 60-point penalty sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. 60 points, right? That's the number being bandied about in some quarters. But consider this: over the past 10 seasons, the gap between 1st and 20th in the Premier League has never been less than 63 points. Based on historical data and City's start to the current season, there's every chance they could take a 60-point penalty and still not finish bottom of the table. They could even take the hit and avoid relegation. That's how big the gap is now between the Haves and the Have-Nots.

9. Football's reputation will take years to recover. But only among casual fans. The rest of us are so tribal, so blinkered and so utterly and willfully blind to the obvious corruption of the Premier League, UEFA, FIFA, and the whole rotten lot, that we'll carry on regardless.

10. Stop wondering which City players will move to which teams. No matter what happens, you know that the good ones will move to Real Madrid on free transfers anyway. – Mark, Cape Town

Rules are rules I wanted to respond to people writing in saying 'it doesn't matter that City broke the rules as the rules are unfair!' and 'red cartel!' etc.

The point that other clubs, including City's natural competition at the time like Everton and Villa, were obeying the rules has been made many times. I've also enjoyed the comments around the red cartel being a pretty incompetent cartel all things considered. But even aside from those points, how do you think Arsenal, United and Liverpool got so big? Do you think a nation state bought them a few years before financial fair play rules were introduced and pumped a billion in?

They did not. They all got lucky to some extent – e.g. United and Arsenal are by far the biggest clubs in their respective cities partly thanks to being in a fashionable area – but periods of success came through sustained good management. It took fucking ages. There is nothing stopping other teams from doing this. Indeed, City now have the best youth system in world football. While cheating on the short game they also played the long game. There are no limits on what clubs can spend on youth development or infrastructure. They could have just done that, and they could still be a force by now. They could be playing Olise, Palmer, Foden, Rogers, Lavia, Trafford, Frimpong, Brahim Diaz, Eric Garcia and others who came through their youth system, supplemented by signings they could actually afford. Newcastle's owners appear to be obeying the rules and committed to a £190m investment in their youth system just last month.

Recent comments from City's owners (including through Etihad Airways) should be considered aggregating factors which result in even stronger sanctions. They must be kicked out of football forever.

Much love Simon Cochrane

I have to respond to Tarqs NUFC and reiterate the point that they did actually break the agreed upon rules. The decision making process for the implementation of FFP was a democratic one, with 13 of the 20 clubs voting to instate it. It is clear the motivation behind it was the big clubs protecting what they had but that is not why most of the other clubs voted for it. The 'pulling up of the drawbridge' by the red cartel became a by-product of what the other 10 clubs really actually wanted: to protect themselves from reckless future ownership.

As I said, it was a democratic process and through that same process, if all the other clubs voted to play without goal keepers to make the game more exciting. It wouldn't be OK for Man City to then field a keeper just because they didn't vote for it and thought it was unfair to them because they had the best keeper in the league.

I think the clubs who Man City defrauded the most were the clubs of a similar level and not the big teams who missed out on trophies. How many teams got relegated with rich owners who would have loved to plough money into the club but stuck to the rules? How many clubs worked tirelessly to try to increase their revenue, just to see Man City steam roll past them? Whether you agree with the rules are not is inconsequential, they cheated.

They didn't just 'level the playing field', they spent their way to a position of supremacy. Since 2008 Man City were the top or second top spenders in 16 transfer windows. But really there's no point looking at the transfer fees or wages paid because we do not know the true figures. How many transfers were lower on the books because the agent got paid his fee from a shell company in the middle-east? Mancini gave us some great in-sight to their common double contact approach.

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