Man City stadium ban proposed as punishment as Saudis take higher moral ground

There is no end to the Manchester City mails as new punishments are proposed and new ire is unleashed.

Man City should be banned from Etihad Stadium Man City and Etihad Airways have been partners in crime for years – at least, that is how it looks if the financial allegations and findings against City ultimately stand after the appeal.

If City are found guilty and gaining an unfair financial advantage, then a fine or points deduction isn’t enough.

My proposed punishment? Ban Man City from playing at the Etihad Stadium for 10 years. Let them play away ALL season long

The punishment should also affect Etihad Airways. If the club is prohibited from using the stadium, its biggest sponsor should feel the consequences too. Taking away the stadium would hurt both Man City and the sponsor financially through lost exposure, matchday revenue, hospitality and commercial activity. Aziz, KSA

Would anybody actually stop watching? So I’ve just had the misfortune of watching Sky Sports Sunday Supplement, or as it should have been called ‘the City forgiveness tour starts here’. The only purpose of the show appears to be floating excuses as to why City aren’t punished. There’s the ‘fear of Super League’, ‘fear of lost commercial interest without City’, ‘fear of East Manchester falling apart’ and ‘fear of the greater UK’s geopolitical interests’. It could have been scripted by ADUG itself.

So is this what we’ll now have then? During the pre-match coverage next week, we’ll have tales of sympathy towards poor City players being caught up in all this, and how they’re the real heroes for stepping out onto the pitch despite that? Or will the commentators give us lines like ‘well thankfully we’re only here to talk about football, and all that process is behind us.’.

It all comes down to the question which may well now face all of us: when City get out of this, will you actually walk? Will you actually cancel Sky/TNT because it’s a farce, and acknowledge that? Clearly Sky believe you won’t. I hope that they, and the Premier League are massively mis-reading the fans’ actual ire, but maybe I’m wrong and we’re all sheep and in a year’s time we’ll be debating if Haaland is the best striker in history and if Maresca is the actual genius for managing to fit an entire new midfield into a title winning team. Ryan, Bermuda (are we the problem?)

…With all of the (correct) moral outrage related to Man City’s shamming, are we to assume that everyone will be boycotting Haaland in Fantasy Premier League? No, thought not.

Cheers, Foldão

Have Newcastle owners taken higher moral ground? I’d imagine Newcastle’s owners will be looking at City’s punishment with great interest.

They may deem it worthwhile to pour £900m into the club in one season and take the punishment knowing that it could be significantly less than City’s if they do it without deception.

Or maybe PIF will just settle for the ‘moral high ground’. They looked at clubs like City and PSG and how they artificially inflated their clubs’ finances and decided to follow the rules instead. This is not how the global system works or how international sport works but PIF said ‘no, we’re going to follow the rules and respect the history and culture of English football’. Even the prices they paid to sign Newcastle players to the Saudi league were relatively fair.

If the City PSG and Newcastle aquisitions were partly about diplomacy and sportswashing, PSG dovetailed seamlessly into the corruption of the French political class. City were exposed as deceitful, tacky rulebreakers with no respect for English football culture but perhaps surprisingly the Saudis have shown that regardless of how they operate in an ancient civilization with ancient values, they are able to adapt to different cultural environments and respect the rules of others, even if they would prefer that they didn’t exist and that they could spend their money without restriction.

I would much rather live in Abu Dhabi than Riyadh, Jeddah, Doha or Dubai but when it comes to respecting our rules, culture and history is it that surprisng that a country with one of the richest cultural histories in the world is the one that understood AND respected English football culture? Ben Teacher

Operation successful; patient died

There seems to be an increasingly popular argument among some Everton, Villa and other supporters that the City case should either result in City escaping serious punishment or, at minimum, provide the opportunity to kill off the FFP/PSR rules supposedly designed by the Big Six to keep everyone else down.

Fair enough. PSR is imperfect and there is a legitimate argument that revenue-based restrictions favour clubs with historically larger revenues.

But what exactly is the alternative?

1. Scrap FFP/PSR and let everyone spend what they want

I’ve already bored everyone with this one. A financial free-for-all doesn’t liberate Villa and Everton; it overwhelmingly benefits City and Newcastle.

Their ultimate financial backing operates on a completely different scale from even extremely wealthy private owners. Eventually the rational private investor reaches a limit. State-backed ownership need not encounter anything resembling a limit.

So, the most likely result isn’t glorious competitive equality. The Petrostate Pair win an awful lot, while our old friends in the Red Cartel hoover up much of what’s left because their revenues and resources still dwarf most of the league.

The other guaranteed winners are players and agents. Football has rarely encountered a huge new influx of cash that hasn’t rapidly passed through to wages, transfer fees and commissions.

The obvious criticism of revenue-based controls is that the biggest clubs start with the biggest revenues, making them difficult to catch. There’s truth in that. Although it’s worth remembering that Liverpool went from financial crisis and being hundreds of millions behind Manchester United to overtaking them competitively while operating under FFP.

But let’s accept the criticism anyway. We need restrictions, but perhaps they shouldn’t be linked to revenue.

2. Introduce a spending cap

This is superficially attractive. American sports use caps successfully, so why not football?

Because football isn’t an American closed league.

Where do you set the cap? At Manchester United’s spending level? That does nothing for competitive balance. Everton’s? Bournemouth’s? Ipswich’s?

And what happens when Ipswich are relegated and Leeds promoted? Do Championship clubs operate under the same cap? If not, you’ve created another enormous financial cliff edge between divisions.

Then there’s Europe.

A Premier League-only cap low enough to create genuine domestic equality potentially turns English clubs into second-class citizens in the European transfer market. The best players don’t have to accept your salary cap; they can go to Madrid, Munich, Barcelona, Paris or elsewhere.

So do we impose the cap across Europe? At what level? Premier League revenues? Eredivisie revenues? Scottish Premiership revenues?

A genuinely equalising European cap would either massively constrain the wealthiest leagues or give clubs in those leagues an enormous advantage over everyone else. The same would happen within leagues – I’m assuming the fans arguing this one want it to be true equality for all not just set at a limit that brings them into the Big 6?

There’s also promotion and relegation itself. Salary and spending caps work particularly neatly in competitions where the worst team gets a high draft pick rather than relegated.

Create genuine NFL-style parity in the Premier League and you have to accept its other side: Everton or Villa might be just as capable of going from champions to relegation candidates as going the other way. How enthusiastic are wealthy owners about investing hundreds of millions when sporting equality also means a substantially greater risk of dropping out of the league entirely?

And finally: enforcement.

We’re currently discussing what happens when clubs faced with relatively modest financial restrictions employ every conceivable accounting device, exploit loopholes or allegedly simply disregard the rules.

Good luck introducing a hard salary cap.

3. Kick out the Red Cartel

This is perhaps my favourite.

If Liverpool, United, Arsenal and whichever other clubs we’re currently including in the evil empire are the problem, kick them out and let everyone else get on with it.

In other words: give those clubs the Super League their owners wanted.

Brilliant.

Those clubs wanted a Super League precisely because they believed their enormous global support could generate considerably more money if they stopped sharing so much of it with everyone else.

Premier League broadcasting income is distributed far more equitably than in many major European leagues. The enormous global audience attracted partly by its biggest clubs produces money that is then shared throughout the competition.

Remove a large proportion of those global eyeballs and what happens to the next television deal? Sponsorship? Overseas interest?

Liverpool, United and Arsenal aren’t simply taking money out of the Premier League ecosystem. Their global popularity helps put money into it.

Perhaps that’s irrelevant. Football isn’t about balance sheets, after all. It’s about winning things.

So Everton win the Premier League after Liverpool, United and Arsenal have disappeared into their European super-competition.

Does it really mean the same thing?

No Liverpool supporters whose noses can be rubbed in it? No Old Trafford away win? No Arsenal title race?

Football’s great rivalries derive much of their meaning from beating the people you desperately want to beat. City understood that perfectly with “Welcome to Manchester”. Newcastle supporters beating Barcelona were still singing “Are you watching Sunderland?”

Winning isn’t just about possessing a trophy. It’s about who you beat to get it. And no it doesn’t go the other way – Super League doesn’t become less interesting because of a lack of local rivalry because Super League is aimed at global audiences who want to see Liverpool v Real Madrid not Liverpool v Crystal Palace. It’s not romantic. I don’t like it. But that is modern football.

And here’s the final irony.

Suppose Villa thrive in this brave new Premier League. They dominate it for several years, grow their revenues and global following and become its biggest club.

How long before Villa’s owners want access to the vastly richer competition containing Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, Liverpool and Manchester United?

That’s why proposed versions of the Super League quickly developed ideas involving a Super League 2 with promotion and wider access once the original closed-shop concept became politically toxic.

The uncomfortable truth about the Super League episode is that supporters of the six English clubs involved were rightly furious. But the other fourteen clubs weren’t exactly delighted at the prospect of being left behind either.

Because they understood what losing those clubs would mean.

So we’re back where we started.

Unlimited spending disproportionately benefits the clubs with the richest ultimate backers.

A genuine hard cap creates enormous practical problems in an open, international football system.

Removing the biggest clubs damages the competition you’re supposedly trying to make more valuable and ultimately gives those clubs precisely the breakaway they wanted.

None of that means PSR is perfect. Far from it. Change it. Allow ambitious owners greater scope to invest. Find better ways of preventing historic revenues becoming an impenetrable moat around established clubs.

But “PSR is flawed” isn’t itself a financial regulatory system.

If we’re going to tear the existing one down in the name of competitive balance, somebody eventually has to explain what replaces it, and those fans arguing for it need to realise that there is an increasing ‘operation successful, patient died’ quality to their proposals. You are solving the problem of a Big Six by handing football to a Petrostate Two, and/or crippling the Premier League’s ability to compete with Europe, and/or removing the clubs responsible for much of its global appeal and expecting your club to be the successful exception to all of that. Lindsay

Man City fans need to apologise

Had a letter fermenting in my mind all day Saturday and wasn’t sure whether to write it or not but reading Tickner’s excellent article on football tribalism and its exploitation promoted me to write.

I’ve commented several times here and elsewhere that I have yet to hear a word of apology from any City fan or representative for what has proven now to be systematic, cynical, planned cheating, lying, fraud and denial on a level never before witnessed in my near 40 years supporting football.

Not one person with a City allegiance has stood up and said sorry.

I’ve had very nice chats with City fans and with the genuine ones I’ve felt their sadness and flatness in the face of this but sorry, nope never said.

Why I wondered. Tribalism surely can be the only answer to denial/delusion in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Underneath it all I think is the identification we now feel with our clubs, supporting your club isn’t just something you do it’s something you are, its core, its identity. I don’t just support Liverpool, I’m a Liverpool fan, we’re slightly better than other fans don’t you know, socialist (run by American capitalists) morally superior as well do t you know.

But underneath all the flags and identities we’re actually no different, every big club has legions of fans. Most are sound decent humans and every fans has its fair share of knobheads, when we assume that’s the full fan base we too have fallen into full on tribalism.

So far so generic email. But the reason why I was reluctant to write this and Dave alluded to in his article, as a Liverpool fan I thought the whole Suarez incident was overblown when it happened. Looking back it seems ridiculous to me now. He clearly committed a racist act against Patrice Evra which was and is indefensible, but at the time I thought different.

At the time I had suffered though nearly 25 years of Liverpool being crap. I had watched United lord it over us for 20 of those years. I saw Suarez as a player who Ferguson and United feared because he would be the catalyst to win us the title again. I knew in one level he had made a racist comment but I convinced myself Evra had exaggerated it and United had embarked on a strategy to get Suarez out of Liverpool and keep us down.

Yes really.

Am I proud of this? No

Am I ashamed that I put tribal concerns above a topic infinitely more important such as racism? Yes I am.

Did I ever apologise as a Liverpool fan for this? No probably not.

So here goes, to Patrice Evra, United and anyone affected by the horrors of racism, I am sorry. I got it wrong.

My advice to City fans and anyone associated with your club, or those from rival clubs defending this with a vested interest, you’re wrong on this. You’ll see it in time as I did a few years later. Tribalism does blind us and it ain’t pretty.

I can’t tell you to be a better fan than me but think about it.

No need to apologise to those in glass houses

City fan here, chipping in about Dave Tickner’s article which I thought very good.

There are, however, some distinctions to be made it seems to me. Firstly, I need to make it clear that I’m not trying to defend what the current hierarchy has, or hasn’t, done. Because, like the vast majority of you out there, I don’t have a scooby about what’s gone on. Moreover, I don’t know a single fellow City fan that is trying to. It maybe, as someone suggested the other day, a generational thing, Certainly I came off SM nearly ten years ago as I found the majority of it either pointless or downright poisonous shite. Accordingly, if there are people out there trying to deflect or defend, then I’ll take your word for it.

My clumsy point is that I don’t ‘blindly’ follow my club. Because ‘my club’ isn’t the owners, from Peter Swales to Tamsin Shinawatra to Sheik Mansour. It’s not the ridiculous ticket prices or hospitality packages nor the staggering cost of club ‘merch’. Because, like every other single supporter in the country, I get absolutely no say in the matter. Rather it’s The Kippax, stinking of p*ss and fags. It’s the songs, the inflatable bananas. It’s the morons or mates sitting near/next to you at every game. It’s the many relegations or getting battered (again) by United. It’s Gillingham at Wembley or THAT day, in the last minute of the last day of the season and SAF’s confused red nose.

What, and I think a popular term right now, is ‘grinding my gears’ is either the suggestion, or outright demand, that I should stop supporting my team. Here’s the thing. I’ve known close friends in my life who were absolutely adamant that, if they ever caught their partners cheating, they would walk away and never look back. Only for that scenario to become true and guess what? It’s one thing when it’s hypothetical, and quite another when it’s biting you on YOUR arse.

If you get your rocks off thinking about what’s going to happen to City? Well, that’s up to you. But to take it out on their fans? Well, maybe have a few words with those who have, and still do, support Leeds, Southampton, Leicester, Derby, Charlton Athletic, Bury, et al.

I don’t have a Crystal ball, but it seems to me that MCFC, one way or another, are in for a right kicking. As supporters of your own clubs, those of you minded to pick up those stones aimed at the City ‘faithful’ may be better off looking at the glass houses surrounding you beforehand.

Man City have recorded a very high score

Imagine you send your child to school and in the examination he/her scored 114 out of 115 available grades, that means the next examination (appeal) the confident we be very high (irrefutable evidents). With all the best lawyers they hired losing this much in this case and still boosting confident that the appeal will be different, they must have some levers to pull somewhere.

Don’t underestimate the power at Manchester City because they have been cooking this foods for years and we only perceived the aroma but we cannot see the foods until now that one of their window leaked.

If you want to boot them out of the league, please can the authorities do it now before our match because if Liverpool win the match and other teams wins against them and later they are expel from the league all the points gained from them will be void. And that is a waste of everybody time and emotions attached to all those wins, we have been hurts for many years please stop the bleeding now as quickly as possible. Mudashiru Lfc Ibadan (with the dramas and talking points surrounding the match, I am really looking forward to our match)

READ: Top 10 things that make us giddy about Premier League return and Man City’s tour of shame

Kiss the Na’al now

A few days ago, on talkSPORT, Simon Jordan was lecturing an agape audience on Abu Dhabi’s involvement in the British economy. Goes along these lines: Abu-Dhabi sovereign funds Mubadala and ADIA are major UK investors, nay, benefactors. They shall pull their gold back to the Rub’ al Khali should boorish British hoi-polloi get their pound of flesh and embarrass, in the process, His Highness Sheikh Mansoor bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Presidential Court and majority owner of ADUG, City’s corporate incarnation.

Unsurprisingly the current edition of the Archetypal UK Lame PM (where do you folks get them?) has sheepishly taken the same line. Both have motivation: Jordan has been angling for a job – any job- with a top club for a while now. Fair enough, the man has the right to make a living. While the ex-Manchester mayor does his best impression of what politicians do, i.e. shamelessly grovel at the sight of fortune.

The argument is specious in many ways. Consider the connection between, on one hand the oh-so-thin-skinned Sheikh Mansoor/ADUG and on the other the Mubadala/ADIA benefactors from afar.

Sheikh Mansour serves as Chairman of Mubadala Investment Company and as an ADIA Board Member. But his ADUG/City is legally distinct from both. Clearly, it wouldn’t be a business decision for Mubadala/ADIA to liquidate UK-positions due to perceived ‘insults’ directed at HH Sheikh Mansoor and his spirited ADUG, in which they have no stake whatsoever.

So, we are left to wonder: are these investments safe for the UK economy? In an investment transaction, the investee expands its profitable business while the investors keep a portion of the proceeds. These are long-term deals; they mandate a framework, patience, operational excellence and, crucially, risk-minimisation.

What then is it to make of an investors’ threat to withdraw funds because an unrelated business party may feel “insulted” by the findings of an independent commission? What next? Will Mubadala/ADIA cash out unless the King kisses HH Sheik Mansoor’s na’al the next time they meet?

This is preposterous.

Let’s now look another way at it. One of the main reasons Abu-Dhabi entities have invested in the UK market is her well-crafted system of checks and balances, rule of law and prudent risk-management. Think: the comprehensive National Security and Investment Act 2021. Yet Mubadala/ADIA threaten to take their toys home unless allowed to grossly and unprecedentedly abuse, on a whim, the very framework which ensures the safety of their UK investments!

This too is preposterous.

Last a case of “When in Rome, do as the Romans do”. Mistakes happen and every cultural space has its own ways to overcome them. In the UK, the redemption mechanism is: confess, repent, and accept whatever punishment comes your way. You do that and you are cleansed. If not, you become a forever pariah. Simple, practical and effective.

It is widely known that HH has bought City for sports-washing reasons. It diverts attention from the UAE’s human rights record, freedom of expression limits and the treatment of migrant workers. It “normalises” the regime on the global stage, presenting it as a progressive, modern business partner rather than an authoritarian state.

So be it. Not ideal, but bordering acceptability. We live in an imperfect world.

But then again. Given that sports-washing is the objective, then: preposterously fighting charges with absurd threats and slews of lies, the strategy won’t work would it? On the contrary, it would paint HH, Mubadala and ADIA as conniving foreign rascals never to be trusted again.

Oh, the goodwill the Abu-Dhabis were to amass if they only showed up on the BBC, confess, apologise and accept the penalties. The best sport-washing ever. Surely they can stomach the consequences. A confession may even convince the authorities and the public they deserve a lesser penalty.

But I have a feeling reason will not prevail. Prepare to kiss the na’al.

READ: Enzo Maresca deserves Man City apology not Al Mubarak, Soriano evasion

Hey Jude

I guess the greatest compliment to Jude Bellingham is that he is the ultimate ‘Team of Gary Breen’ player ever. The lad can do anything.

READ: England physicality in a press is unmatched; keep doing this, please