Man City found guilty of 114 charges

[Mouse]

I hope we are right and they are damned for years. It is a real sliding doors moment for the Premier League and English football as whole. It is a chance to show it does have back-bone and that no-one, not even a government owned fund and political ally, is above the concept of sporting fairness. I hope they are up to it.

[Shogun]

At least from my POV, I talk about the football financial landscape involving the rest of the Sky6 in addition to Man City's guilt, not to lessen what they've done and pretend it's not a big deal.

They're fucked and rightly so. This is what happens when you allow so many bad actors to be embedded within football clubs because the only thing that matters is the 'product'.

[Shogun]

I imagine the EFL would accept them because they could stick them in League Two and get at least 3 seasons out of it all.

Would the 72 EFL clubs vote them in as a majority though? I feel like just because of the money/attention then they might but by no means an assured thing. No idea how it works at non-league with voting in the separate leagues.

[Bluedylan1]

It makes you think about our case and Forest's case as well, with the benefit of hindsight.

Obviously all the City stuff will have been going on before and after we were charged and punished. So presumably that's why the Prem and the independent panel went quite harsh on us. They must have been thinking some version of ''we're gonna have to go quite harsh on Everton and Forest, if we're ever gonna make this City case stick in the future''.

Obviously that remains to be seen.

[Shogun]

One thing is for sure, I'd pay good money to read the Man City equivalent of @brap2 dealing with all this

[Shogun]

I do wonder if there's going to be more to this than sanctions and appeals though. I don't for one minute think City are the only 'dirty' club in the Premier League and I imagine if they're going to go down then they'll go full Scorched-Earth about it and I'm sure with their resources that they will have plenty of nasty stuff on other clubs/individuals. Could be a lot more fallout to come.

[Bluedylan1]

There's no way all of this stopped in 2018 btw, and then everything after that point was above board.

I'll repost the Dortmund Sporting Director's quote from this earlier this year about the Haaland deal in 2022, now that we have a clearer picture of what they were doing -

“Manchester City never wanted the real number out. That was the first condition they put on the table. Not the release clause everyone printed. The full package.

Officially it was reported as £51 million because that was the figure written into the clause and that was the figure they asked us to stand by.

Internally it was a completely different conversation. When you add the guaranteed payments, the structured extras and what was agreed around the player’s camp, we were looking at something close to €250 million all-in.

That is more than PSG paid for Neymar in 2017. City knew that. We knew that. They did not want Europe talking about it.

They were very clear: if Dortmund confirmed anything above the clause, the deal would become politically messy for them. So there was a private understanding.

We stay silent on the real total. They stay silent. A few people in the media were steered toward the £51m line and that became the official story

I am not going to sit here four years later and pretend we sold the best young striker in Europe for pocket money. We did not. City paid what they had to pay to get him. They just did not want the world to see the receipt.”

So when people say ''the players and manager won't have known any of what the club were upto, and they will just have operated on good faith with the owners'', are we absolutely sure about that? It makes you think.

[blueToffee]

I do wonder if there's going to be more to this than sanctions and appeals though. I don't for one minute think City are the only 'dirty' club in the Premier League and I imagine if they're going to go down then they'll go full Scorched-Earth about it and I'm sure with their resources that they will have plenty of nasty stuff on other clubs/individuals. Could be a lot more fall-out to come.

I think this is probably on the nose.

I don't think with the resources they obviously have that this all stops with the PL process as it did with us though. I still have a hard time thinking anything happens quickly here.

The timeline for appeals review is supposedly 12 weeks, but if they appeal every individual charge there is surely a good chance they drag this out years further. Should that fail, I imagine they'll at a minimum push this to the high court not to mention whatever strings they can pull at a governmental level. At least if the punishment is meaningful, anything simple like one year in the Championship to bounce back and a financial slap on the wrist would big picture be pretty inconsequential to them.

I don't think when they have the money that they do this resolves quickly...but we'll see.

[Bluedylan1]

I don't know if it's accurate because I've not fact checked it, but I've seen some Arsenal fans saying that Everton missed out on some sort of European football on five separate occasions (including Champs League) by one place each time, with Man City finishing above us, during the relevant period.

Assuming that's accurate, if we're not suing them for very large amounts of money, I'm not sure what we're playing at.

[blueToffee]

I don't know if it's accurate because I've not fact checked it, but I've seen some Arsenal fans saying that Everton missed out on some sort of European football on five separate occasions (including Champs League) by one place each time, with Man City finishing above us, during the relevant period.

Assuming that's accurate, if we're not suing them for very large amounts of money, I'm not sure what we're playing at.

Season Position Points Manager(s)
2009–10 8th 61 David Moyes
2010–11 7th 54 David Moyes
2011–12 7th 56 David Moyes
2012–13 6th 63 David Moyes
2013–14 5th 72 Roberto Martínez
2014–15 11th 47 Roberto Martínez
2015–16 11th 47 Roberto Martínez / David Unsworth
2016–17 7th 61 Ronald Koeman
2017–18 8th 49 Ronald Koeman / Sam Allardyce

That record qualified us 2 times 13/14 season (EL) and 16/17 (EL).

So bumping up a place would've had us qualify 6 times altogether (so 4 more than we did), although importantly a bump from EL to CL in that 13/14 season.

[Cereal Killer]

they’ll never be 15 clubs voting them out

[TheRam]

they’ll never be 15 clubs voting them out

Why wouldn’t they?

[Escalator]

Season Position Points Manager(s)
2009–10 8th 61 David Moyes
2010–11 7th 54 David Moyes
2011–12 7th 56 David Moyes
2012–13 6th 63 David Moyes
2013–14 5th 72 Roberto Martínez
2014–15 11th 47 Roberto Martínez
2015–16 11th 47 Roberto Martínez / David Unsworth
2016–17 7th 61 Ronald Koeman
2017–18 8th 49 Ronald Koeman / Sam Allardyce

That record qualified us 2 times 13/14 season (EL) and 16/17 (EL).

So bumping up a place would've had us qualify 6 times altogether (so 4 more than we did), although importantly a bump from EL to CL in that 13/14 season.

Should be a slam dunk, precedent set by our having to pay Burnley £38 million, if we don’t sue City for having cheated us out of millions then we are idiots.

[777Kidnappings]

I hope we are right and they are damned for years. It is a real sliding doors moment for the Premier League and English football as whole. It is a chance to show it does have back-bone and that no-one, not even a government owned fund and political ally, is above the concept of sporting fairness. I hope they are up to it.

It aint about sporting fairness

[Deano Blue Boy]

I'll never forget the semi final against them when the ball went over the line before they crossed it in and scored, knocking us out.

Could argue we could have went onto win that and get into Europe