When will Man City face justice?

[Follyfoot]

1 minute ago, Keyblade said:

It would be made difficult, but it's only a minor bump in the road in the grand scheme of things. They'd be by far the biggest club in the EFL, and would sail back to the top by hook or crook. Even we couldn't mess up getting out of there within 3 years, and we had absolute basket cases running us.

In all fairness it took Deano and our fantastic new owners to get us out 

[villan95]

A points deduction or relegation isn't enough for over a decade of cheating. I want their titles stripped.

[JoshVilla]

I feel like they've dug themselves into a big, big hole with the Everton situation. If they got a 10 point deduction for 1 charge, then everybody will be expecting an absolutely unprecedented level of punishment with the sheer number of charges that City have against them. Anything other than that, and the cries of corruption will be deafening. If they come out and say that it turns out there was no wrongdoing, things could get ugly.

[Marka Ragnos]

I really need to see them unceremoniously dropped into the regional Manchester Football League, where they might face competition such as the redoubtable Manchester Gregorians, a club that surely have more honour and genuine respect for the game (if not exactly the level of skills ;-)).

[jimmygreaves]

Any fine should be proportionate to the gains from their cheating.... Winning the Premier League, Champions League and coming close for several seasons...

Like 6 or 7 hundred million pounds.

[villa89]

58 minutes ago, villan95 said:

A points deduction or relegation isn't enough for over a decade of cheating. I want their titles stripped.

Virtually no chance that happens.

[VillaJ100]

The most I can see is the mathematical most amount of points to keep them up like a 57.5 point deduction 

[villan95]

1 minute ago, villa89 said:

Virtually no chance that happens.

Yeah it likely won't happen but that is the only sort of punishment that I think is fitting. Juventus did have theirs stripped of course, although that was different circumstances.

I could maybe accept a points deduction for the number of seasons they cheated. Say starting on minus 15 for the next 14 years?

[Captain_Townsend]

7 hours ago, KevinRichardsonsMoustache said:

The financial doping thing is absolutely spot on. It really is a disgrace. But, as other have said before, our demise was due to far more factors (many of which related to our own shambolic management at that time) rather than any single thing they did. Blaming two clubs that have admittedly cheated their way to the top lets off those ar*eholes who f*cked us over from the inside.  

 

The fact that we're competing with these clubs at the moment, with the uneven playing field as it is, is just testimony to how well we've done.

Yes, I agree largely. I still think Chelsea were a big problem for us after 2003. We were well ahead of Chelsea in the decade before 2003, though they were on the up. After their takeover they started buying a much higher calibre of player and pulled way ahead of us.

Then same happened in 2008 with Man City. We were way ahead of them. Then they got taken over, started buying a higher calibre of player and even started buying our best players.

Do while Ellis and Lerner were beyond useless, I would argue that it was harder and harder for them to compete (post 2003 for Ellis, post 2008 for Lerner) because a new club had cheated their way into unlimited spending prowess.

[foreveryoung]

I wouldn’t be visiting the UAE anytime soon whoever it is finally puts the nail in there coffin. Likely you aint coming back. 

[Zatman]

14 minutes ago, Captain_Townsend said:

Yes, I agree largely. I still think Chelsea were a big problem for us after 2003. We were well ahead of Chelsea in the decade before 2003, though they were on the up. After their takeover they started buying a much higher calibre of player and pulled way ahead of us.

 

No we werent. Chelsea had won more trophies than us in that decade and even played Champions League

[KevinRichardsonsMoustache]

This is a classic case of implicated parties having more money and influence than the governing bodies. As such, they can throw legal resource at the problem for so long the process bogs down. There are plenty of legal firms and tax auditors who will take Citeh’s money and defend the sh*t out of them until the cows come home and UEFA and the PL have ceased to exist or care. 
 

Unfortunately, we’re so far down the rabbit hole that to change the rules so the burden of proof is on Citeh or to make the process quicker will be nearly impossible.

 

These are such massive governance issues that they won’t be solved without some political will and there’s clearly no appetite for it atm. 

[Marka Ragnos]

40 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

I wouldn’t be visiting the UAE anytime soon whoever it is finally puts the nail in there coffin. Likely you aint coming back. 

Lessee ... that would be hundreds of executives who work for BP, Shell, Rolls Royce, HSBC, BAE Systems, Mott McDonald, John Lewis, SERCO, Standard Chartered and on and on.  

[Marka Ragnos]

I think ordinary punters needs to do more to put pressure on the PL to move things along, probably through their MPs? It seems clear that the question of whether different British governments may be encouraging a slow-walking of the investigations means it's a public issue now. It's not just football. There's a saying in civil rights history --and I know there's no comparison of the gravity of the issues -- but "slow justice is no justice." If the wheels of justice and the investigation take so long -- it's already been on for something like five years now, right? -- the damage to so many lives and honest clubs will be almost incalculable! Man City is already a kind of roving Frankenstein monster. It has towering strength and does what it wants and swats aside the ignorant villagers. They have totally distorted the PL again this year, but think of all the clubs relegated in the last decade who still haven't made it back -- Sunderland, Hull City, Stoke, etc.

 I thought this article was pretty interesting in its focus on Sheffield MP Clive Betts and Lucy Frazer: Side note: Clive Betts is a Wednesday supporter.

Quote

 

Clive Betts, a Labour MP who heads a cross-party parliamentary group on football, called on the culture secretary, Lucy Frazer, to put pressure on football’s governing bodies to look into the findings in depth.
In a written question, he asked whether Frazer, whose department oversees sport, “believes that clubs which seek to circumvent the Premier League’s financial fair play (FFP) rules undermine the credibility of the competition and are guilty of cheating”.

Betts also asked whether Frazer intends to contact the Premier League in relation to the allegations and whether she accepts that a new football regulator must have sufficient resources and skills to identify breaches of FFP and hold clubs to account.

The government is to put a football governance bill before parliament next year, confirming the legislation that will create an independent regulator for the game.

 

Edited January 3 by Marka Ragnos

[DakotaVilla]

If I was guessing they’d want to cook up a penalty that appears to be punitive but is anything but. I also doubt Abu Dhabi will ever publicly acknowledge guilt due to the reputational damage that would create for them. So any worst case penalty might look like:

- Points deduction - 40 points. Something that will look severe but basically would mean no relegation and effective no champions league for 1 year.

- sporting penalties - I can’t see any scenario where Abu Dhabi are asked or willingly give up any of their titles won. 
 

- Financial Penalty - They’ll probably add a large financial penalty of 200 to 300m that is then redistributed across the premier league with a one off payment to the wider league. This will appear to make up for the cheating but money is nothing for these guys. They’ll happily pay anything if it means keeping their titles. 
 

All complete conjecture on my part but shows there’s huge flex to just slap them on the wrist. 

 

[HalfTimePost]

When will their case be closed and a "punishment" doled out? Sometime in 2025, appealed and reduced in time for 2026 imo.

When will there be "justice"? Never. The punishment will be a slap on the wrist compared to what they deserve. They'll performatively be angry and disappointed but be ecstatic behind closed doors, as others have said.

In the mean time, the likes of Everton, Forest and 4-5 others (maybe including us) will all get 10 point deductions that have a much bigger risk of settinf the respective clubs back 5 years than anything City will get

[ThunderPower_14]

The punishment isn't just if they keep their titles.

If you offered me winning the title this year, followed by a big fine and points deduction next year for FFP irregularities, i'd take the title every time.

[sne]

Add it to the list of things they are getting away with I guess.

Quote

City refuse to advertise Emirates as it's a direct rival to their own sponsor

While the rest of the competition will be wearing the Emirates sleeve patches, the reigning champions don't have to and have been granted an exemption due to their long-standing partnership with the airline's direct rivals, Etihad, according to the Daily Mail. Emirates is a Dubai-based airline and while the Premier League champions' sponsor is based in Abu-Dhabi, they are still close rivals in the aviation industry and as a result, the club have refused to wear the sponsor.

They've refused to do so since Emirates became the chief sponsor of the FA Cup back in 2015. Their commitments to Etihad ensured that any inclusion of the competition's sponsor on their shirts would have caused issues for them. For almost a decade, the Emirates branding is typically seen on one sleeve of each team's shirt, inside a red rectangular patch with the FA Cup logo alongside it. It's become a tradition for most teams, but not City.

https://www.givemesport.com/why-manchester-city-have-refused-to-wear-emirates-fa-cup-sleeve-patches-since-2015/

[Zatman]

43 minutes ago, sne said:

Add it to the list of things they are getting away with I guess.

https://www.givemesport.com/why-manchester-city-have-refused-to-wear-emirates-fa-cup-sleeve-patches-since-2015/

Etihad probably cover this by paying them 440 million to help FFP

[GlobalVillan]

On 03/01/2024 at 16:32, HalfTimePost said:

When will their case be closed and a "punishment" doled out? Sometime in 2025, appealed and reduced in time for 2026 imo.

When will there be "justice"? Never. The punishment will be a slap on the wrist compared to what they deserve. They'll performatively be angry and disappointed but be ecstatic behind closed doors, as others have said.

In the mean time, the likes of Everton, Forest and 4-5 others (maybe including us) will all get 10 point deductions that have a much bigger risk of settinf the respective clubs back 5 years than anything City will get

Yep. Man City will never, ever face justice. There are people, even on this forum that watch them, rave about how good they are, call their **** manager by his affectionate little pet name and even address the cheating bastards by their own pet name.

I know I'll get pelters for saying it, but whilst that continues, and it will, they will never be held to account. People should refuse to watch them, demand justice and stop banging on about how good their illegally assembled squad is. Maybe then it would help even a little bit, to bring this forward.

If they ever do get their day in court, it will be such an insignificant "punishment" that it wouldn't even register. 

They'll probably have a few more trebles by then too.

Hate them.