English newspapers put the boot into Man City for a decade of financial doping and cheating

English newspapers are all over the story that surfaced yesterday about a decade of cheating from Manchester City that resulted in over 100 charges from the FA.

Effectively City have been charged with cheating every other Premiership club with fans and sponsors paying in to a ‘game’ that was tilted unfairly towards one club.

Strangely there have been no claims of ‘ah but they won it on the pitch’ or sympathetic tales of how players battled for the jersey, chasing dreams completely in the dark as to the various income streams popping into their accounts free of Income Tax and National Insurance.

When the Rangers story started to emerge in 2010 and 2011 panic set in across the Scottish media. Titles and reporters that knew nothing other than the horrendous O** F*** panto were confronted with the unthinkable.

For a decade or more they had covered a rigged game, the authorities had nodded through without question dodgy contracts, asked no questions and signed off broadcasting and commercial deals based around a classic head-to-head contest.

One club played by the rules, the other broke the rules with the consequences from HMRC piling up. Had the football authorities did their job Rangers wouldn’t have gone into administration followed by liquidation.

It would have resulted in short term pain of seeing Celtic dominate but down the line at some stage, without Murray, a competitive Rangers would have emerged, playing in a 50,000 capacity stadium. One that could have challenged Celtic rather than the laws of the land and football regulations.

Typical of the English coverage is Ian Herbert of the Daily Mail who writes:

Where along the line, you have to ask, will Manchester City take a long, hard look at themselves, put aside their sense of victimhood, and realise how deeply unattractive they have become?

Not because this is the third time they have been charged with secretly channelling extra Abu Dhabi cash into their coffers, through fake sponsorships, to dodge financial spending rules.

Not because paying manager Roberto Mancini twice — once on the books, once off the books — was a joke, given how deeply unpopular he had become inside the club when they finally got shot. But because of the flagrant contempt they show for the system, the rules and the administrators whose competitions they are so eager to play in and dominate.

That was laughable. So impossible has it been to extract the necessary documents, that the Premier League were forced to go to court last year and launch an arbitration process to get them.

Later he details:

Eighteen months later, the Football Leaks cache showed that we actually had only half of the story. City’s owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group, were in fact bankrolling Fordham, according to the leaks, as a way of paying part of the players’ wages. Not only were City boosting their income against the rules but reducing their headline wage bill as they did so.

The leaked emails saw City charged by UEFA four years ago and left facing a two-year Champions League ban. They successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which found that the alleged offences took place too far in the past to be investigated, under UEFA’s statute of limitation. City were still fined the best part of £9m for what CAS called ‘obstruction of the investigations’.

The consequences were minimal when they breached UEFA FFP rules in 2014, too: a £49m cap on spending in the next transfer window, a Champions League wage cap and four players fewer than everyone else in their squad for that season’s competition.

There will be no statute of limitation at the Premier League’s independent commission. There will be no recourse to CAS if the decision goes against City.

The Premier League are under pressure from their 19 other clubs to apply utmost rigour to this —and most of all Liverpool, already nursing a grievance having run City so close for so long. Those clubs have complied with FFP, cohering with the view that if you play someone’s competition, you abide by their rules — whatever your views on them might be. City are confident of legal success, as they always are. 

Celtic and others had their recruitment curtailed by having to deduct Income Tax and National Insurance from the salaries they could offer signing targets, at Ibrox there was no such issues with a side-letter detailing how much and when money would be paid into a Trust to top up the token salary registered with the SFA and SPL.

Neil Doncaster, Andrew Dickson and Rod Petrie all had full details of the scams, all are still in power within Scottish football without a word of complaint from the compliant clubs happy to play along with the big con that relegation occurred in 2012.

It didn’t, like Gretna and others Rangers died, taking their debts with them into liquidation with 276 creditors left high and dry.

A decade of cheating? Sounds somewhat familiar.https://t.co/LJ7Q2keyop

— Joe McHugh (@videocelts) February 7, 2023

No arm twisting or threats from supporters required.https://t.co/XOkGkUV3dk

— Joe McHugh (@videocelts) February 7, 2023

Justice will be done and seen to be done.https://t.co/BaJ3sEXuGI

— Joe McHugh (@videocelts) February 7, 2023

Just 101 questions.https://t.co/g16BoItUy4

— Joe McHugh (@videocelts) February 7, 2023

? Premier League statement confirms “Manchester City have been charged with numerous breaches of financial rules ”.@martynziegler now reports that “Man City will not be able to appeal any sanction to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the one which overturned the UEFA ban. pic.twitter.com/fsRtpQKSI8

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) February 6, 2023

If Manchester City are guilty they have betrayed football as a spectacle | Barney Ronay https://t.co/9Nz7ycbwCL

— The Guardian (@guardian) February 6, 2023

? NEW: Manchester City have been charged by the Premier League with more than 100 alleged breaches of financial regulations after a four-year investigation https://t.co/ezwqgAULBb

— Times Sport (@TimesSport) February 6, 2023