History
By: Ted Fred Franky, Refuting misinformation, June 6, 2023 1 year ago
A brief look at the recent past
Manchester City are currently being vilified in some quarters of the press as if they are some sort of evil being.
Manchester City is simply a football club with the wealthiest owner ever, which means they can buy the best players who play attractive football to win as much silverware as possible, and in turn make a lot of money.
It has always been the case that cash put in by owners has pushed clubs from obscurity to the top of the league. It happened with: Liverpool in the 60s; Derby and Forest in the 70s; Oxford and Watford in the 80s; Blackburn, and Newcastle in the 90s; Wigan, Chelsea and Man City in the 00s; and now Everton and Newcastle (again) in the 20s. There are many more as well. The only reason Leicester City were in the Premier League and won it, was because the club had wealthy owners who had spent money to get them promoted, and at the time their playing budget was the 7th highest in the Premier League. To put this into context Leicester City are not a historically big club, they have spent most of their history in the second tier of English football, their attendances reflect this, their stadium capacity reflects this and their trophy haul of one league cup prior to 1997 does too. Since then they now have 3 league cups, 1 FA Cup and 1 Premier League Trophy, largely down to being in the Premier League thanks to the investment by King Power supremo Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha.
Other clubs have got into enormous debt pursuing glory, Chelsea and Leeds in the 90s, Newcastle, Arsenal and Liverpool in the 00s.
Of course this is unfair, but it is how professional football has always existed. Professional football is in the entertainment business, it is not purist like the amateur game. As Brian Clough pointed out to the Derby chairman, if you want to win trophies you have to have the best payers, they cost money and you have to pay for that.
There is an orchestrated war being raged against Manchester City behind the scenes, within UEFA and within the Premier League and in the press, and it has been going on for years. The reason is Manchester City have pushed the self-styled elite to one side, they don’t like it, they can’t beat City on the pitch, so they have to resort to underhand ways of doing it.
Prominent sections of the media vilify the club and deliberately misreport events, to mislead the general public and create a sense that what Manchester City have achieved so far is not worthy, it’s dishonest, it’s criminal and it’s cheating. None of this is true.
The clubs involved in attacking Manchester City have abused and continue to abuse their dominant position in the market, and so are committing criminal offences under the Competition Act 1998. Proving what they have done may be difficult but the body of evidence is building up.
The primary motivator in all of this is Liverpool or someone closely associated with the club, yet Arsenal, Spurs and Manchester United have supported them at times. In Europe Bayern Munich and Real Madrid have been particularly hostile as well.
On this website, I’ll mainly be focusing on the role Liverpool and those associated with the club have played. The fact is the attacks on Manchester City almost always seem to have someone associated with Liverpool involved.
I’ll also focus on bogus claims in the media that are taken as the truth. For example, sports washing, state ownership, the value of the Etihad sponsorship deal and other so called “dodgy” deals City have done.
A lot of this centres on the bogus FFP systems now in place. Before FFP the clubs could not do anything about the wealth put into Manchester City, and clubs like Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea ultimately owe their status in the game to owners with deep pockets who did exactly the same thing.
FFP rules were brought in under the guise of making the game fairer, but critics pointed out that they would have the opposite effect, and the critics have been proved right, FFP is a total failure. FFP is designed to ensure the hierarchy is maintained, and to restrict clubs from rising or falling within that hierarchy, which is not what it claimed to try to be doing.
FFP was lobbied for by the big European clubs to try to prevent smaller clubs with huge investment like RB Leipzig, Hoffenheim, PSG. Manchester City, Shaktar Donetsk and Baseksehir from breaking into and dominating the Champions League.
It has failed, with Manchester City now at the top of the tree, FFP is actually now making it impossible to push Manchester City out. I guess it is the law of unintended consequences. So these clubs are trying desperately to smear Manchester City and knock them by any means necessary legal or otherwise. They do not want to lose FFP, because once Manchester City are out of the way they can use it to get back to carving up professional football for themselves.
So now we have the FFP rules being twisted and subverted to try to punish Manchester City.
Manchester City will rightfully defend themselves and no doubt succeed but a lot of mud will stick.
For Sheik Mansour’s part he has been remarkably successful, he’s invested around £1.4billion, and sold around 30% of the club for about £800million. leaving his net investment at £600million, and the club is worth around £4billion, of which his share is around £2.8billion, that’s a 366% gain, I wish my investments performed like that!
It’s hard to see him letting these clubs damage his wealth without any come back. This will eventually come to a head in the courts.
