Short term yes. Over the medium and longer term I doubt it. Memories are pretty short in footballing terms - witness how Milan's criminal corruption is a footnote now.
The much longer term, perhaps, but I think you may be underestimating the potential impact over the medium term. Creating public support, and even demand, for punishment (and perhaps even ostracism) happens over that period, and can have long lasting effects on our club.
It’s interesting that you use Milan as an example of a club unaffected by this type of situation, as I would say it is one of the better ones for the medium-to-long term impact (that is, few people think back to the real causes of their decline, but it was in large part because of the scandals and public/football community backlash, which also contributed to the financial troubles).
There are examples of football clubs weathering the storm, to be sure, but most did not endure what we are likely to see in the next year or two if those entities genuinely attempting to undermine the club are not put in check. And the football world is even more sensitive to this sort of thing than the corporate world, as the “consumer base” is much more limited and segmented for each entity, meaning the majority of “consumers” don’t just accept the scandal or issues as they have few alternatives in the market or they simply don’t want to bother with effort to move to an alternative (such is the case with Apple, Facebook, Google, Petrol Companies, and so on). Most have no affinity for our club at all—or worse, they actively dislike our club—which makes it that much easier to gain their support for punitive action, whether justified or not.
Said it time and time again. The countless number of sponsors we’ve attracted, big ones at that, clearly don’t care. I’d say the manager, arguably the most popular and coveted in the world, doesn’t either. I drove by the stadium every morning and Nexen clearly don’t care. Puma have just given us £60m I believe. One of the largest deals in the country. They mustn’t care either. I know someone will say ‘what about those who may have walked away?’ I’m yet to see any evidence of that though.
I don’t quite get that point, as the current situation is really just manifesting itself, and my point is about how this is becoming a groundswell that could negatively impact our future operations, so past sponsors attracted, players acquired, and managers attracted are not really relevant. You have referenced operations involving entities that would not have likely been aware of what was to come, so it would not have factored in to their decision-making.
I agree that I cannot provide evidence of how it is affecting operations now but, again, I never made the claim it was impacting right this moment (though, it probably is). My assertion is that believing this will have no impact, if it continues on it’s current trajectory, would be naive, so it is perfectly fine to care about what is written about the club.
Juve are everyone's favourite underdogs in the CL now as well.
Definitely an example of how to manage through scandal but, even so, they had a short-to-medium term that was damaging to their club, so not really an argument against caring about what is written about City, which was and is my point.
