If you can plough through the embittered united and Liverpool fans crying, this letter in the Football365 mailbox today is worth a read. Talented chap whoever wrote that...
https://www.football365.com/news/mailbox-ole-gunnar-solskjaer-man-united-moyes
The absolute States
As a City fan it has been both entertaining and illuminating to read some of the reaction to the CAS decision from supporters of other clubs – and certain sections of the media whose buffoonish incompetence, haughty hubris and self-destructive personal prejudice against the club and it’s supporters has been laid bare for all to see in brutal fashion (hello Delaney, MacKenna, Syed, Herbert, Corbett, Conn, Panja, Evans, Nakrani, Glendenning and pretty much any hack with the surname Harris).
Much of the reaction has been depressingly predictable. Blinded by tribalism and self-interest to even the most cursory reading of the factual decision of an independent judicial body, many are clinging vainly to the ‘time-barred’ element of the judgement as some sort of consolation prize – while choosing to ignore the fact that CAS also found that many of UEFA’s allegations- for that is all they were – simply were not supported by the evidence.
We all await the full detailed ruling with interest, which may hopefully shed some more light on the issues rather than the heat generated by hysterical smacked arses over the last 48 hours, but for CAS to come down so firmly in City’s favour would at least seem to suggest that the club refuted those of UEFA’s allegations which were not time-barred with some ease.
So it follows that there is nothing to say that those specific allegations which were not discussed at CAS by virtue of being time-barred could not also have been dismissed in similarly perfunctory fashion by City and their legal representatives.
If you’re hoping for a smoking gun to prove your “got off on a technicality” consolation tales, lads and lasses, then you may be disappointed.
Perhaps now the UK sports media, including the aforementioned rabble, might use this episode as an opportunity for reflection. To consider the fact that engaging in witch hunts and pile-ons against an individual club or fanbase (“sewer rats”, anyone?) does both themselves and their profession a disservice. That their journalism should be fair, honest, balanced and evidence-based, rather than churning out emotion-fuelled clickbait to appeal to rival supporters from the Meme/BANTZ generation.
They could perhaps start by asking who pressured UEFA into pursuing what City and its supporters knew all along was a doomed endeavour, a spiteful tilt at a windmill?
The old G14 may no longer formally exist but it is naive and disingenuous in the extreme to think that these old, long-standing political alliances between the entitled establishment clubs don’t exist and, indeed, continue to flourish today (see Agnelli’s shameful recent comments about Atalanta’s Champions League qualification at Roma’s expense as just one example).
Most Tory MPs and Peers have long ago left Eton and Oxbridge but does anyone honestly believe that the alliances and connections they forged at that time don’t influence their conduct and values in later life? Same thing.
The media could ask those rival Premier League clubs (aka ‘The Hateful Eight’) what on earth possessed them to write that ludicrous letter to UEFA demanding City’s immediate punishment despite the fact an independent due process had yet to run its course? Quite why the likes of Leicester, Wolves and Burnley got involved with the red-shirted mob is beyond me. They are fully deserving of scorn.
Finally, the media could just stop being so credulous and gullible. They could apply the principle of ‘cui bono’ – who benefits? Who had the most to gain from this grandstanding pursuit of an upstart rival?
Enter American-owned LFC, MUFC and Arsenal. There is an infamous photograph doing the rounds for a while now of their owners and senior officials all laughing along at a dinner table. It’s not a massive stretch to imagine that using the blunt instrument of FFP to fatally damage a rival might have been a subject for chit chat over the breadsticks.
With compliant mouthpieces in the press and broadcast media, extensive lobbying operations and even reports of murky connections to social media dirty tricks and disinformation campaigns, the redshirts and their owners have managed to convince a depressingly large constituency that while white American hedge fund money is good, brown Arab oil money is bad.
Persuading the gullible to “Look over there at what those nasty Arabs are up to” means nobody is looking too closely at their own values and conduct. Leveraged buyouts. Huge debt levels which they convinced UEFA to exclude from FFP. A cultural desire for sport as a closed shop – a cosy system where promotion and relegation on sporting merit is utterly alien and something to be resisted at all costs if it threatens the flow of money. You could even throw in the proven on-field cheating culture apparently condoned by other sports clubs in their broader organisations. Or perhaps the hacking of a rival club’s databases and the personal information contained within – criminal offences under the Computer Misuse Act and the Data Protection Act. Instead of disciplining those responsible, they get promoted instead. How does that work, la?
I would suggest that these factors mean US owners pose a great existential threat to football as we know it than any amount of upstarts from what their glorious Commander in Chief referred to as ‘shithole countries’.
It is a classic bait and switch and a great many people – journalists and rival fans alike – have been taken in completely. Completely conned like the doomed rubes who still think they can beat a street corner card sharp at Find the Lady.
There might be a sucker born every minute but there are literally thousands of them tweeting every second. And that just goes to prove that this cabal of septic Americans have done their job depressingly well.
- from Scooby D, Manchester
