Don’t you?
I think you can, and the reason I think you can is that the author makes a number of assertions that are based on very flimsy factual foundations. If however the factual basis upon which an article rests is undermined, I don’t think the conclusions reached in the article can be safe.
His starting point is to assume that Sheikh Mansour’s ownership of City is a sham, and that the real owners are the city state of Abu Dhabi, and in particular Sheikh Mansour’s brother. He seeks to make this link presumably on the basis that there is nothing comparable to the torture video that he can bring to bear in relation to Sheikh Mansour. So unless he can make that link his argument falls apart. (It seems ironic that a self titled human rights activist is so willing to accept a finding of guilt by association so long as he is himself is the one making the finding, but that could warrant a thread of its own.)
His evidence for reaching this conclusion seems pretty underwhelming. For instance he says this:
“Manchester City is nominally owned by Sheikh Mansour Al Nahyan, who is so enthused by his investment of nearly £1 billion that he has attended one match in nine years. “Mansour did not like the fuss it caused”, was the rather implausible explanation that a City source recently proffered to Giles Tremlett to explain the Sheikh’s aversion to attending games. A simpler explanation might be that Sheikh Mansour has nothing to do with Manchester City and that it’s not his money that is responsible for its remarkable transformation.”
It might be a simpler explanation but it doesn’t fit with a lot of inconvenient facts. For instance
- Sheikh Mansour officially attended one game, a home game against Liverpool. It is however widely understood amongst City fans that he has attended more games than that, though without making that fact known. Evidence, you say? One particular example is the private jet that flew from Abu Dhabi to Manchester on the day of our first CL knockout game against Barcelona, arriving in good time for kick off. A man remarkably similar in appearance to Sheikh Mansour was seen getting off the plane. Maybe he didn’t go to the first game against the team we have in many respects tried to emulate, however - maybe it was his body double and he just fancied a pint in Mary D’s
- If Sheikh Mansour comes ‘officially’ to Manchester the security concerns are as real as if Prince William went to the UAE. If he doesn’t like the fuss, you can sort of see his point. Every time he comes there would be a huge security scrum basically so he can watch a game of football. The Queen doesn’t go to Newmarket to watch her horses every time they run for similar sorts of reasons. There is nothing implausible about that whatsoever.
- There are lots of tweets or other social media content showing private pictures of Sheikh Mansour and his family with some City connection. If you trawl through the archives on this forum you will find pictures of Sheikh Mansour wearing City leisure wear, for instance, and on a relatively frequent basis. He isn’t exactly Tony Pulis in terms of wearing the club shop, but why would he put on a City polo shirt in his ‘down time’ if he is just a front for Abu Dhabi’s corporate ownership? Why would his son be sent over to see a game? Why does his son get a City cake on his birthday? (Not even Yaya got that) Why does his wife tweet ‘Obsessed with City? Of course we are’. There is in short a lot of information in the public domain that sits very uneasily with the idea that City in reality has a connection with Sheikh Mansour in name only.
- For many years reports of private conversations involving Sheikh Mansour have been reported by third parties. I recall David Cameron once saying that a business discussion with Sheikh Mansour was preceded with small talk about how City were doing. I recall Mancini relating a conversation with Sheikh Mansour at an end-of-season gathering in Abu Dhabi which indicated a lot more than passing knowledge about the club. I recall Khaldoon talking about meetings at which he, Sheikh Mansour and the manager (and others) were all present where strategic and long term plans were discussed in detail
- The Sheik’s ownership of MCFC came about when it was bought off Shinawatra by ADUG. MCFC is an English company and its transfer from one owner to another involved English solicitors financiers and accountants. They are under legal obligations called ‘KYC’. (Know your client). This arises under anti money-laundering legislation. What that means is that the professionals involved in the transaction had to be personally satisfied about where the money came from that was being used to fund the purchase. If the article is correct in saying “it’s not his money that is responsible for the transformation” a lot of lawyers bankers and accountants have put their own careers on the line by accepting that it was his money.
- Khaldoon has said on many many occasions that Sheikh Mansour watches every single game. That’s a lot of time to waste on a project you aren’t really interested in.
- He went to Spain in a Lamborghini and brought us back a manager (okay, he might not actually have done this one)
You suspect the author of the article is not aware of these matters, and frankly it is quite probable that the only reason a large number of bluemoon posters are aware of them is because our interest in and knowledge of MCFC is much deeper than his. But since the entire article seems to be based on the premise that Sheikh Mansour has no real interest in City and is just a face for an otherwise abhorrent regime, and since that premise is MASSIVELY at odds with other things we have learned over the last 9 1/2 years (see what I did there?) it is perhaps unwise to take at face value not only this but many of the other jumps he makes. It may be of course that we have all been duped all these years into believing that Sheikh Mansour is now a City fan too when in fact he has no interest in City or even football at all. But that is very much at odds with everything else we know about him. It makes you wonder what else has escaped the author’s attention.
Organisations like human rights watch and amnesty international do some incredibly important work in many parts of the world. But they, like every such organisation that is dependent on volunteers, can also sometimes become soapboxes for individuals with an agenda. The conclusion that Sheikh Mansour must be a fraud because he’s only been to one game is so tenuous you wonder if the author hasn’t reached that conclusion first and then look for evidence to back it up rather than the other way round. The blithe assumption it wasn’t his money that funded the purchase seems to have no evidential basis at all and implicitly accuses many highly respected lawyers and accountants of neglecting their professional duties. Again it seems a conclusion the author has reached without regard to the available evidence. And if an author is looking for evidence to back up a conclusion he has already reached you wonder why.
I can’t take this article seriously. The only reason I’ve written such a long post is because (no offence, hawkhurst, I agreed with the rest of your post entirely ) some blues might take it at face value when in my view it doesn’t deserve to be.
