If we were owned by a company like Mubadala (a UAE state-owned investement company) you could say we were state owned.
But we aren’t; we are majority owned by Newton Investment and Development LLC (a Mansour bin Zayed - as an individual - owned company), and minority owned by Silver Lake and China Media Capital. Three individual shareholders, none of which are not state entities.
We have to stop going down this road.
You think like a Brit because you are a Brit, the distinction you make doesn't hold up.
Our detractors come from two distinct camps, the liberal left and from football's big beasts, primarily American owners in the Premier League and the "established" giants of European football. These two groups have one thing in common, their opposition is political.
These camps have very different political aims, even if they borrow talking points from each other, but essentially it all boils down to politics, and labouring on about subtle distinctions between personal and sovereign wealth won't counter it.
We need a robust political counter argument.
We need to tell our detractors to fuck off, it is for the Emirati's to decide their future, not for us to lecture them with a left wing version of the white man's burden.
And the Hateful Eight and Tabas can fuck off as well, our owners play by the rules, we're just better at it than they are.
