Exactly.
I remember well all the furore once the ban had been announced but before the CAS verdict came through.
I said at the time that the club were in a true, existential, fight for its very survival. Read the Simon Jordan piece in particular. This was only an amuse-bouche for what would have followed if the ban had been upheld. Titles,cups,records WOULD have been stripped from us. The media and their acolytes in the game would have ensured the pressure was applied to such an extent it would have become impossible to hold back the tide.
Next would have come the briefing in the media about how ‘club X’ wants to ‘rescue’ KDB/Raheem/AGuero/name any of our players you want to from the ‘nightmare’ they found themselves in at City ‘the proven cheats’.
Then would have come the claims for financial compensation from ‘rivals’ who had been ‘cheated’ out of prize money/tv revenue (CL) etc. Even if they hadn’t won the clamour and endless negative publicity around these claims would have served to constantly continue dragging the clubs name through the mud for years afterwards. And by extension the good name of our owner. The pressure on him to abandon us would have risen day by day, and there may well have come a point where in order to protect the good name of his nation he may have felt it sensible to give in.
All of the above accompanied in the media by the sobriquet “Proven cheats”, which the club would have been powerless to combat if CAS had been as bent as uefa and upheld the farcical ban.
It is why I will never, under any circumstances, ever, turn against Pep. At the beginning of all this when the times were as dark for City as at any time In our long and illustrious history, He responded loudly and very publicly to stories in the media that he was going to leave if the ban was upheld with a resounding “I believe in this club, I believe in our owners and my bosses, I am staying at City and seeing out my contract come what may”. THAT is leadership.
I also remember well a thread around the time of the CAS verdict where I actually had to argue with City fans (only two to be fair to every other sensible and normal poster on here) that the above scenarios weren’t excessively pessimistic, but were in fact very real.
Thank God I didn’t have to be proven correct as CAS did the correct thing.
I will never forgive the media Though. Never. They danced on our grave before we were dead and fed their fetid, rancid readership a daily diet of racism, lies, xenophobia and outright glee at the prospect that “the Arabs” were going to get it.
How wrong they were.
CTID.
