PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[Prestwich_Blue]

I notice Hunt mistakenly calls Khaldoon "the owner of Manchester City Football Club", tsk.

Easy thing to get wrong. He's owned Manchester United for quite a few years now.

 

[mcfcphil]

I notice Hunt mistakenly calls Khaldoon "the owner of Manchester City Football Club", tsk.

It’s good that City are so intrinsically linked to Abu Dhabi investment in the UK. You can’t mention Khaldoon without also mentioning City.

Even Jeremy Hunt will be able to join the dots on how serious the fallout of the premier league charges could be.

 

[Chappie]

Yeah but to paraphrase Simon Pearce in the leaked emails when this situation reared its head after Mancini was fired “I’m not sure how much influence we have there any more”

No one accuses F1, or particularly Ferrari, fans of being apologists for Abu Dhabi. Or golf, cricket, or fans of any of these other sporting events. https://yallaabudhabi.ae/sports-leisure/best-sporting-events-in-abu-dhabi-2023/

No one accuses Arsenal fans of being supportive of a repressive regime when they wear shirts with Emirates on the front and Rwanda on the sleeve. No one accuses Qatar of sportswashing over their ownership of BeIn Sports

It's just us (and now Newcastle fans) who are the only ones seemingly making excuses for the states we're associated with via our ownership. It's rank hypocrisy.

None of those sports have 3 history clubs whose nose has been put out of joint by Manchester City Football Club.
We can't beat them,so we will smear them.

 

[I'm no cynic but...]

Most armchairs are rags hence it probably wouldn’t be in his interest to publicly support our position. He could though decide to support our position because that would be the right thing to do in spite of probably costing him votes. Dr Martin Luther King ‘it’s never the wrong time to do the right thing’.

Most armchair rags live nowhere near Manchester.

 

[Invisible Man's Bandage]

I'm certain that the panel won't be taking any potential geopolitical consequences into account and I wouldn't want them to either. We are either innocent of the charges after due consideration or we aren't. Why should we get away with something on the basis that our owner wouldn't invest billions in Sizewell if we were punished for example? We as a support base would be outraged if that was the case with a rival club so you have to be consistent.

Obviously I want us to be cleared and for this to finally go away but not on the basis of threats or undue financial pressure. I also think that people are over estimating the influence our owner could bring to bear on the UK government. Yes Abu Dhabi invests in UK projects but the country wouldn't collapse if it didn't.

 

[bluenova]

No one accuses F1, or particularly Ferrari, fans of being apologists for Abu Dhabi. Or golf, cricket, or fans of any of these other sporting events. https://yallaabudhabi.ae/sports-leisure/best-sporting-events-in-abu-dhabi-2023/

No one accuses Arsenal fans of being supportive of a repressive regime when they wear shirts with Emirates on the front and Rwanda on the sleeve. No one accuses Qatar of sportswashing over their ownership of BeIn Sports

It's just us (and now Newcastle fans) who are the only ones seemingly making excuses for the states we're associated with via our ownership. It's rank hypocrisy.

I can see your point, and agree that it's daft to suggest we're all apologists for the UAE, but it's surely easier to make the link where the people clearly support just one team, and that team is owned by an entity linked to a state. Sports where the occasional event is held in a state, or where people are "fans" of individuals etc. are very different.

In other sports it's often the players who are the ones getting grief. The LIV golfers certainly got a shitstorm raining down on them (albeit things have got more complex since), and the players who went to Saudi faced plenty of criticism. Bein and Qatar have also been linked to sportswashing repeatedly in the media, but there isn't really a Bein fanbase to attack.

The other key difference in being fans of a team, rather than individuals, a sport, or a TV station, is of course that you have more obvious rivals. Rivalry between supporters is almost entirely based on hypocrisy. Their players are shit, our are great. They get all the decisions, we get hard done to. Their owners are worse than ours.

 

[Jam Tomorrow]

Most armchair rags live nowhere near Manchester.

Statistically you are probably right, what with their twenty trillion fans throughout the known universe, however, there are still plenty in Manchester and Greater Manchester.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Statistically you are probably right, what with their twenty trillion fans throughout the known universe, however, there are still plenty in Manchester and Greater Manchester.

If I'm out shopping or driving when they're playing, it's common to see people with rag shirts on out and about.

 

[Jam Tomorrow]

I can see your point, and agree that it's daft to suggest we're all apologists for the UAE, but it's surely easier to make the link where the people clearly support just one team, and that team is owned by an entity linked to a state. Sports where the occasional event is held in a state, or where people are "fans" of individuals etc. are very different.

In other sports it's often the players who are the ones getting grief. The LIV golfers certainly got a shitstorm raining down on them (albeit things have got more complex since), and the players who went to Saudi faced plenty of criticism. Bein and Qatar have also been linked to sportswashing repeatedly in the media, but there isn't really a Bein fanbase to attack.

The other key difference in being fans of a team, rather than individuals, a sport, or a TV station, is of course that you have more obvious rivals. Rivalry between supporters is almost entirely based on hypocrisy. Their players are shit, our are great. They get all the decisions, we get hard done to. Their owners are worse than ours.

Good post. I also think a lot of it is down to snobbery, golf and F1 are deemed upper middle class sports, whereas football fans are still plebs who need controlling, the hypocrisy of it is the same plebs who need controlling and an occasional police baton on the head to keep them in line should also know the ins and outs of complex Middle East geopolitics.

Of course we all know there would be no such hand wringing if one of the favoured clubs got taken over by a Middle East regime.

 

[Ducado]

I'm certain that the panel won't be taking any potential geopolitical consequences into account and I wouldn't want them to either. We are either innocent of the charges after due consideration or we aren't. Why should we get away with something on the basis that our owner wouldn't invest billions in Sizewell if we were punished for example? We as a support base would be outraged if that was the case with a rival club so you have to be consistent.

Obviously I want us to be cleared and for this to finally go away but not on the basis of threats or undue financial pressure. I also think that people are over estimating the influence our owner could bring to bear on the UK government. Yes Abu Dhabi invests in UK projects but the country wouldn't collapse if it didn't.

I get where you are coming from but many things are linked the PL is a massive earner for this country, and seeing it successful is a political and economic priority, that thee is a battle over regulation going on between the government and the PL there can be no doubt