I watched AFTV this evening to catch up on the transfer rumours and I was disappointed to see AFTV banging on about the charges as that hasn't been part of the agenda of AFTV all season. That being said there were City fans on here having a dig at the Thomas Partey accusations and in both cases it's innocent until proven guilty. You can't give it out to him and then complain that other fans give it to City. Not until the proper legal process has been allowed to take course.
Re the City charges, 115 is misleading as the reality is it will boil down to a few more serious charges and a bunch of other much more trivial misdemeanours. Bear in mind the traditional top 4 sides had decades to get their shit together and spend a fortune on building their clubs so if, big IF, City are guilty, it will be of doing something to develop the club in a way that the other big sides have historically been allowed to do but now times have changed and newly-monied clubs are unable to, and City bending the rules and concealing the true nature of events leading up to City being able to invest in the club.
From what I'm reading and hearing it is likely some sort of deal gets done in the background, City get a 20 point deduction and a big fine - will mean they won't win the league that season but still qualify for CL. The hysteria that City get relegated to the National League or whatever is overkill - not in a million years will that happen and it's in the club's interests to wrap things up quickly and I'm sure the lawyers will be advising them that as for sure with 115 charges to go through some of them will stick, even though there's an element of subjectivity to them all.
Note also, contrary to some of the posts in this thread, City were NOT cleared by UEFA. They were found guilty however there is a statute of limitations that applies when going to the European CAS meaning evidence older than a specified period of time cannot be used and therefore the charges were not allowed to stick. PL rules are different and evidence can be used from any period of time which is why I think the PL will get some of them to stick. But none of the charges are as serious as the ones Juventus faced for basically match-fixing and their penalty was relegation to the next division down. So there's nothing in my mind that makes me think City won't be able to do a deal behind the scenes with a one-off points deduction and a fine.
As a Gooner I'm genuinely not bitter at all - we've historically had the opportunity to spend whatever we wanted - we chose not to (despite at the time having a corrupt Putin stooge in the form of Alisher Usmanov as a major shareholder who wanted to splash his blood money around). Other clubs like Chelsea and the Rags did get their wallets out though and now they don't like it when someone else wants to spend their money on their club. Football has always been. That way in the PL era - heck even Blackburn bought a league title. Since then more clubs have come in with the readies to compete and build the infrastructure to take the club to the next level, set up sustainable infrastructure for the future, sustain higher revenue channel opportunities and so on.
Chelsea spent dirty Russian money on building that club. Money with blood on it.
And as for the Dippers being up in arms - let's just reflect on the fact that their club is responsible for the murder of 39 Juventus fans, responsible for English teams being banned from Europe, responsible for attacks on opponents team coaches. If there ever was any justice then that club would be permanently banned from Europe and would have been relegated by the FA for giving English football a bad name in the 80s. So I'd advise them to shut the fuck up.
