Mic drop post!
It is all part of a continuing narrative that Khaldoon & Co are bent, because City upset the apple cart.
If any of these sponsorship deals had been done with another “Top 6 club,” no-one would have batted an eyelid. I point you to the record-breaking, head scratching Chevrolet deal (A General Motors brand not even available in the UK) with Man Utd! People questioned it, seeing as United had American owners, but it was supposedly all about “branding” and the “halo effect” of being on the shirts of a top team shown around the world on Premier League game days.
Errrr, isn’t that EXACTLY what EVERY SPONSOR is paying for?
Oh wait, OUR sponsors seem to be focused on the ME. Uh huh, because Sheikh Mansour’s ownership, and success on the field, have made City, and the extensive media presence they elicit, an important source of exposure for any and all sponsorship!!!
No, this is more than that. City were always a “fuck up club!” They were always the “almost” club, the Noisy Neighbors to the supposed real big money draw team in Manchester. However, when Mansour bought the club for a song from Shinawatra, not only did he see an excellent value, he saw an excellent opportunity…both sporting and business…which he has helped provide seed money, raised considerable outside investment, and funded a renaissance of not only the club, but the poverty stricken environs in which he has chosen to invest.
In short, Sheikh Mansour has been a MODEL OWNER!!! He provided a base upon which a 10-year plan for success was built. It was no secret.
He built the best Academy in the world, a college to ensure young players got an education because reality dictates only a very small fraction of them will ever make a living playing football.
CITC, was, is, and continues to be a model for how to engage in the Community.
He paid for the expansion of a stadium he doesn’t even own, which generates millions of pounds for the City of Manchester, and is looking to do it again in the near future.
He is developing the area around the Etihad in to an entertainment and sports complex to rival anything in the world.
In short, he has turned a has been, also ran, Club steeped in (somewhat ancient) history back into a club which can compete with the best, as it did 50 years ago…and the Big Money Biys who had helped dial up all the money sloshing around d the PL & CL for the past two decades DO NOT LIKE IT ONE BIT!!
First UEFA went after City & PSG, the new ME-funded clubs breaking down the doors of the ECA Cartel Clubs. City kept their head down and nose to the grindstone to get into the “club.” PSG chose $$$$! They used BEin Sports to buy UEFA TV rights and then the bent Juventus Chairman nominated him to the ECA Executive Committee. Lo and behold, the PSG Chairman not only funnels millions into the Juventus pockets, but fills up the UEFA coffers AND BECOMES CHAIRMAN OF THE ECA!! Mansour chose NOT to “pay to play” and was dragged through the courts, banned from “their” competition, then acquitted on appeal to an ACTUAL judicial body, where the law actually applies!!
Next up, the little shadow plot from the PL!
Can’t have Little Old City dominating things in the PL, because they’re not one of the “Top 4” that helped create the PL money machine the Top 4 used to fund themselves! Always got the top earnings from the TV rights, always got the top sponsorship deals because they were always the featured games, always got into the CL where the annual payouts are often worth as much as the entire net worth of smaller clubs in the PL…and ALWAYS won the silverware!!
Their “history” was all built on there being a well-financed cartel of 4 that ran the PL for their own edification and remuneration, and breaking into the “club” was not allowed!
Their owners? American and Russian billionaires! No “Dirty Arab Oil Money” allowed!
Again, Sheikh Mansour & Khaldoon played the long game with a 10 year plan of sustainability.
But wait, can’t we STOP these new clubs?
Let’s invent “Financial Fair Play!” Even the name is a lie! It has nothing to do with financial prudence and certainly has nothing to do with fair play, but great name, huh?!
In order to determine “fairness” we will make it so that it doesn’t matter how bad your debts are, as long as you can SERVICE THE INTEREST EVERY YEAR, you’re golden. However, your revenues have to be greater than your expenses, give it take a few Euros, over the course of a rolling 3 years…because the ECA clubs can’t all get into the later stages of the CL every season, can they?! In fact, when they can’t qualify at all, we will literally juice their “UEFA COEFFICIENT” to give them credit for being a big club yesteryear! We gotta keep the big ECA Clubs happy and funded, lest the upstarts get ideas!!
Anyone not totally immersed in football, but with an ounce of business acumen, could sit back, survey the landscape of YEFA & PL policies, procedures and penalties and see the blatant manufacture of a Cartel System designed to protect some at the expense of others.
The wrinkle has been that “others” who have fought to break into the big money game have been attacked (some would say on the field as well as off it!), berated, shamed and belittled in the not inconsiderable media cesspool of mutual backscratching that keeps the chosen clubs in the positive media and the gatecrashers on the defensive. PSG chose a legal bribe and were rewarded. City chose the finger!
And, here we sit. Almost without fail, every red top has City guilty and “possibly” not even allowed in the EFL (smh), while others focus on how every piece of silverware is now tainted and should be polished up and awarded to the also-rans.
The clutching of pearls by these multi billionaires and their clubs is laughable! They ALL spent more money than Vity with less success, but are claiming things like a lm arms length business deal was TOO good, that if our manager made a few quid OUTSIDE THE CLUB, that it should have been reflected on City’s books, and on and on and on…
I have no reason whatsoever to believe one of the richest men in the world would pull penny ante bullshit to make a buck. NONE! But then, often, when you see people going after others, they are projecting their own impulses and desires on the situation. Their own biases and beliefs.
Could it be that Sheikh Mansour and Khaldoon simply sat down, learned the rules of the game, leveraged them to the hilt to build this club from the ashes into the best, most successful club in England for the past decade? Nah…because when you’re a hammer with a warped mentality, everything looks like a nail!
I am absolutely confident City will be exonerated. There MAY be a technical infringement thrown into the mix that fouls up the works a bit, which will allow the “I told you do!” crowd to have their moment, but to suggest City are a club built on corruption defies reality.
Two people can disagree on the value of anything. After all, a deal only occurs when both sides believe they’re getting better value than the other. However, to legally prove an arms length business valuation does not pass muster is a ridiculously high hurdle to overcome, and I don’t think the PL will fo any better than the CL in proving it.
The clickbait media will run, and fun, and run, and fun with the story until they’ve squeezed every last ad click out of it. Nothing new there!
The problem will be all the ex-pro talking heads with their own personal and financial agendas. There are a metric shitton of column inches and media interviews to be done to help fill their pockets on this subject…even though 99% of them know less about this than the average engaged City fan, and 100% know less than City’s legal team.
But, make no mistake, EVERYONE IN FOOTBALL is hoping this knocks City off their perch. EVERYONE!
We are going to have to live with that for a long, long time and the long term whisper campaign to damage City’s reputation and tarnish their silverware will become a wall of sound, especially from the red shirts who think it means they really won that silverware because they didn’t cheat!
“We’re Man City, we’ll fight to the end!”
And, wouldn’t it REALLY BOIL SOME PISS if we won the two jewels in the crown of British football this season and did an FA Cup and Premier League double?! HAHAHA!!
If only PIGMOL didn’t hate us, too!
