Not fanciful at all, sadly. The PL and (by way of projection) any Super League are/would be enormous cash generators and we are the proverbial fly in the ointment, dipping our paws in the honeypot year after year after year, and walking away with the better part of £100m a season in prize money from the CL alone, not to mention all that silverware that had previously been reserved for United, Liverpool and Arsenal. Pretty much every time we finish in the top 4, one of them misses out on a pot of gold and they’re forced to spend large sums of money to try and keep up with us and, as long as Pep remains at the helm at City certainly, there’s no sign of that changing any time soon.
No surprise then that they want us gone. They’ve been trying for years. Rule changes galore in an attempt to stymie us and benefit themselves, and now we’re reaching a Game of Thrones style ‘all or nothing’ denouement. Those fucking context-free Der Spiegel emails gave them the chance to try and ruin us that they’d hitherto been unable to obtain (and Blues should be under no illusions as to the extent of the resentment these entitled bastards have for us by the way - they don’t want us just “punished” without the inconvenience of a trial, they want us, to borrow from John Kreese in the Karate Kid, “out of commission permanently.” Not just relegated and stripped of titles, but damaged reputationally beyond all repair and then excluded from the entire Football League structure).
CAS was of course meant to act as the catalyst for our removal, but the judgment went our way, and so this now is the last hurrah instead. They’ve had 4 years to learn from their mistakes and prepare, and all the pieces are potentially now in place. A CEO who had to be ‘auditioned’ at Anfield and the Swamp before being approved for the role, a Chairwoman who is a season card holder at United, Parry in charge of the EFL (you can make your own minds up about his alleged previous associations with certain overseas journalists) and an Arsenal fan invited to select the panel for our tribunal and, as long as that panel is cautious with its legal vocabulary, no right of appeal to anything other than another rubber stamping PL appointed panel, in the event they decide we’re guilty, and new “associated party” legislation in place to “manage” any attempt at a return to our former position.
I should stress I cast no aspersion over the actual integrity of those just mentioned. For all I know they may be all absolutely committed to affording us a fair hearing, but unfortunately their club associations can’t fail but make me itch. I can’t even go to fucking Sainsbury’s in a City hat without some cnut or another shouting “cheats” at me, so I can’t imagine the opinions they’re going to be surrounded by at places like Anfield or the Emirates, for all that there may be educated individuals like David Dean floating about, are going to be anything other than loaded.
We’ve unquestionably missed the boat IMO, in attempting to counter some of the relentless propaganda spewing out of rival clubs and MSM, particularly as regards to the current round ”what about City?” bullshit. Apart from Stefan Borson being wheeled out on Talkshite every now and then to be interrupted by that City hating troll Jordan, our media presence in the dreary “what about City?” debate, has been practically zero, and even then it feels like an exercise in futility to try and convince the “cor blimey” merchants who listen to that clown car of a radio station. For the record I have zero sympathy for Everton, who voted for FFP, I have zero sympathy for Newcastle, who also voted for FFP and were one of the hateful 8, I have zero sympathy for Forest, who spent recklessly, and every time one of their wanker fans lashes out at us, as if we were the fucking enemy, it makes me boil.
There are causes for optimism - the ongoing stadium expansion at the Etihad for one and the fact that I genuinely don’t think we did what we’re accused of (if I were a gambling man, I would have money on the AD Executive Authority, ie. the UAE government, having covered the disputed £59m of Etihad’s £67m sponsorship deal, not ADUG). There’s also then the reach of our owners, which is prodigious. I just hope we (the club) haven’t been complacent on that basis though, because the one thing I fear is not that we might actually be guilty (and we may or may not be, I have no idea), but rather that our guilt or innocence is almost irrelevant, and a gigantic stitch up is currently being played out.
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