The dark side

I must admit I can relate to alot of posts on this. I am 51 loved football since I was about 4. Followed City through the dark days of getting put out of the cup by Shrewbury and Halifax, travelled miles on shit coaches and even shitter special trains. I recall back in about 1983 we drew Chelsea away in the league cup. Went on the special train which was not a comfortable way to travel. On arrival in London despite a fairly small following it was still an interesting experience getting from the train to the ground without getting battered by Chelsea or indeed the police. Further adding to the ambience of the evening was the fact it was pissing down with rain and the away supporters were naturally on a large exposed terrace. The rain never even hinted at stopping and if anything got heavier.

As for the match it was on a mudbath of a pitch and we got humped 5-1 i think, i seem to remember our goal being a Mcnab penalty?

Needless to say at the end of the game we were kept in for a further half hour before being given an "escort" back to the station, as we were leaving the ground up a dingy unlight passage way leading out of the ground there was an almighty bang and the smell of burning fuel....some twat had tried to lob a petrol bomb at us, but it hit the corrugated iron fence and not landed amongst us. There followed a long piss wet through journey home on the high speed luxury special train back to Manchester......

Now if during the above miserable tour of duty someone had said to me oneday in your lifetime City will be playing in a near 60k space age stadium winning cups and leagues winning more derbies than we lose and being blaze about playing Barcelona, but it wouldnt mean that much to me, or I would rarely be there to see it, I would have not have believed them.

Its not an age thing its not being pissed off with City as such...its the game and how it has gone, and yes how it is quite clearly bent to the degree that supporters are not given the credit of having the intelligence to see when they are having their proverbial pants taken down. In short I have no belief in the game having any real integrity in its upper echelons either here or abroad.
 
Keep up Gaz, as a result of the dossier Walton retired and fu\*ked off to America and Mason was taken off our games of the rest of that season

Yep - I hadn't really taken any notice of the 'football is fixed/agenda kind of stuff, it didn't seem credible really to me but that game last week was really odd. I have seen plenty of bad refereeing before, but when a referee is crap, he's usually crap for both sides if you know what I mean. That was something else last week and to rub salt in the wounds, the refereeing performance has warranted barely a mention in the media.
 
not gonna disagree with you on that aspect; its unnatural how few PEDs have been uncovered in football, relative to other major sports

Absolutely. Cycling and athletics are always considered suspect, but football is never questioned. I know of lads who say they have played in local Sunday league games where players have clearly been on it during a game. I also know of rumours of it going on at a certain Scottish Division 2 club (which I won't name, so don't ask).

At the highest professional levels, there are always rumours; players who recover from injury unnaturally quickly; players who suddenly seem to be playing out of their skins; players that suddenly seem to attain another level of fitness in a very short space of time; etc. There have been rumours in the past regarding specific players; one where a certain defenders curiously missed being tested. Fair enough, he served a ban for it, but it could have been a whole different story if he had been tested. Other players have served bans for recreational use, but I'm unaware of any failing a test for PED.

Drugs, cheating, betting irregularities, downright corruption, jobs for the boys at the FA, FIFA scandal, World Cup scandal, bent agents, third-party ownership. Just a quick search of the internet throws up a whole load of anecdotal evidence.
 
There's a number of ways the game is corrupt in one sense or other.

There's the straightforward commercial interests of the PL/Sky/BT. They're all interdependent so getting good viewing figures helps them all and poor viewing figures hurts them all. Scudamore was quite open about it when he said that the rags not being in the top four damaged the brand. Them, Liverpool, Arsenal and maybe Chelsea are the preferred top four as those clubs bring in the viewers. You can easily imagine a scenario where the PL and/or Sky feel their revenue is being hit by the rags and/or Liverpool being mid-table and have a quiet word with Mike Riley. He's their employee as PGMOL is jointly owned by the PL, EFL and FA. Why do England players like Rooney seem to get such leeway? Remember John Terry's red card against us? It was rescinded on appeal because it was felt he wasn't the last defender. However the rules are (according to Mike Riley) that they can only be rescinded if there's an obvious error not if it should have been a yellow. Terry's should at least have been a yellow as there was undoubtedly a foul on Jo. So the ban should have stood but he got away scot free.

Ever seen the England squad and thought "WTF is he doing there?" Well maybe his agent has given the England manager a backhander as he knows his player's value will increase if he's in the squad and team. "There's quarter of a million in it for you if x gets a game." "Wight. Tell him to play out of his skin for the next few games and I'll awwange it for the next international".
We know managers take backhanders from players for getting picked.

Then there's gambling. So many clubs are sponsored by gambling companies and Bet365 effectively own Stoke as the Coates family own both. Sky also have their own gambling company. While the European market is pretty well regulated, the Far Eastern market isn't and something like £1bn is staked on PL games alone every weekend out there. We've seen plenty of evidence of Far Eastern syndicates trying to fix outcomes in some way (floodlight failures being one). Someone was murdered because they threatened to blow the whistle on a ruse whereby Chinese syndicates had "spotters" at games feeding back live information ahead of the TV stream, which had a delay of a minute or so.

You don't necessarily have to fix a whole game but just certain events and the obvious people to get to fix a game are 1) refs and 2) goalkeepers. It might be the number of cards issued for example. How many times have we seen refs and said "When is he going to get a card out FFS"? It could be clean sheets, total goals or winning margins. A goalie can be unbeatable one game yet play like his feet are nailed to the floor next game and no one raises an eyebrow. "He's a bit inconsistent" or "he was a bit too pumped up" say the media. And we swallow it.

Top post, love reading your thoughts on this subject. Could be wrong but I get the impression you know more than you are prepared to divulge on this forum.
 
look at Chelsea the season before champions, last season same players absolute shite this season looking good and with pretty much the same squad

Very true. I was surprised how easily Chelsea gave up their title. Jose always looks like he has something other than football on his mind. Maybe he has got himself involved in something he is not altogether comfortable with. Obviously, the financial rewards go some way to alleviate the guilt......
 
Been watching City since the 60s (I started young)......saw the good times then and suffered the many poor years in the eighties and nineties.........but wouldn't swap what we have now.

Times have definitely changed from when the only live televised matches that were shown were the Fa cup final and England v Scotland..maybe there is too much football on Tv...but you don't have to watch it !

I respect the opinions and previous posters who say they are giving up their tickets ......But if you you can't enjoy watching what we have now...I'm not sure what would ever make you change your mind because there was nothing more depressing than being battered by United every time we played them with no hope of ever going to Wembley.....never mind winning a trophy !

I'm not so sure I buy into the conspiracy theories......although I do think that Saturday's refereeing performance ranks as poor as I have ever witnessed.....plus the decisions not to send Rojo off or look at Ibrahimivics kick out are baffling to say the least.....but this has more to do with the United dominated press and people in positions of power ........not sure that's corruption though and certainly not a reason to give up on watching 'the best team in the land and all the world.'

But we shouldn't let the bullies win ( the old cartel ).....Imagine how they felt when Aguero scored v QPR...they know we are not going away anytime soon.....just like Bovril, bog rolls and rattles are not going to make a comeback.

So embrace what we have know.....we have the best owners in the world....no doubt !......plus of all the premiership teams I would still wager that City are still more in tune with the supporters than most.

if you can't get excited, a buzz,,,,,,call it what you like, watching great games like last Saturday when the football and drama (good or bad)was absolutely fabulous and as good as it gets.......then just maybe the other reasons given for not going again are a convenient excuse.
 
One thing I can't help thinking is... If you were a criminal, and you had realised that you could take £100 from the till each week and go undetected, then you would keep taking £100 even if there was lots more there...But if your boss tells you that tomorrow he is installing a new till that you wont be able to steal from, then what would you do? Steal the whole thing instead of just £100 obviously.

If you had a nice little fixing operation going on, nothing major, but a nice steady earner..and then you heard that in a years time there will be technology brought in as standard that could make your methods obsolete..what would you do?

You'd obviously pull off one last mega fix. Something like some kind of long-shot coming in.
 

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