Thinking about the outstanding charges against City, it’s striking me as becoming increasingly irrelevant. There is just so much money behind them that they can fight any legal charges pretty much infinitely.
Look at what has happened in golf.
Football has a massive moral vacuum, it will always sell itself to the highest bidder. I sincerely hope that some good could come out of it, namely the banning of betting sponsors & wider association.
It’s utterly pointless bleating about it or defending the situation as it’s far too late. A pretty sad state of affairs but it’s not the fault of the fans.
Though this is true (sentence 1), these are not legal charges, they are alleged rule breaches. Most have no idea what they are but 115 is a number I have heard a lot in the last two days.
I hear a lot about time-barring. Those who make the accusation that City were only found not guilty by CAS because of time barring miss the point - time barring means the evidence cannot be heard, AND nor can it be defended. City were found guilty ONLY of non-cooperation with UEFA, and the original 50m fine was reduced to 9m because CAS accepted that City refused to provide further information because it was being handed to third parties, which prejudiced the case.
The latter is true, and although it is pretty meaningless to fossils like I, City has now been named as the most valuable sporting brand of all, and now has 42.1 million following the club on Instagram, the 2nd highest in the Premier League. The club has had a meteoric rise so the accusations of sponsorship not being of fair value are really gone - based on these issues, the clubs sponsorship levels, kit deals, and so on, should be just about the largest in the game. The repeated negativity from certain journalists in the UK has not stalled worldwide growth. Sooner, or later, journalists like Miguel Delaney will have to pack up and go home - his repeated assertion that City are state owned is simply false.
The PL is much of the root of this problem. When the previous head of the FA stated that the PL needs a strong Manchester United, you could see that the focus of the PL was money, it was never about competition. I buy into the product as a fan, but I absolutely hope there comes a time when the game is opened up to the working-classes once more. If I take my lad to the game, a single game, I am in to 150 including travel, and I only live down the road. I earn decent money but that is simply not affordable to me, and I won't go to the game without him. Billion dollar hedge funds or nation investment funds is irrelevant - the money is obscene and fans want the clubs to invest, and invest BIG.
