AustinScubaAg said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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TXAggie2011 said:

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Manchester City's actions have, I think, developed exactly 0 sympathy for the plight of "small clubs" and have not in anyway advanced the argument for financial parity.

That's just not a cause for a corrupt nation state willing to lie and cover up actions to take on. And no one, umm, buys that they were just trying to improve the game and champion the small guys.

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No one is saying that Abu Dhabi is fighting for the small guys.

They came into the league seeing what Blackburn had done in the past, what Chelsea was in the middle of doing. They came in with a plan to invest just as other big money owners have done in the past and take a struggling club with some history and turning them into a big elite club like the Red teams. They start that process which there were no rules against at the time, then suddenly the league elites push in spending rules and convince enough other clubs that it's in their best interests so that they can keep City and any other big investors from coming in and challenging their dominance.

It's anti competitive.

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Then city owners need to push for changes to the rules not just say we do not like the rules so we can ignore them.

City net transfer spend was the same as all 3 members of your "Red Cartel" combined between 2008 and 2018. City's Net spend look better now because they over pay for academy players

Liverpool: -250.61m
Arsenal: -216.26
Man Utd: -659.14m
Man City: -1.192b
Red Cartel total: -1.126b
Man City: -1.192b

City's Net spend look better now because they have also over paid for academy players for years and have been able to benefit from the Homegrown rules. If City had been willing to be patient, this is one area an owner can overspend to help finance future transfer spending since academy salaries and scholarships do not impact PSR.

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You are skewing the number by putting in 08 -12 when the FFP/PSR rules didn't inact till 2012/13. If you look at 12-18 City and Man U are pretty much the same in net spend.

Dre_00 said:

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Your fundamental argument is that FFP shouldn't exist, but yet you only want to count the net spend of when it exists.

This is performative art at this point.

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What point are you even making? FFP rules are the only reason this is a discussion.

Hell the fact that City's net spend was so much higher than the Red teams PRE FFP type rules, makes it even more obvious for why the red cartel pushed for those rules.

They bought the team when the rules allowed unrestricted financing of your own club. They started investing heavily and the other teams changed the rules because they didn't want competition.

Yeah the Robin Hood act is a farce.

Even if the rules are atrocious, a team can't choose to just ignore them while still remaining in the league. It doesn't work that way. Robin Hood only works if you exist outside the structure whose rules you're choosing to violate on principle - and this very nearly can't happen in a sporting context. Sport by its very nature needs an agreement of rules between competitors.

And as has been said ad nauseum - the real crux of the problem here is that City's owners have shown zero desire to cooperate with the investigation. As a sovereign, they feel like they can play by their own rules and get away with it because they can use political influence above and beyond the sport itself.

This isn't a question of whether owners should be able to spend money the way they want to.

This is a question of whether owners should behave like they are above the law - to use authority outside (and above) the sporting body to influence (or ignore) action inside the sporting.

And if you might think such behavior is ok - consider how t.u. would use its political and financial leverage to blackmail the Big 12 into doing whatever it wanted. I'm sure City fans will spin this into a t.u. = "red cartel" analogy, but they'd be dead wrong. The LHN was a gross departure from standard norms, and while it was questionable as to whether any rules were actually broken, the fact is that t.u.'s actions were done without regard for due process of the rules. They exploited new media rights territory that the existing rules didn't even consider yet. They lived in the gray spaces and loopholes. And they did so knowing that they could then leverage their financial and political power to lean on the conference and get the rules formalized to make their behavior fully compliant.

City's actions are the exact same. Do things that the current structure isn't even considering yet. Maintain innocence. (Try to) use political and financial power to get the rules changed to fit your actions.

But also there's a key difference - even with t.u. - they actually did listen and agree to rules makers when there was enough pushback. When their influence wasn't as great as they thought it was, they backed down. They didn't show high school games or have high school highlights (like they wanted to). The outcry there after those plans were announced was so great and both conference and NCAA rules came out against it - so they backed off.

I'm sure sip fans felt the new rules were unfair - but at the end of the day, the organization complied because that's what sporting organizations have to do within the structure of a league.

The fact that City continued to keep doing what they were doing, even after the league formalized rules against it, is precisely what's wrong. Just because you think the rules are bad doesn't mean you can violate them but somehow think you can stay in the league. If you want to be Robin Hood, fine, be Robin Hood… but you'll have to do so from Sherwood Forest (non league).

The problem with your analogy is that there is non bigger than t.u. when it came to the conference. City was just trying to spend like the highest rev clubs could. City is like if Baylor had a big money alum start pumping millions in, setting up their own TV channel deal starting to grow then t.u. pushes the Big 12 to institute rules that say the spending on the programs have to be restricted based on programs revenue. All because Baylor doesn't the "history" that t.u. does so they don't deserve the right to spend as much money.

What has been great with social media over the past several days is seeing the veil lifted on all the Man U, Liv and Arsenal fans. They started out with all the "do the crime pay the time" sentiment but now they are just saying what it's really all about.

All this FFP and PSR stuff is getting boring. Strip away the mythical “cartel” nonsense and it’s simple, City and Newcastle fans want mega rich owners to spend what they like, hence Newcastle fans suddenly becoming City’s unofficial legal team.

United, Liverpool, and Arsenal…

— Rick (@1972_rickyb) October 6, 2026

They truly believe they "earned" their place as a historical elite and their dominance should never be challenged.
They give the ole "your s$$$ty club should have to slowly build and grow to get to be as big as us". Knowing full well that no club will truly grow until they get good players and win big things. We are watching Newcastle trying the "build slow and grow slow" tactic and it's just them spinning their wheels while their best players get bought up and their fan base doesn't grow.

Texaggie7nine said:

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The problem with your analogy is that there is non bigger than t.u. when it came to the conference. City was just trying to spend like the highest rev clubs could. City is like if Baylor had a big money alum start pumping millions in, setting up their own TV channel deal starting to grow then t.u. pushes the Big 12 to institute rules that say the spending on the programs have to be restricted based on programs revenue. All because Baylor doesn't the "history" that t.u. does so they don't deserve the right to spend as much money.

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No analogy is gonna be perfect - but let's keep exploring your variant cause I agree it could fit too - what would Baylor do in that case?

They'd probably fight it, but while fighting, they'd comply. Western societies have cultures of regulation and compliance.

Then if/when Baylor lost, they'd have to go Independent - which college football at least allows for (again, analogies aren't great). Or they'd have to find ways to operate within the framework of the rules… which in the case of City, as I've said means dumping money into legal channels - while also complying elsewhere.

Point being, you simply can't be a part of a sporting organization and choose to ignore the rules - even if they were made specifically and unfair to target you.

If they had the means to "meet" the rules in their eyes, I think Baylor would do it.

No different than the Mansour seeing companies like Etihad being financed with gov money that was technically separate from the Abu Dhabi United group as a valid way to increase revenue.

Texaggie7nine said:

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They bought the team when the rules allowed unrestricted financing of your own club. They started investing heavily and the other teams changed the rules because they didn't want competition.

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I think you mean the league members followed the protocols in place and adjusted the rules and put them to a vote. 13 teams voted to change it, 6 voted against it, and one abstained, as per the guidelines of the league.

So what's your point? If Man City didn't like those rules, they could 1) follow them and try to change them later on, 2) break the rules and suffer the consequences when they did so, or 3) go find another league to play in.

You're whining about your team willingly joining and staying in the league and then violating the rules of the league.

Man City isn't the victim that you want them to be.

When you have mid tier players and you are signing top tier players, you are going to have crazy high net spent until your squad is up to the level of a Man U. That's just common sense. They didn't have the multi million dollar players to sell in the early days of their build to balance out the net spend. You are also just going to have a higher spend for the few years of upgrading your squad to the level of a top tier team who already is full of top tier players.

Man City "supporters" need to watch this video carefully. Yes it's long but the extent of the club's cheating and unrelenting hubris caused this:



At a minimum, Man City needs to be smacked back down to its place (a middling club that bounces between EPL and Championship with no serious history as a champion or major trophy winner).

All there is is 3 biased "judges" that said they didn't believe the witnesses (that's not proof they lied). They said they "covered" up money, but I don't see proof of that that cannot be explained by Gov money going in to sponsors to finance the sponsorship. The emails that were hacked mentioned just making sure the financials were correct so it didn't appear that the ownership group was providing money, when it was in fact the UAE gov.

ThunderCougarFalconBird said:

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At a minimum, Man City needs to be smacked back down to its place (a middling club that bounces between EPL and Championship with no serious history as a champion or major trophy winner).

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That's where the real anger is at. That a middle tier team DARED to be a big boy.

"We're a good club. We didn't want to cheat; we were forced to cheat. We just wanted to be like tou guys. Cool? THANKS."

Yeah, Rob and Ryan used their celebrity status, made a popular TV show about their buying and running the club, grew a massive fanbase for Wrexham which then massively grew revenue through new and higher sponsorships. When looking at Wrexham's revenue it was shown to be almost 60% from the US market.


Yeah, that's so fair to all the other teams that were in the teams they passed in climbing the league.

That's fine, but spending your own money on your own club. EVIL!

Who cares when the rules are unfair and anti-competitive?

I think this LFC fan put it nicely.

I think the level of hysteria around the Man City case is becoming very weird.

People genuinely acting like the Club has to be destroyed and sent to the shadow realm have lost the plot in my opinion.

They weren’t found guilty of match fixing. They weren’t paying refs. This…

— Watch LFC (@Watch_LFC) October 5, 2026

actually there is a better argument for Lance to get his championships back than Man Dhabi to keep theirs. we have definitive proof that nearly ever participant in those TdFs were using.

Man Dhabi cheated alone.

On its face, there's nothing wrong with an owner spending their money on their club.

But in reality, if an owner has serious personal financial problems (i.e. they took on bad debt to make the investment), it can absolutely have a negative effect on the club.

And realistically, the league can't police all of an owner's personal finances, even with the owner fitness test.

The newest SSR rules help prevent owners buying clubs using debt… which would have prevented the Glazers from buying United since they infamously bought the club with gobs of debt and then passed the debt onto the club.

That can't happen anymore either. So either the Red Cartel is deviously voting against the practices of one of their own… or maybe PSR (now SCR) was just a part of a broader effort to ensure clubs (and their fans) aren't crushed by ****ty owners. SSR prevents bad new ownership; SCR prevents bad subsequent investment.

Sometimes the most likely reasons for a thing are in fact the reason for the thing.

Furlock Bones said:

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actually there is a better argument for Lance to get his championships back than Man Dhabi to keep theirs. we have definitive proof that nearly ever participant in those TdFs were using.

Man Dhabi cheated alone.

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That makes it pretty similar then. Because the top clubs were spending at the same rate as City was. It's not like they had advantages that top club didn't have.

deadbq03 said:

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If this was years ago and City was 100% cooperative with the investigation (or even like 80% cooperative), I'd be inclined to be fine with a lesser punishment.

The denial and coverup is the much bigger offense to me because it reveals the fundamental flaw in sovereign ownership… they think they're above the law.

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That I can get. When it's not "take all of City's titles, they cheated every match they played" ect and just saying they need to be punished for breaking the rules and covering up, I get it. If the appeal and whatever legal pursuits City and their sponsors take fail, then I accept whatever punishment is dealt out. Though if they are kicked out of the leagues altogether, then I support them pushing for Super League 2.0.

Furlock Bones said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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Furlock Bones said:

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actually there is a better argument for Lance to get his championships back than Man Dhabi to keep theirs. we have definitive proof that nearly ever participant in those TdFs were using.

Man Dhabi cheated alone.

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That makes it pretty similar then. Because the top clubs were spending at the same rate as City was. It's not like they had advantages that top club didn't have.

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except they weren't. Man Dhabi's off books transactions are part of the problem. but, you know that.

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I city's most successful years, when Pep got all his trophies, that was absolutely the case. The off the book stuff was before then, when they still had much lower revenue. Before City's fan base grew with Pep, and KDB, and their trips to the US. The dynasty years of Pep's City, they were not the highest spenders, not close.

ThunderCougarFalconBird said:

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Texaggie7nine said:

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Who cares when the rules are unfair and anti-competitive?

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You sound like one of my kids when they're losing a game of Monopoly of something.

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Yeah, after 5 of the 8 players voted to only allow 3 of the players get to participate in the auction of properties when a player doesn't buy a free property after landing on it.