Husband of JFSonne, Viennoiserie hobbyist, Caissa lover
Gh
Joined September 2011
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Ato retweeted
The few things he actually tried to save our season. Why do we keep pretending he didn't do anything?
Ato retweeted
🚨🔴 BREAKING: Liverpool have reached full personal terms agreement with AS Monaco’s Camara, as reported!
Club-to-club talks are advanced. Liverpool want to wrap it up quickly, following the Gakpo approach, to allow early integration.
More to follow… 👀
#LFC #LiverpoolFC
Ato retweeted
92% - Trey Nyoni has completed 92% of his passes under high-intensity pressure in the @ChampionsLeague this season.
This is the highest accuracy of any midfielder with 100+ attempted, ahead of Pedri in second (91%).
Composure.
Ato retweeted
Not that interested in the xG. Arsenal were better. Not a lot better, better in big moments and under pressure.
LFC had more xG from lots of low quality shots but didn't create good chances (apart from Macca). Iraola coached a v good game. Our players not as good as Arsenal's.
Ato retweeted
PSG have completely destroyed Ligue 1 as a credible competition, the other french clubs are on their knees.
Big clubs like Lyon and Bordeaux are in 100s of millions of debt as a knock on effect.
TV companies withdrew a mountain of funding for the whole league due to the non-competitive nature of the league.
The NYT framing is ridiculous. PSG and Manchester City both challenged the established European order, invested in elite infrastructure, hired world-class managers and built winning teams. PSG won the Champions League in 2025. City won it in 2023.
PSG are celebrated for evolving. City are vilified for succeeding. Same ambition, same elite competition, two different media narratives. Why? 🤔
Ato retweeted
If FFP/SCR rules were in place in 04/05 Simon Jordan would have been forced to maintain a wage to revenue ratio of 85% when Crystal Palace were relegated to the Championship. Their wage to revenue ratio was 129% when they were forced into administration in 2010. Food for thought!
Ato retweeted
1. The rules limit how owner £ is spent not prohibit owner spending. It prohibits owners from subsidizing direct ⚽️ costs that cannot be covered by 80% of revenue. Risk exposure regulation.
2. Banking, Insurers, Utility industries all have regulations on Risk exposure.
Ato retweeted
“And cut the morality act.
Newcastle and Villa fans aren’t leading some great socialist revolution to save football, they want wealthy owners to spend their way to the top. They weren’t hamstrung by PSR for the previous 70 years or more, they were mostly just shite.”
Brilliantly said.
It’s completely self serving. They’re not doing it for the betterment of clubs like mine, they simply want their rich owners to pump in infinite money and blow other clubs out the water.
And for all the bleating about “cartels” ironically THEY want to become one.
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 weren’t handed their position by the Premier League. They spent generations winning trophies, building support, and growing revenues, just as Real Madrid and Barcelona did in Spain.
Do the rules need changing and ambitious clubs have room to grow? Absolutely yes, but rules also exist to stop clubs buying an advantage through inflated or disguised revenues.(City)
And cut the morality act.
Newcastle and Villa fans aren’t leading some great socialist revolution to save football, they want wealthy owners to spend their way to the top. They weren’t hamstrung by PSR for the previous 70 years or more, they were mostly just shite.
Argue for different rules by all means, but stop rewriting 70 years of history and dressing a billionaire’s chequebook up as Robin Hood fighting the cartel.
Ato retweeted
“It’s impossible for clubs to compete with the “red cartel” or grow their commercial revenue without sustained success or cheating.”
Let’s use Spurs as an example, because they were never part of this supposed cartel.
Yes, sporting success isn’t guaranteed by spending the most money, but that’s beside the point.
Spurs were generating £114m in 2007/08.
City were generating £82m in the season before Abu Dhabi took over.
Spurs then grew their revenue to £147m by 2012/13, around the point Premier League financial regulations were being introduced.
They were also already increasing their commercial revenue and explicitly supported bringing financial fair play into the Premier League.
And look where they are now. Spurs generated £565m in 2024/25.
That’s an increase of roughly £418m, or 284%, from 2012/13.
Their sponsorship, corporate hospitality and merchandising has gone from roughly £44m around 2012 to close to £200m today.
Spurs missed out on Champions League football on four occasions during this period while City finished above them.
Across those four seasons, City received €138m in Champions League distributions from UEFA, while Spurs missed out on an estimated £91m in direct financial benefits from not qualifying.
That’s before you even consider the knock on effect of losing the Champions League exposure, sponsorship opportunities and additional commercial growth that comes with it.
They built a new stadium, increased their commercial partnerships, expanded merchandising and e-commerce, massively increased hospitality and turned the stadium into a year round business with NFL, concerts, boxing and other events.
Spurs went form 14th in the Deloitte Football Money League in 2007/08 to 9th in 2024/25
Above Chelsea and just below United
All done without sustained success.
All done without cheating
There was nothing preventing Man City doing the exact same thing but they wanted it “then and now”.
There are no rules preventing other clubs from growing their commercial revenue significantly within the rules like Spurs did.
Ato retweeted
English Football clubs going into Administration or Insolvent since the Premier League begin:
1992–2003 - 38 (3.17 per year)
2004–2011 - 16 (2.00 per year)
2012–2026 - 9 (0.60 per year)
1992–2003: the early Premier League era, before the Football League had introduced some of its stronger insolvency deterrents.
2004–2011: after measures such as points deductions for administration, fit-and-proper-person tests, and salary controls had started appearing, but before the modern FFP/PSR era.
2012–2026: the period broadly associated with UEFA FFP, Championship FFP, and later Premier League profitability/sustainability rules.
The lies these rules were created to solely protect big clubs is dangerous, misleading and vile. Professional pundits and media outlets pushing it should be ashamed.
Financial Fair Play was sold as a way to protect clubs from reckless owners. In reality, it tied what you're allowed to spend to what you already earn. Think about what that means. The clubs with the biggest historic revenues, the ones who'd been dining at the top table for decades, got to keep spending. Everyone else was told to know their place. Ambition from below was reclassified as a threat.
Look at the hypocrisy. An owner putting his own money into a club, clearing debt and building it up, gets treated as the villain. But an owner who buys a club with borrowed money and loads the debt onto the club itself? Perfectly acceptable. The Glazers took over Manchester United through a leveraged buyout, and that club has since poured well over a billion pounds into interest, debt repayments and dividends. Nobody drew up 115 charges for that.
Then remember who these supposed guardians of fairness actually are. In 2020, Liverpool and Manchester United pushed “Project Big Picture”, a plan to hand more voting power to the biggest clubs. In 2021, the same elite tried to walk away from English football entirely with the European Super League, a closed shop with no relegation. City were part of it too and withdrew, but the architects and the loudest voices came from the traditional cartel. These are the people lecturing everyone else about the integrity of the game.
Even the Premier League's newer rules haven't stood up. In 2024, an independent tribunal found parts of the Associated Party Transaction rules unlawful after City challenged them. That wasn't City escaping justice. That was a legal body confirming the rules themselves were flawed.
City were never the problem. City were the proof. Proof that a club outside the old establishment could be invested in, built properly, run brilliantly, and beat the aristocracy on the pitch. Academy, infrastructure, a city regenerated, a team that won everything. That's what they can't forgive.
These rules were never about protecting football. They were about protecting a hierarchy. And we will keep fighting them, in every forum, for as long as it takes. We are Manchester City.
Ato retweeted
Sunderland spent 8 YEARS in the Championship. One season back in the Premier League and they’re already playing in Europe.
Brighton are in Europe.
Bournemouth are in Europe — a club that was practically on its knees when Eddie Howe took over.
Crystal Palace are in Europe AGAIN after beating Manchester City in the FA Cup final.
And somehow we’re still being told the Premier League is a “closed shop”? 😂
Look at what’s happening:
Brighton went 2-0 down to Man United in the Carabao Cup and came back to win 3-2.
Three days later, they absolutely dismantled Arsenal.
Brentford put three past Chelsea that same weekend.
Hull came up from the Championship and have already beaten United and taken a point at Stamford Bridge. They’re sitting 8th.
Where exactly is this “no chance for smaller clubs” argument coming from?
And I genuinely don't understand the “red cartel” argument either.
Arsenal waited 22 years for another league title.
Liverpool have won two league titles in roughly four decades.
United haven't won the Premier League in 13 years.
So what exactly is PSR supposedly protecting these clubs from? 😂
Trophies?
Because over the last decade, the clubs collecting the most silverware have been Manchester City and Chelsea — the same clubs at the centre of major financial-rule controversies.
Yet somehow we're supposed to believe the problem is everyone else.
At some point, you have to take responsibility.
“We had no choice.”
Yes, you did.
Brighton had the same choice.
So did Brentford.
So did Bournemouth.
They built gradually, developed players, recruited intelligently and stayed within the framework.
And now they're competing at the top end of English football.
Maybe the problem isn't that the door is closed.
Maybe some clubs simply don't like the fact that everyone has to walk through the same door now. 😭
PSR hasn't stopped competition.
If anything, look at the clubs breaking through and tell me the competition is dead.
The excuses need to stop. 😤
Ato retweeted
In 2019, Jurgen Klopp told Rog that winning wasn't everything and that "all the other guys who won with ignoring all the rules" would be ultimately be judged differently 👀
