I hope Penders learns from this and moves on. No need to turn on a young keeper with a huge potential. Let Spurs celebrate their “champions league” trophy in the meanwhile.
Frank (ܦ̮ܪܢܟ) retweeted
Everyone seems to have forgotten why Financial Fair Play was introduced in the first place.
It was never supposed to protect the richest clubs. It was supposed to stop clubs from spending themselves into oblivion and creating a financial arms race where the only way to compete was to find a billionaire willing to bankroll massive losses.
Look at what happened in the 2000s and early 2010s.
Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 2008, played AC Milan in Europe in 2009 and reached another FA Cup final in 2010. Then came administration, a nine-point deduction, relegation and eventually League Two.
Leeds went from Champions League semi-finalists to League One.
Bolton went from the Premier League to League Two.
Clubs were taking enormous financial risks just to keep up.
So the Premier League clubs agreed that something had to change.
In February 2013, they voted in new financial regulations designed to improve the sustainability of clubs, requiring them to work towards break-even while still allowing a degree of owner investment.
And here's the funny part:
Manchester City voted AGAINST the restrictions.
At the time, City were already being bankrolled on an extraordinary scale by Sheikh Mansour. Their 2011-12 accounts showed a £99m loss, a £202m wage bill and almost £1bn of owner investment since the takeover.
Fast-forward to today.
The same financial rules that were supposed to make clubs sustainable became something City spent years fighting.
And an independent commission has now found that City used sham agreements, misstated accounts and concealed the true state of their finances, concluding that the club intended to circumvent Premier League rules.
Meanwhile, clubs like Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford have shown that you can build competitive Premier League teams through recruitment, development, smart trading and sustainable growth.
That's the irony.
Financial regulation wasn't created to stop clubs competing.
It was created because football had already seen what happens when clubs believe they HAVE to spend beyond their means just to survive.
The problem isn't that football has rules.
The problem is what happens when the richest clubs decide the rules shouldn't apply to them.
And that's exactly why this City story matters far beyond Manchester.
It is about what kind of football the Premier League wants to be.
Frank (ܦ̮ܪܢܟ) retweeted
Malaga were acquired by a Qatari billionaire in June 2010.
They didn't go from a struggling club to a dominant Champions League or title-winning powerhouse like Manchester City.
A Saudi prince bought a 50% stake in Sheffield United in 2013.
Sheffield United didn't suddenly transform from a club bouncing between the Premier League and Championship into a consistent Champions League or Premier League title contender.
Newcastle were taken over by Saudi ownership in 2021, with the takeover officially completed in October.
Yet even Newcastle haven't been able to consistently challenge for the Premier League title or continually bring in players capable of doing so.
Why?
Because football doesn't work the way Manchester City did it.
In football, clubs are generally constrained by their revenues and financial rules. You can't simply spend whatever your owner's personal wealth allows.
Even if Elon Musk bought a small club tomorrow, his personal wealth wouldn't automatically mean that club could spend billions on players. Owners can inject money to deal with debt or certain costs, but there are limits to how much clubs can spend and how much they can sustain.
That's why Manchester City's transformation deserves scrutiny.
Going from a club that had been relegated to becoming one of the biggest powerhouses in English football wasn't simply a normal organic progression.
Compare that with clubs like Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth.
They built their projects gradually.
They signed players for relatively small fees, developed them, improved their infrastructure and built their squads over time.
That's a completely different model.
And even those clubs haven't reached the level of consistent title contenders and Champions League favourites that Manchester City have reached, partly because they don't have the same financial spending power.
So as football fans, we need to understand the financial side of the game before jumping to conclusions or blindly defending Manchester City's rise.
Manchester City's transformation was extraordinary.
But if you understand the financial mechanics behind football, it's difficult to describe that growth as purely natural or organic.
They found a shortcut that most clubs simply don't have access to.
Frank (ܦ̮ܪܢܟ) retweeted
Manchester City’s reiteration of their “confidence and intent in proving the club’s innocence” given their “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” is incredibly at odds with their own behaviour and the intensity in which they blocked the Premier League’s process of investigation at every step since December 2018.
The scale of their obstructing was revealed in a July 2021 British court judgment. City simply refused to supply information and documents requested by the league, which then issued a disciplinary complaint in August 2019. The club challenged the disciplinary process and the commission that was set up.
The league proposed an ad hoc procedure of appointing a new commission, but City objected to that too. The PL were forced to bring legal arbitration against the club, to be decided by a tribunal of three senior lawyers.
City countered the PL had no power to do that, and challenged the impartiality of the tribunal. That was rejected and the club were again ordered to submit all the documentation and info.
City then appealed to the high court to strike the tribunal down. In March 2021, a judge ruled against the club and that her findings should be published.
City unsuccessfully fought against it being made public knowledge; the judgement published in July illustrated just how hard and long they resisted providing information.
With all that confidence, intent and irrefutable evidence, why the YEARS of non-cooperation and active, intensive blocking?
Frank (ܦ̮ܪܢܟ) retweeted
Judge Judy says people who don't like America should 'go somewhere else' trib.al/Pq6GAUH
The amount of stupid comments under this post is astronomical.
🇮🇷 @hasanthehun to @alexthomp on the next episode of The Axios Show:
"I think that the Middle East would be more stable" if Iran had a nuclear weapon.
Frank (ܦ̮ܪܢܟ) retweeted
Ilhan Omar on Charlie’s ass*ssination:
“There is no legacy to honor. It was filled with bigotry, hatred, and white supremacy."
What a vile POS you are @IlhanMN
Frank (ܦ̮ܪܢܟ) retweeted
On 9/11/2001, 19 terrorists tried to kill America. Not just our financial centres. Our leadership. Our safety. But America itself.
25 years later, America is still the most dominant nation on earth. Its people are strong.
So, to all our enemies: screw you. We are still here.
