Manchester City* - 130 charges (and counting...)

They’d still do the same things though if it were prohibited or limited. Wouldn’t affect the money generation. They don’t extract an extra billion barrels just to pay for Grelish’s gold plated alice band.

On one side: luring workers from Bangladesh and Indonesia to the Middle East in order to build new cities and new stadia, taking their passports away when they arrive, and forcing them to work under inhuman conditions without a chance to go back home, exploiting them until they drop like flies in the process (commonly known as modern-day slavery).

On the other side: being able to spend £100m on the newest fashionable player in the Premier league, after having already spent billions on artificially inflating a small club into a winning machine, for the entertainment of the masses, and for obvious sports-washing.

You don’t see the relation? I’ve no problem with luxury as such, but these guys actively work on maintaining a lot of people in poverty while increasing their own profits. Then they spend it on futilities. That is morally wrong.

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All true

Although I didn’t expect you to take my comment as 100% serious. :wink:

I take your point but your original post (the one I quoted) didn’t mention the origin of the money, just that spending £100m on a player was immoral. In isolation, I disagree with that assertion.

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Absolutely. A nations sovereign wealth fund is there for the betterment of its people. Spending it on a sportswashing operation thousands of miles away is immoral.

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Unless they think what they are doing is for the betterment of their people?

Presumably, owning Man City is a drop in the financial ocean to them. And the PR it has bought for the country might be seen as money well spent.

Rough calculation:
In the 40 years of my life before Abu Dhabi bought Man City, I probably mentioned Abu Dhabi a handful of times, at the most.

In the 10 years of my life since, I have mentioned them innumerable times, in relation to football, and I know the names of the ruling family, some of the companies there, the wealth, the opulence, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, can’t stand them. But their view might be that the money they are investing into Man City is worth it, for their people.

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I always think we’re on dodgy ground talking about ‘morality’ when it comes to football finances. We spent £75 million on a single player 3 years ago and have the second largest wage bill in the country. There are plenty of poor people in the UK and the US. Back in the 80s Liverpool was one of the most deprived areas in the country but it didn’t stop the club spending millions on players and wages. The club played a big part in running down the area immediately around the ground in a bid to drive people out of their homes.

Bottom line is Abu Dhabi can spend money on City if they want and they obviously feel it’s serving a purpose otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it. That’s not the problem. The problem is their rule-breaking and the authorities inability to do anything about it.

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But not the gay ones. Or the women.

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Pep takes over at Man City, who were basically a championship winning team,

he spends near £1,000,000,000 pounds over the next 4 seasons,
winning 3 leagues titles, a FA Cup, and 4 League Cup titles,

its good thing he is at a club where the owners are in awe of him,

cos if he did this at Chelsea, Roman would have already fired him

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I think the primary issue is that it was not an organic growth so feels artificial. Klopp for us is very much standing on the shoulders of giants. The club is where it is today because of Rafa, Houllier, Kenny, Fagan, Paisley and Shanks. It’s not simply a heritage. But their work they did provided foundations for future success. Organic growth.

City struck gold. It could easily have been Newcastle, Blackburn or even Nottingham forest. The owners had no real affiliation with City. They had the football equivalent to winning the lotto.

But just like winning the lotto money does not buy class/status. In a sense it’s amusing that they try and justify their sucess As being due to hard work. That they are no different to other clubs. It brings it all back to the peaky blinders above. In that show once they are successful they crave acceptance, after the charades don’t work it simply increases the frustration. :rofl: that’s city all over.

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That’s a good narrative. City, Chelsea, PSG are like genetically engineered/modified crops/livestock. It’s unnatural and disrupts the delicate and natural ecosystem.

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It’s an oppressive regime, no doubt about it. Backwards by western standards.

I am a little uneasy casting easy stones though, since for example in the UK we were chopping the bollocks off mathematical genius, Alan Turing, within living memory, for being gay.

Anyway, I actually agree with you wholeheartedly.

The wealth of a nation should be for the good of its citizens. The calculus for Abu Dhabi is either the wealth is not for the good of the whole, and is in fact concentrated at the top, at which point they are just like the west in terms of wealth distribution. Or maybe, as I cack handedly attempted to say, they do think that what they are doing in owning Man City is for the good of the country?

And that’s the question the media should have asked him, when he was bullsh*tting about Klopp spending on 2 players and winning the PL and CL. “Well, in that case you have outspend him and every other manager in the past 10 years, why don’t you have a CL yet to show for it or a league title every year Pep?”

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Yep, the media gives Pep an almost free pass to spout bollocks. You don’t even need to be a professional journalist to be able to ask a couple of challenging questions about the finances.

Prove we cheated?

OK Pep. Here is the outcome of this case. You avoided serious punishment on a technicality, after not cooperating with the investigation. But a Premier League investigation is ongoing, right?

According to records you spent this much money Pep. (Easy to demonstrate)
Where did the income come from?

Why have City earned £600M+ more commercial income than Liverpool, when you aren’t a global giant and can’t fill the stadium?

Why is 85% of sponsorship revenue from Abu Dhabi? Etc.

He gets almost a free pass, and people are scared to ask proper questions.

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I don’t think that the sport journalists are the Jamal Khashoggi or Marie Colvin type (investigational or war correspondents). They won’t put their lives on the line (nor expected to). Furthermore, if the sport journalist asks that type of questions, he/she will never be allowed in the “home” news conference again (or not letting the question being asked).

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If you take things in isolation, you never get the full picture. Indeed, if LFC spent 100m on one player after having sold four players for 20m and adding in money from their annual revenues, I wouldn’t call it immoral.

Still absolutely batshit crazy though, there is far too much money within this branch of the entertainment industry imo.

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Morality thread? Should be fun :slight_smile:

Lewi saying he wants to leave with a £100mil price tag?

Coincidence timing with Spurs refusing to answer any calls re: Kane?

No way someone pays more than £100m (at least that’s what Sky are reporting) for Lewandowski in this climate.

We’re talking about Manchester City here. Normal spending logic doesn’t apply to them.

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