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

I expect he will disappear/die in mysterious circumstances long before we get to that point. Remember the calibre of the individuals and group behind cheaty.

too obvious.

my guess is he will be employed on a very lucrative contract and realise that the information he provided was false and planted.

crisis averted…it was all a big mix up…

oh, we did laugh…

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https://x.com/obrien_jonathan/status/1704257869753774164?s=20

Classs acts, aren’t they just.

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I like how they say “discuss”

Season 15 Money GIF by The Simpsons

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As I have been saying since the CAS debacle, the footballing bodies may get a small punishment to stick, but the really interesting time will be when HMRC decide to take a look at City’s books as they are the ones that have some serious bite.

They can even go to the courts to have a winding up order if they think the club has fucked around withholding taxes.

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OR

Abu Dhabi will be making it clear to the UK Government, “We are investing X, Y, Z in the UK. If our flagship project at Man City is hindered, we will pull the plug on these other things…”

That’s how I read the ‘discussion.’

The fact that the government is involved is appalling. It indicates to me that the Prem has City bang to rights, but the sports washers have raised the stakes beyond the confines of sport.

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Possibly but if and when hmrc get involved they want to make sure they are getting their slice of the pie and wont care about other potential deals

Doesn’t that depend on what sort of independence they are able to operate under? I know theoretically they are supposed to independent, but those understandings are always open to manipulation under special circumstances.

There was a really good piece on City from a couple of years ago that reframed the idea of sportswashing. I think it was maybe even one of the local Manchester newspapers. Their angle was that for state actors like this, it’s not just about getting good press, but it being the way to open the door to relationships that make it very difficult to untangle them from. Kind of analogous to the perspective Putin had with how much leeway his supply of gas gave him over his conduct. The piece focused on the amount of local projects the Abu Dhabi United Group had picked up the funding for, which local authorities were eager to accept for the short term benefit, but in the longer term effectively ceded control of lots of the actual city to them. Their money is now in so many places that people are going to feel very uneasy at taking them on for fear of what would happen to the greater economy if the sanctions made them pull back.

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Who is that?

Wouldn’t trust Rishi as far as you could throw him.

And he is tiny so I assume that’s quite far.

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Turns out if was a collection of pieces, not a single one. But these are always well worth reminding ourselves of

I guess no one ever thinks their conspiracy theory requires wearing a tin foil hat, but I really dont think you need to be that conspiratorially minded to be concerned that the impact of what is covered in these pieces would result in powerful people in the government stepping on anything the tax man will try to bring against them

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And you don’t think the tax man will bite back investigating the dirty politicians?

They would absolutely fucking love to take down the Westminister elite and crow about how dirty politicians are

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Rodri see’s red. Merson reckons its a tad harsh. VAR check ongoing. Push in the neck!

He was well out of order. The final hand around the throat was maybe the 4th in a quick escalation of frustrated responses from him. He was pissed at at being (fairly) knocked to the floor by MGW’s (fair) first challenge then massively over reacted to the next one with a response that was a yellow by itself. The incident that ultimately made MGW go down was then the second separate time he put his hands around his throat. It was all handbags, but WTF are you doing putting two hands around an opposition player’s throat for? Twice.

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I think we’ll need to target him with the same modus operandi that MGW employed.

Just saw the highlights and another case of a “headbutt”, the sort of thing where commentators credulously say “you just cannot do that” when justifying the inevitable red card that is only not given that treatment because Awoniyi didnt throw himself to the ground. It is absolutely pathetic that the treatment of these incidents is 100% dictated by whether the confronted player throws himself to the ground pretending that he’s been headbutted.

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Man City looked amped up on something to me.

Rodri overreacted, definite red. 3 games violent conduct, and hopefully another one added for getting in the refs face. I doubt the last part will happen.

Then Ederson in Awoniyi’s face. If he went down, instead of going forehead to forehead, it’s a head butt, and Taylor has a decision to make, instead of being able to give them both a yellow for squaring up.

Anyway, credit to Forest for trying to have a go. They didn’t roll over to let Man City tickle their tummies, which was good to see.

Mind you, Man City had the game won in the first 15 minutes then they mostly strolled around, controlling it even with ten men. Most of the season will be like that for them, which is why it is so important for us to keep racking up points and staying close to them.

We are only at the start of the new cycle, Klopp 2.0, so Man City have years on us in terms of having a well oiled (intentional) machine.

Even so, I think we can put the shits up them when we face them.

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