What have Man City been doing since 2018? The charges only apply to the nine years leading up to then. Since 2018 has everything been hunky-dory? Cooperation? Open books? No issues at all?
Even if all that is true, and of course it isn’t, the financial cheating didn’t just affect the years in which it happened. It affects every year since.
It won’t do to claim that they are operating a sustainable organization today, if it is only happening on the back of all the illegal money they injected into the club to get it there.
Their punishment needs to hurt them for multiple years, as that has been the span of the cheating. Relegation. Then demotion to the bottom of the football league pile. Large fines to be paid to everyone who was cheated out of their legitimate earnings too, having come runner up to Man City across numerous competitions. And as a condition of entering competition moving forwards, their books need to be open to forensic accountants for scrutiny, since there’s no trust there, at all.
I expect to be disappointed, but the jeopardy for the league is that if they don’t punish Man City harshly enough, it could lead to a split as the majority of clubs who are legitimate won’t stand for it. Unfortunately Man City won’t be isolated on their own though, as several other clubs have aspirations to overspend.
I kinda feel the same way. If these cunts aren’t punished properly then fuck it we might as well just hand the game over to the Arabs and relocate the Premier League there and they can all own three or four clubs each.
Kick them so far out of the Football League that the owners will decide to walk away as they can’t fleece anyone for any money, calling in their loans and withdrawing all Abu Dabai linked sponsorship deals forcing the grubby little gobshites to go down the fan trust ownership route meaning they will never get the sort of cash injection to see them move beyond the Dog&Duck sunday pub league.
It needs to be harsh enough so that the fans of any team will start asking serious questions about the sort of people that own their clubs. I felt sorry for the Rangers fans at the time - at least the actual football fans amongst them. The knob-head hangers on can go to hell.
The argument being made by many pushing this solution is it has longer and harsher effects than a one time penalty that sees them relegated. The concern with the latter is like Juve or Rangers they are back and competitive in one season whereas a multi season penalty would be designed to make CL all but impossible for 4-5 years in a row and the knock on effects of that in terms of current players forcing their way out and who would be willing to sign for them are enormous
