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Joined October 2010
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This
Five games, five wins, top of the league. Manchester City, a fortnight after an independent commission found they systematically broke the Premier League's financial rules for nine straight seasons.
So what exactly are we all watching?
Not asking for the season to be scrapped. That's daft, and it punishes nineteen clubs who've done nowt wrong. But I'd like somebody at the Premier League to explain why the table at the top of every sports page is one they already know is wrong.
Because here's where we actually are. The commission has ruled. City lodged their appeal on October 1st. No sanction has been announced. Nobody knows when it will be. Sky are reporting that Premier League clubs themselves don't expect City to even BE in this league next season if the appeal fails.
And in the meantime, the league just carries on. Points are awarded. Positions are published. Clubs are planning January windows around a table that might be fiction.
Think about who that actually hurts. Not City, they're fine, they're top. It's the club that goes down in May by two points and later finds out the table was never real. It's the club that sacks a manager in February over a league position that gets rewritten. It's the staff at a relegated club losing their jobs over a season nobody can stand behind. Real money, real people, decided by a table the league itself can't vouch for.
And the bit that genuinely sticks in the throat. Everton got docked ten points, mid season, reduced to six. Forest got four. Both for single PSR breaches. Both punished DURING the season it mattered, so the table stayed honest.
Eighty charges over nine seasons, plus thirty five for refusing to cooperate with the investigation into it, and somehow that one has to wait.
Carragher's right. Do it this season. Whatever it is, apply it now, to this table, the way it was applied to Everton and Forest. Because every week this drags on, the Premier League is asking us to treat a standings table as real while quietly knowing it might not be.
Due process matters and the appeal has to be heard, I'm not arguing with that. But there's a difference between due process and letting a club sit top of a competition for an entire season while the punishment for breaking that competition's rules sits in a drawer.
The league's credibility isn't damaged by what City did ten years ago. It's damaged by what the league is choosing to do about it now.
Nine seasons. Then three years of charges. Then a verdict. And still, somehow, nothing.
Who's season is this, exactly? 🖤🖤
#PremierLeague #MCFC
Sanjay Patel retweeted
What I didn’t get to say to @SuellaBraverman on Question Time 🏴 #bbcqt
This will be fun 🫣
We’ve a report coming out soon on the civil and criminal tax implications of the Manchester City shenanigans. To catch it first you can subscribe to our free newsletter taxpolicy.org.uk/subscribe
Sanjay Patel retweeted
People as powerful as the City owners do not follow conventional logic. They will believe their own imaginary constructs until the end thinking they can bend the world to their own view.
They will never admit guilt. They will prefer to believe that everyone else is guilty of wronging them.
It will be messy and drawn out but justice will be served.
And I can’t fucking wait.
Send them to Macclesfield!
Before you assume that Man City will drag this out with appeals, know they might not even want to. Unless they have a silver bullet, I think it hurts them.
Whereas they could convince top players to join them whilst the narrative existed that they would get away with it, I doubt they can do so now. And I don’t think genuine commercial partners will be renewing or engaging any time soon.
They’ll be in purgatory until sanctions arrive and why drag that out unless they earnestly believe they have a silver bullet (which they don’t - they have known this was coming for a long time).
I believe the club has been positioning itself for a distressed sale for a while, putting it in a position to bounce back as fast as it can post relegation and sale.
10-year commercial deals.
New, costly, revenue-generating infrastructure in and around the club.
Shedding of older players on expensive wages and the addition of young players on long contracts.
All of this makes the club more resilient to relegation and easier to sell to an ambitious new buyer.
If I’m right, they will want to do this soon.
Sanjay Patel retweeted
Count Binface vs The Establishment
Official Satirical Music Video
#CountBinface #ReformUK #NigelFarage #clacton
Sanjay Patel retweeted
I will accept Nigel Farage’s request to be appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
It is a farce and a desperate distraction, and the people of Clacton deserve better.
But if he wants to spend the summer arguing with a bin, I won't stop him.
Gabriel Agbonlahor just reinforces the wild trope that all footballers are as thick as mince. He’s just too challenged and doesn’t realise that he’s on radio as the challenged sidekick rather than the erudite elite sportsman. Gabs, we’re laughing at you, not with you., #Arsenal
Sanjay Patel retweeted
22 long years for the Arsenal.
But finally, we’re back where we belong.
Champions!
Sanjay Patel retweeted
With respect to my colleagues in the football writing industry, I am stunned that Bruno Fernandes has been named FWA Footballer of the Year instead of Declan Rice. Rice has literally won more matches this season (35) than Fernandes has even played (34).
telegraph.co.uk/football/202…
