🧵 THREAD: Manchester City, the charges, the evidence, & how justice was delayed. Manchester City weren’t charged because rivals complained or because they 'spent big'. They were charged because evidence shows a decade-long system designed to hide owner funding, inflate revenue & deceive & obstruct investigations. The Premier League’s case didn’t appear overnight. It began in late 2018, triggered by Football Leaks documents - internal emails, invoices, contracts - that contradicted what City had been telling UEFA & the Premier League for years. Those emails are the backbone of everything that followed. At the centre of the case is a simple allegation: Manchester City repeatedly disguised owner funding as commercial revenue. FFP rules require sponsorship income to be real, independent, and market value. What the emails suggest is that City’s biggest 'sponsors' weren’t paying what City claimed - Abu Dhabi was. Take Etihad as an example. Leaked emails show City executives discussing Etihad paying only a fraction of headline sponsorship deals, with the shortfall quietly topped up by Abu Dhabi government-linked entities. One email explicitly references ensuring funds 'come through the correct channels' so they are not detected as separate sources of funding. That is the definition of disguised equity. This wasn’t a one-off. Emails show Etihad deals where shirt sponsorship, stadium, training kit & campus naming rights were all inflated wildly out of line with the market at the time - later confirmed in the actual contracts, not just drafts. The numbers in the leaks weren’t hypothetical. They were real. UEFA auditors suspected this as early as 2013–14. They found £47m of 'intellectual property' sales boosting income, a £5m 'win bonus' paid for an FA Cup final City lost & sponsorships from Aabar and Etisalat above market value. City were fined & restricted - but crucially, UEFA never saw the full records. Why? Because City refused to provide them. This becomes a pattern. When UEFA charged City again in 2020, they imposed a two-year Champions League ban. City appealed to CAS & had it overturned. City fans shout 'INNOCENT', shared out of context screenshots. They're wrong. CAS did not rule that City were innocent. CAS ruled that UEFA could not meet the burden of proof - largely because City did not co-operate. City were fined €10m specifically for obstructing the investigation. Even City's own expert witness was denied access to key information that could have disproved disguised funding. 'No evidence' doesn’t mean nothing happened. It means the evidence was withheld. CAS explicitly stated that disguised equity funding could not be excluded - only that neither side could conclusively prove their case. That vagueness was entirely engineered. After CAS, new emails emerged suggesting Simon Pearce, a senior City executive & Sheikh Mansour adviser, had given misleading testimony under oath. City declined to comment. Again. While all this was happening, the Premier League had already been investigating City for years. City’s response? Delay. Delay. Delay. Obstruct. Litigate. Court filings later revealed City challenged the legality of the investigation itself, filed repeated procedural applications, refused to hand over documents, forced arbitration, then challenged arbitration & tried to keep the entire process secret. A High Court judge called it out in 2021. “It is surprising, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made.” That’s legal spiel for stonewalling. This obstruction accounts for 35 of the 115 charges alone & that’s before we get to the secret payments. City declared Roberto Mancini's salary as £1.45m per year. On the same day he signed with City, he also signed a “consultancy” deal with Al Jazira - a club owned by the same man who owns City - worth £1.75m per year. That deal was explicitly marked confidential. Emails show City executives arranging the payments. Same signatures. Same people. Same day. The allegation is obvious: City paid Mancini off the books. Leaked documents allege undeclared payments for Yaya Touré, including via third parties. These aren’t rumours. They’re contracts, emails, invoices. This is why there are 14 charges relating to manager and player remuneration. Then there’s image rights. City told UEFA they sold player image rights for a £24.5m lump sum to comply with FFP. Later, they quietly resumed earning millions from image rights again. The buyer? A company whose directors included City’s own senior legal officer. Independent journalists couldn’t even establish its genuine commercial purpose. All of this feeds into the core allegation across 54 charges: City failed to provide accurate financial information in good faith. Not once. Not twice. But repeatedly, over nearly a decade. Now add politics. UK government departments discussed City’s charges with the British embassy in Abu Dhabi. Those communications are sealed - because releasing them could 'damage relations with the UAE'. City insist they are not state-backed. Then why is the state involved? Yet still, the delays continue. A 12-week closed-door hearing. Half a million documents. Years of silence. City remain 'innocent' - not because the evidence disappeared, but because the verdict hasn’t landed. This is why the case matters. If City walk away with a fine, it tells every club to cheat cleverly, obstruct endlessly, spend on lawyers, not compliance.. & the rules collapse. This isn’t about jealousy. It isn’t about success. It’s about whether financial regulation in English football is real - or optional for the richest club in the league. The evidence exists. The emails exist. The delays are documented. Now only one question remains, do the rules apply to City or not?

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The mental gymnastics of City fans is astonishing.

You have to be a different level of stupid to think the most ethical journalist in the sport did not only verify the information from ATLEAST 2 independent sources but also give the PL and City the right of reply to which they could have EASILY denied it.

I hope footballers around the world recognise the courage Gavin Bazunu has shown by refusing to play against Israel. We always value messages of solidarity and raising the Palestinian flag but this goes further, turning solidarity into action despite the consequences.

People think Ornstein lied because of a statement from the CHAIRMAN lmaooooo

People like Nick Harris, Duncan Castles, Magic Hat & others for years have been abused (& worse) for speaking up - even I have had City fans track down my wife on FB & IG. The past 24 hours are a victory for the truth & maybe there's some integrity left in this sport after all.

Club football has been ruined by money, leaving international football as the purest form of the sport at the highest-level, or at least it should be. This deliberation by the Ireland players over whether to play Israel is the perfect example of why football is important and not just 22 millionaires kicking a bag of wind around for an hour and a half. Some things are bigger than sport. Sometimes footballers can be icons and inspirational in more than just the way they kick things in a certain direction at a certain speed. We all know a genocide has happened in Gaza. The UN has confirmed that for us. No state should be allowed to use sport as a propaganda tool and then call foul when anyone pulls them up on it. No state should be allowed to murder innocent children. Everyone should try to do what is right. Always. #StopTheGame

Apart from everything else, I feel like I need to point out that what they have been found guilty of isn’t just a football thing, it’s literally fraud, like people who get found guilty of this in a court of law go to prison

City should be stripped of titles & trophies, but nobody should be awarded them. Those clubs & their fans were denied those moments & that glory, nothing can make up for that now. They've left those black marks on history & they should sit in infamy for the rest of eternity.

OLIVER HOLT: Strip Man City of ALL eight of their Premier League titles and relegate them for their defrauding of Man United and Liverpool's history. English football is broken irretrievably and will never be the same again trib.al/1ywdgWV

With so much attention on #BoycottUnited lately, it would be good use that attention to highlight something that matters far beyond football. 1 in 4 people in England experience a mental-health problem each year. Mind is one of the UK’s major mental-health charities which has guidance on depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicidal feelings, loneliness, and more. This isn't an advert or sponsor. Never be afraid to ask for help. Don't suffer in silence. Monday–Friday, 9am–6pm Mind Infoline: 0300 123 3393 Mind Suportline: 03001021234 Email: info@mind.org.uk Website and more info: mind.org.uk/

People like @lukestanley03 spent years acting like the charges were rival propaganda, all while never once explaining any of it. Deflect, get personal, send insults, but couldn’t ever address the subject matter. Feel free to now. Take your time, we’ve waited long enough. City's fanbase has an entire personality based on out of context CAS screenshots, from a verdict they didn’t understand & now there’s nowhere to hide. Your club is guilty. They cheated, they lied, they did all they could to deflect & delay. How’s that working out today? Their client journalists & content creators built careers off the biggest cheating in football history, trading access for becoming lackeys. I’m sure they'll be along shortly to tell you it changes nothing & City are the best run club in the world, but the guilty verdict disagrees.

Fabrizio Romano has still not posted the 114 guilty verdict. He of coruse posted Rodri's quotes, amplifying City's defence & not aggregating the news. The selective silence & PR machine rolls on. David Ornstein broke the biggest story of the decade, while Romano won't even acknowledge that it has happened. The stark difference between them couldn't be any clearer than it is now. A coward & a lackey, only confirming suspicions about him & City held by many for years.

On February 6 2023 when City were charged, their official statement claimed they had a ‘comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence’. 3 years, 7 months & 20 days later - 1327 of them - that evidence never existed & was utter bullshit, just like we always thought. Guilty in 114 of the 115 breaches, 99.1% of them. Congrats to City on being found not guilty of.. 0.9%. Now let's wipe every memory of them, strips titles & trophies. History will remember them as cheats - if it remembers them at all. Fans can keep their memories. Every ‘success’, every signing, it all has a footnote the size of Abu Dhabi. That’s not banter, that’s the reality now. Client media treated them like a normal club with 115 charges hanging over them. Corruption wins until it doesn’t. As of yesterday it is official. Lance Armstrong won seven Tours. Nobody thinks of him in that light or otherwise, nobody talks about them as if they were achievements. That is City’s reality now, a disgrace, a stain on the sport & that’s all. A City shirt is now the equivalent of a livestrong wristband. Now we wait for the inevitable sanctions. A fine is immaterial to a state ownership to whom money is no object. Point deductions are a starting point only, but ultimately the punishment should take as long to recover from as they have benefited from the cheating.

For those thinking Man City will get a lenient punishment like Chelsea did, that simply won’t be the case. The PL convinced an IC Panel that Chelsea (a) did not gain any Sporting Advantage, (b) they were no longer owned/run by the perpetrators, and (c) they were very compliant (even self-reporting). Man City’s case is the opposite of those 3 factors. 1) They gained a monstrous sporting advantage. Hundreds upon hundreds of millions over PSR limits. 2) They are still owned / run by the people that did it. 3) They have gone to extreme lengths to avoid justice. They hid it all (only an email hack caught them - the rules could not). They refused to comply with the investigation. They committed perjury at CAS. I’ll do a fuller post later tonight but the reality is the punishments will be as serious as they come. My pinned post says it all.

When you’re asking foreign royals who don’t know you exist to increase your cost of living, it’s probably worth contemplating whether at some stage your football fandom might have caused your brain to fall out.

It is not that the Sir Alex vs Pep debate is now over, it is that it was foolish it was even being had at all. His entire career is surrounding by both kinds of doping. Pep tested positive for PED's (nandrolone) as a player, six times the legal limit. Dr Segura, who worked with him at the time, joined him at Barcelona in 2009. Luis Garcia del Moral - who was 1 of the 3 doctors banned for life following Lance Armstrong's life ban - was a medical advisor to Barcelona. Del Moral is one of three doctors (Segura & Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes are the others) with links to doping who have ties to Barcelona. Manchester City were also fined THREE TIMES within the first 6 months of Pep's appointment for violations of anti-doping regulations. And I haven't even mentioned the Negreira corruption case with Barcelona, involving payments to a former refereeing chief. When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

The analysis below shows just how severely Man City breached PSR. 2015/16 - £129m above the limit 2016/17 - £122m above 2017/18 - £141m above And this analysis excludes Project Longbow or off-book payments. If those were added, it would be a further £150m breach.