But the timing of the news that dropped via David Ornstein last Friday -the subsequent Premier League statement is absolutely damning, by the way; leaving no room whatsoever for doubt - calls for football writers everywhere to pick up their pens or grab their keyboards. Because this is seismic stuff!
And it's therefore time for an Extraordinary Blog Post from yours truly. I am aiming to put my own personal slant/views together on this - so whilst you'll probably be reading dozens of interpretations and conclusions, these thoughts are all mine (with this legal disclaimer, just in case: I am interpreting and basing my analysis on numerous media sources; all of which are freely available to anybody). I'm not expecting to be sued regarding any allegations I may make here, but you never know...
And this piece of work is inevitably going to be a long one. Strap yourself in...
And with thanks to whistleblower Rui Pinto (wherever you are).
First, a quick reminder/history lesson to explain how we got here:
As long ago as 2003, when Premier League clubs' finances were essentially unregulated, ex-Soviet oligarch Roman Abramovich waltzed into Chelsea Football Club and began to spend unprecedented amounts of his (allegedly) ill-gotten gains; money earned by buying Russian commodity assets at heavily discounted rates at the time that they were de-nationalised, and then later selling them back to the State at vastly inflated prices. Not bad for a guy who'd started his entrepreneurial career making and selling children's toys out of his Moscow apartment!
As Jack Walker had proved on a short-term basis with Blackburn Rovers in the 90s - attracting the likes of Alan Shearer to the club - chucking vast amounts of cash always looked likely to prove successful, and before long Chelsea had bounced up from a decent mid-table side to a become a major force, as over the years Abramovich 'laundered' some £3bn through the club and put together some formidable sides - managed initially by our friend Jose Mourinho and later by other household managerial names - and Avram Grant! It mattered little that the club appeared to be run like the Wild West; the money brought great players to Chelsea, who brought inevitable success. Abramovich's vast wealth - dwarfed later on by Abu Dhabi, of course - meant the club could afford to run at enormous losses - and damn the consequences; Abramovich - at least initially - didn't care!
But was this fair? Well, there was nothing to stop Abramovich doing this at the time - until the Premier League and UEFA concluded that it wanted/needed to see its member clubs run like actual businesses and not mere playthings of the super-rich. Lessons had been learned, I guess, from what had happened to clubs like Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday, Portsmouth and Blackburn themselves as they over-reached financial norms over the years; and it is this - as much as trying to keep a level playing field - that led to regulations being put in place.
Going back to Chelsea now. From an Arsenal perspective, Arsene Wenger first coined the phrase 'financial doping' as he watched what was happening in West London. And David Dein is quoted as saying: 'Roman Abramovich has parked his Russian tank in our front garden and is firing £50 notes at us'. And it was in the summer of 2006 - as Arsenal were preparing to move from Highbury to their new stadium at Ashburton Grove, that the landscape flipped for the club.
It was clear that Arsenal were going to have to go through a period of relative austerity at the very time when they needed to compete with the inflated financial playing field - and it was soon clear that they could not. And then Chelsea signed Ashley Cole.
Yes; the loss of Cole was as much to do with the Arsenal board's mis-management of the situation as it was to do with the monetary attraction of Chelsea, but the guy went from a club hero, legend and Invincible to a pariah in a single day. But can we really - with the benefit of hindsight - blame him?
Arsenal were in massive debt at this point, with the move costing the best part of £400m and the subsequent repayments at eye-watering levels. At one point interest payments on the loans amounted to over £20m a year, whilst annual turnover was only around £90m, so something had to give for Arsenal - who unlike Chelsea were trying to live within their means.
The only way to balance the books was to sell its assets; its best players. It was the perfect storm, as the club were left in Chelsea's wake and Wenger was forced to sell the likes of Thierry Henry, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie and - tellingly - Samir Nasri to Manchester City over the subsequent years. The latter being just one of several players to move to City as they looked to establish themselves from 2009 onwards. But I'll come back to that shortly.
And I'll say this - and hope that you'll agree with me - the fact that Wenger managed to keep Arsenal in and around the Top 4 over so many years was nothing less than a miracle. Sure, after 22 years his time as a coach/tactician was probably up, but for people to knock his achievements even in the latter years of his time at the club is - with the benefit of the knowledge we have now about the need to sell players in order to keep the club afloat - simply not on.
Wenger and the board looked to ensure that the club spent within their means - whilst Chelsea went down a completely different route; at the same time changing the financial environment in which every other club had to operate.
Poor Arsene has been the biggest managerial victim of financial doping (or calling a spade a spade; cheating) in football history - firstly Marseille against his Monaco, and latterly Chelsea and then Manchester City against Arsenal. What he did manage to achieve needs to now be viewed in an entirely different light!
In 2008 the world went through a massive financial crisis, you will recall. It started with the collapse of Lehman Bros., and the macroeconomic walls came tumbling down. This made things even more difficult for Arsenal, of course, but it made little difference to the multi-billionaire Abramovich; and it was in that summer that Manchester City were taken over by the Sheikh Mansour and Abu Dhabi. The first thing they did? - sign Brazilian forward Robinho for an at the time British record transfer fee of £38.5m; from under the noses of... yes, you've guessed it - Chelsea! And so the die was set.
Chelsea had opened the door. Abu Dhabi marched straight through it! What Abramovich had done, they turned into an industrial model. Their emergence as a major force was swift and devastating; changing the landscape again like an earthquake. There was a problem with this, however; because by 2011 there were rules in place. Rules to which they tuned a complete blind eye.
It matters not that they may have disagreed with the regulations that were in place; they were duty bound to stick by them. It’s like shoplifting or speeding - the rules are there for a reason and just because you don’t believe that they are correct, and that you can simply help yourself to goods without paying, or drive up the M1 at 100mph+, doesn’t mean that you can; especially when everyone else is going to the tills and sticking to the 70mph limit.
It was UEFA that set up the first set of FPP rules. Its basic purpose was straightforward - clubs could no longer simply spend unlimited amounts of money supplied by their owners and compete against other clubs that were themselves expected to balance their own books through football-generated revenue. As much to protect the clubs themselves as anything else.
Clubs like Chelsea, Manchester City and PSG have taken these regulations to - and sometimes well beyond - their limits, however. On the other hand other clubs - the most notable being Newcastle United - have been frustrated in their attempts to emulate Manchester City because of the regulations. Because they have stuck to them!
The new regulations created an obvious problem for City's ambitious and impatient owners. So they looked to find ways of circumventing them. And this is at the heart of the allegations/charges against the club - and for the record I'll reproduce the Premier League’s initial summary, which is entirely self-explanatory:
The independent Commission found that between Seasons 2009/10 and 2017/18:
- Manchester City arranged 'sham' contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on 'sham' agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club's revenues and reduce its costs
- The club filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators
- Manchester City was significantly in breach of both the Premier League's and UEFA's spending limits
- During the Premier League's investigation, Manchester City committed multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and utmost good faith towards the League (three of the four alleged breaches were upheld)
From this point, I'll have to start going into specifics. And I'll be looking at three major areas of rule-breaking.
1. Salary leverage
2. Artificially inflated sponsorship deals
3. Denial and non-cooperation
The cheating started almost immediately, by all accounts. I'm not going to go into massive detail here, because you've read and seen so much about it over the past few days, but essentially:
Salary Leverage
The Commission found that the owners were officially paying employees one amount from club funds, but then doubling (in many cases) their salaries with payments from elsewhere. In the case of manager Roberto Mancini, who guided the team to its first title in 2012, the Italian had a second source of income from an Abu Dhabi-based football club (owned by Sheikh Mansour). £1.5m from City, and then a further £1.75m from this other source... for - it is being alleged - 4 days work a year! That second source of income being paid to Mancini via an offshore company.
Did that £1.75m change the course of a season? Well, without it perhaps Mancini would never have gone to Manchester City in the first place. Would a lesser name in charge have been able to attract the likes of Yaya Toure, Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Vincent Kompany to the club? And this then goes to the question of whether the financial information supplied to football's governing bodies accurately represented the true cost of operating the club.
Rumour has it that Yaya Toure himself - and/or his representatives - was also the beneficiary of 'double payments'. And one would imagine that he would not have been the only player to gain in such a way. No wonder the club was able to attract the best players around!
14 of the charges covering the period concern the failure to provide accurate information about player and manager payments.
Of course, success - and the nefarious behaviour alleged/now proven - inevitably breeds success. It appears clear that the club cheated its way around the rules in order to win its first title, and that first title was the foundation from which the dynasty grew. And it is only reasonable to assume that this way of circumventing the FPP rules would have continued throughout the period in question - and probably beyond!
And I haven't even tackled the question of Tax Evasion here!
Sponsorship Dealings
The Commission found that the following methodology had been put in place - and applied to every one of the years under investigation:
- a sponsor appeared to agree a large sponsorship deal with the club. The figure was important, because genuine commercial revenue was an integral part of the club's financial position
- the sponsor in fact only paid around 12.5% of the advertised figure; the rest was paid by a separate vehicle owned by Abu Dhabi United Group - a Private Equity fund - owned by Sheikh Mansour
In other words, owner funding explicitly not permitted by the Premier League's rules was being fed in to the club by the 'back door', but was declared as independent commercial sponsorship revenue. The Commission found that this distinction enabled City to report substantially stronger revenues and lower losses than it actually had.
The rules were designed to prevent clubs from gaining an unfair commercial advantage from essentially unlimited owner funding, and using that money to support expenditure at levels that enabled the club to show commercial stability when that was not the actual case (the rules on associated party transactions have changed since the period in question - forcing clubs to show that they are receiving FMV (fair market value) in their sponsorship deals - but that is another matter entirely). But this arrangement - which enabled City to benefit from an extra injection of over £800m over the 9-year period - exploited a vulnerability in the accounting/reporting side of the financial rules.
City exploited these 'sham' contracts/arrangements, ruthlessly enabling them to inflate reported revenue and reduce reported losses at the same time. Making it appear that they were satisfying the financial limits when they were, in fact, way off kilter. They then, of course, successfully hid these arrangements from their own auditors, and from the authorities.
Before I get on to the matter of denial and non-co-operations, here are a few rumours/conspiracy theories about other behaviour that I have stumbled upon. In my current mood, I believe them all:
1. It is alleged that Queens Park Rangers players were bribed to 'throw' the final game of the 2011/12 season. You know the one:... AGUEROOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
2. It is alleged that whilst Erling Haaland's release clause was £51m approx., City paid as much as 5 times that figure to Dortmund in order to ensure that the move went through, and that - as per the Yaya Toure rumours - Haaland's already reportedly ludicrous salary of in excess of £400k per week is in fact being understated by around 50%
3. And then there is the whole Pep 'problem'. Was Guardiola - a man who is without doubt one of the greatest tactical geniuses of his or any football period - the perfect manager for this project for other reasons?
The man himself was found guilty twice of doping offences involving the banned steroid nandralone.
His personally-assembled medical team at Barcelona has been convicted of blood spinning/doping - evidence permitted in court regarding offences in the field of professional cycling was not permitted in relation to football by a judge; who actually order dozens of blood samples belonging to footballers to be destroyed! To protect the integrity of Barcelona (and Real Madrid?). Perhaps.
There have also been logistical infractions committed by Pep-managed Barcelona and Manchester City over the years; drug testers sent to incorrect addresses, or players due to be tested given last-minute days off.
Conspiracy theories, eh?...
4. Refereeing controversies. Too numerous to mention, but for me the two most egregious were the failure of the officials to give a penalty to Liverpool for a chest-high assault by Jeremy Doku on Alexis MacAllister at a crucial moment in one particular title race, and the failure of the referee to send off Mateo Kovakic for two horrendous tackles from behind in Arsenal players at Emirates Stadium. The referee in both cases, by the way… Michael Oliver
5. FIFA refusing to get involved in the cases of City and also PSG; both clubs who had been flying far too close to the sun for peoples’ liking. You won’t be surprised to hear that the person who had the biggest role in this dereliction of duty to world football was Gianni Infantino - a man whose presence at the top of world football makes one long for the halcyon days of Sepp Blatter
The 2012 title changed everything for City. The foundations that it was building - using illegal materials - are what are to this day the foundations of their success on the playing field. By this time - in the space of 4 years - Sheikh Mansour had 'illegally' injected almost £1bn of his own money into the club; which had in turn spent over £700m on transfer fees. It's not rocket-science, is it, and I'm sure that I don't need to spell it out. But this, in a nutshell, is 'financial doping'. City weren’t so much ‘cooking the books’ as grilling them over a white hot open flame!
You can't blame the players who achieved all that City have achieved. They still had to do the business on the field. But it doesn't half help when the club had illegally put together the biggest and deepest squads that ever existed. How could they - coached by Guardiola - have possibly failed to be successful? Although it is still disingenuous of the likes of Rodri to put forward the theory that the players still had to do the job. After all, nowhere was anybody better equipped to do so.
And all of this puts the achievements of Jurgen Klopp and now Mikel Arteta into a completely different light. Remember, Klopp walked away prematurely from his job at Liverpool citing ‘exhaustion’. Thanks goodness that Arteta delivered a title before this all blew up! And as for ‘second again - ole ole’ - you can shove that where the sun don’t shine!
Denial and Non-Cooperation
This is perhaps the worst part of it all. Manchester City have essentially been caught with their entire bodies - not just their hands - inside a massive cookie jar, yet deny that they were ever in that jar - and indeed that the jar exists at all! But it is this cookie jar - filled with the very best Fortnum & Mason specialities - that has meant that other clubs who had been perfectly content with Rich Tea and Hob Nobs were then forced to splash out on luxury brands that they could barely afford.
The knock-on effect for the financial landscape of football finances at the highest level has seen transfer fees and salaries go through the roof. From 2008 - Robinho; £38.5m, to 2021 and £100m for Jack Grealish. And now in 2026 - Elliot Anderson (!) - £116m, and Morgan Rogers £117m. Salaries in the hundreds of thousands a week. Clubs with transfer budgets that would service the debt of a small country. It's madness! It was started by Chelsea, and City kicked on. And on. And on. Whilst systematically playing on a field tilted vastly in their favour.
In doing this they have affected the careers of dozens of clubs, and hundreds of footballers. Think of those clubs who have lost to them in Cup Finals. Who finished fifth in the Premier League and therefore failed to qualify for the Champions League. Who were relegated in those years, even?
Think of the players who have been denied winners medals, and who have lost out on both the money and the glory that would have resulted. Of those players who ended up playing in lower leagues through no fault of their own. And of the managers whose careers have bombed because they ended up runners-up to Manchester City, were not afforded the investment in their clubs that they perhaps deserved, and who lost their legacies and subsequently their jobs. Brendan Rodgers. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. I almost have sympathy for Jose Mourinho here. And specifically from an Arsenal point of view - Arsene Wenger.
Look how Wenger suffered personally from all this. Scouting raw talent like Clichy, Adebayor and Nasri from Ligue Un, only to see them leave to jump on the City juggernaut. Forced to work on a completely tilted playing field for year after year, whilst firstly Chelsea and then City - for years - walked roughshod over the rules. Wenger called this out continuously, and was ridiculed. I hope that all those who mocked him are thinking about how they behaved.
We can expect City to drag this out for as long as they can. How much 'face' can a group of people/organisation possibly lose before finally packing up their bags. A ‘scorched earth’ policy like that one makes matters even worse!
To hear City’s CEO Ferran Soriano defiantly promise to fight on in the face of all the evidence, and to read that Etihad Airways are threatening to sue the Premier League for defamation, are further examples of this ‘scorched earth’ policy. It’s over. Please; just go away.
Now, one thing I won’t knock is the amount of good work that Abi Dhabi have done for Manchester. As supported by our Manchester-based Prime Minister, by the way.
Of the good they have done for the city there can be no doubt. But - and this is crucial - this is precisely what ‘sports washing’ is supposed to achieve for whoever indulges in it. And then there is this...
As for fan reaction? Well, from anybody who isn’t a City fan it has been ‘at last’. And many City fans of my acquaintance have held up their hands and are prepared to take their punishment. Those that are still in denial are going to have to get there eventually.
It’s true to say that nobody can take away their memories of past victories - just like some of my Chelsea-supporting friends, who don’t care how the club went about things. But it’s good to know that from now on these people are going to taste the ashes of Pyrrhic victory in their mouths whenever the subject is broached - which it will be!
As for punishment; well, for me nothing should be ruled out. In a way, I feel sorry for the supporters who are going to have to live with this for their rest of their football-supporting lives. Because they’ve been wronged as badly as the rest of us.
However, in the light of the overwhelming evidence and verdict, in the face of the stonewalling and denials that still continue, and in light of the fact that the Premier League haven’t even started on the period between 2018 and the present day (do you honestly think that they suddenly started sticking to the rules in 2019?!?), nothing - but nothing - should be off the table for the club.
- Points deductions - certainly
- Enforced relegation? The only question is where to?
- Expulsion? Hmmm...
- Fines? Surely to run into the hundreds of millions of pounds?
- Transfer bans? For sure - it’s just a question of how many years
- Disqualification of the club officers implicated - definitely. Plus a ban on Sheikh Mansour and his cronies from a role in the ownership of any club in the world
All of the above are a good place to start. And it must be done this season; otherwise, the Premier League is rendered meaningless. Meanwhile, Manchester City's first game after the Interlull is at Anfield - now that's going to be fun!!!
And from an Arsenal point of view… it is now time for our club to seize the opportunity to create a dynasty of its own. We will never be better placed to do so. Having done things properly.
Come on. Mikel. And Come On You Gunners!
North London Forever.
