Manchester City Financial Controversy Analysis

Jules, wh- what's more important and what's more damning, the fact that they said that, you know, the findings and the rules were broken, or the fact that Manchester City did this intentionally to break rules repeatedly, repeatedly for a decade?

Probably a bit of both. Somebody was telling me today that this is probably bigger than football even, you know? Because they, also the account that they put to HMRC, which is the, uh, you know, the, the company here in the UK where you

send your accounts, wherever your company is, by the way, and they check your accounts that everything is in order and all that kind of stuff. City have done that with the same false account that they gave the Premier League and they provided. So all these inflated accounts

that they've had, all that money that didn't come from sponsors but come from their own owners, that also has gone to HMRC. So now in the UK they can even say, like, "Okay, we, you know, we're gonna..." The, in the financial side of things, they might even look at that. So City could be in,

even in trouble outside of football, outside of the Premier League, outside of this, o- of our own bubble here of talking about football. So there's, there's that. There's obviously how much you have, if they're in the end proven

guilty finally and after all the appeals and everything you want, you've lied to people, you've lied to your own supporters, you've lied to Pep Guardiola, you've lied to, to the players. You know, Roberto Mancini yesterday I thought, or the

day before, was very clear in his press conference about the double contract that he had at City, saying, "This is not our problem, it's their problem." Even himself admitting that the real, the double contract existed

when City have told us that that was never the case. So i- if, if that is proven to be a, a massive, massive lie, then I, again, I'm not sure how they come back from that as a club. Yeah. Jules, o- on the City perspective of things,

they've given a statement and they're still protesting their innocence, saying not only are they innocent, they also have a body of evidence to just compound and just reflect their sense of innocence. Given the fact that we have Roberto Mancini coming out in his own press

conference saying the things he's saying, and the mounting evidence against Manchester City keeps piling up, how is this changing how we perceive a club that were the standard-bearers for a decade, the last decade plus in English

football? I think it changes everything, really. And okay, some people might have had doubts before. Some people have, might have said it a few years ago, "Look, those contracts

don't look right," or f- absolutely, for sure. But I think it changes everything because City used all those tricks to become the dominant figure that we've seen in the Guardiola era. So Guardiola arrived in 2016. This period is '09 to '18, but

this was all that extra money that they got, all that inflated funding was used to create the machine, the winning machine that we saw City being under Guardiola. The four Premier League titles in a row, the six in 10 years, the Treble, the Champions League win, all of that would not have ha- had happened

if they hadn't done that in that previous decade, really. It's as simple as that. So of course it, it changes everything. And now they have to keep fighting. They have to keep showing the same belief in the sense that they are innocent. Of course, they're not gonna change that now.

But again, like you said, all the, the, the proof that we have already seems pretty, pretty against them. Jules, last question from me. Y- you've covered European football for quite some time. In a world where we see nation states and people involved with nation states backing football clubs,

you know one in PSG, in Paris Saint-Germain. Just where could this be in terms of holding some of those clubs accountable, and could this be a new potential Pandora's box, or maybe could this be kind of a road, a template of how to hold football

accountable and have justice in football? I think we are on the right path towards more transparency, certainly, but more, but, but more fairness really in football. I think that's the right word, because PSG have had to change massively the way they were running their club to go to, to

balance their books, to spend less money, to sell better, better their players, to be able to be more healthy financially and not just rely on some of the sponsorship contract that they've had with, with, with companies from, from, from Qatar, for example.

You know, for City, this is damning, as we said, but certainly we saw Chelsea as well also with the takeover from the Americans being very much, "Okay, we saw some things in the accounts." They reported themself to UEFA and things like that, and to the Premier League too.

So I, I really believe that this cannot happen again. And look what Newcastle could have done, I guess, with the Saudis, and in the end could not do because of PSR and because of the financial fair play pretty much everywhere, and be very much, have, have their hands tied, which was

not City's case. Certainly not in '08, '09 when this whole thing started, this whole sham, which is the word that the Premier League used, which a very strong word, by the way. I mean, we haven't used the word sham so far, but this is a

strong, strong word for what City have been doing according to the Premier League. So I don't think those shams agreement, sham contract could happen anymore now. There's too much control. There's too many things. The focus is too much on the finances of all those clubs.

Uh, even if somebody was trying to do another PSG or another City or another Chelsea or those kind of things, I don't think this would be possible really. So I guess this is a good thing. I know it's bad for City and for their

supporters, but again, they might pay for what they've done wrong in the past. But I think for football it's probably a good thing