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A Premier League legend is urging Manchester City players to throw their medals \u201cin the bin\u201d, while the world of English football sinks the boot into the Sky Blues after the extent of their financial cheating was laid bare.<\/p>\n
An independent commission found City guilty of using \u201csham\u201d deals with commercial partners<\/a> to inflate the club\u2019s revenues and reduce costs by more than \u00a3900 million (A$1.7 billion) between 2009 and 2018. <\/p>\n \ufeffGet all the latest football news, highlights and analysis delivered straight to your inbox with Fox Sports Sportmail. Sign up now!!!<\/a><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n The club were also found to have conjured up \u201csham\u201d image rights deals with star players and former manager Roberto Mancini to artificially inflate their earnings.<\/p>\n The deceptive moves allowed the Abu Dhabi-backed club to hide the true state of its finances to avoid breaching the Premier League and UEFA\u2019s rules on spending limits.<\/p>\n As a result, year-after-year City built a formidable squad who yielded eight Premier League titles, a Champions League, four FA Cups, seven League Cups and a Club World Cup in the 18 years since billionaire Sheik Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates\u2019 royal family purchased the club in 2008. <\/p>\n The Telegraph\u2019s<\/a> chief football writer Sam Wallace summed it up by writing that \u201cabout \u00a3920m of funny money was pumped into English football to fund one of the most successful dynasties in history\u201d.<\/p>\n Perhaps even better was his comparison to Leonardo Di Caprio\u2019s depiction of infamous American stock broker Jordan Belfort in the Hollywood blockbuster \u2018The Wolf of Wall Street\u2019 – citing one of the movie\u2019s most well-known lines: \u201cWas all this legal? Absolutely f***ing not.\u201d<\/p>\n The word \u201csham\u201d was used eight times in the findings.<\/p>\n City orchestrated commercial deals so that club sponsors only actually paid a portion of the fees.<\/p>\n The rest of the money was pumped in by Sheik Mansour\u2019s company – Abu Dhabi United Group Investment and Development.<\/p>\n It was a lot to outlay from a man who has only ever attended two City matches in person – a 3-0 win at home to Liverpool in August 2010 and the 2023 Champions League final 1-0 victory against Inter Milan in Istanbul, Turkiye.<\/p>\n Those who have been there in the stands for the entire ride are hurting.<\/p>\n Fans on the blue side of Manchester who have taken immense pride in their club, who always played little brother to their rivals over at Old Trafford, are outraged.<\/p>\n After seeing their club emerge from the third tier of the English football in the late 1990s to become a Premier League powerhouse, their spirits are broken.<\/p>\n They were duped.<\/p>\n Despite scrutiny over the club\u2019s financial practices for many years – dating back to a series of 2018 articles in German newspaper Der Spiegel based on emails, which also appeared on the Football Leaks website, obtained by convicted Portuguese hacker Rui Pinto – they were always told it was all above board.<\/p>\n Now, those who spent their hard-earned to train and bus across England, and fly across Europe, to witness history cannot help but feel like their memories of the treble of 2023, topped by that night in Istanbul, of triumphs at Wembley and trophy lifts at the Etihad have been destroyed.<\/p>\n \u201cI am utterly aghast at the sheer scale of the findings here. I think it is probably fair to say that, over the duration of the investigation, the period of the charges, I have been considering the fact that they may be guilty,\u201d host of the fan-made Blue Moon podcast David Mooney told Sky Sports News.<\/p>\n \u201cI never dreamed for a second that they were guilty to this extent and this scale.<\/p>\n \u201cMy overriding feeling right now is just anger. [It is] pending appeal and they say they have an irrefutable body of evidence for the appeal; if it is so irrefutable, then why is it the scale that it is?<\/p>\n \u201cAt this stage, they have lied to the fans. They have lied to the rest of football.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have acted with sheer contempt towards the football club I support. <\/p>\n \u201cAt this stage, I am just so incredibly angry that they felt that they could get away with this.\u201d<\/p>\n Much to Mooney and other football fans\u2019 disgust, it appears that City believe they can still get away with it.<\/p>\n The club\u2019s CEO Ferran Soriano released a video statement on Tuesday declaring that City will be vindicated on appeal, saying that guilty verdict was one big \u201cPremier League conspiracy theory\u201d.<\/p>\n A club statement also claimed that have \u201cirrefutable evidence\u201d to clear their name, but that has not been made public.<\/p>\n While several supporters have accepted their fate, there are other City figures that believe there is a lot more fighting to be done.<\/p>\n One of City\u2019s most famous fans, Liam Gallagher of Oasis, took to social media two days ago to profess his belief in his club\u2019s innocence, saying the only thing they were guilty of was making rivals Manchester United \u201clook like s***c****\u201d.<\/p>\n Soraino\u2019s approach appears to have borrowed a bit of the superstar frontman\u2019s fighting spirit, but it is also what City have done throughout this entire ordeal.<\/p>\n \u201cCity have, in the defence against the biggest legal case in the history of British sport, always reached for the extreme option,\u201d The Telegraph\u2019s chief football writer Sam Wallace wrote. <\/p>\n \u201cThey have acted as if they would rather bring the whole edifice down than just admit that perhaps, after all, they broke the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was one that took eight years to unpick, more than \u00a3100m of legal fees from the budget of rival clubs, 500 pages of argument from the Premier League, and witness statements comprising more than 700 pages,\u201d Wallace added.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bundle of documents submitted in totality to the hearing was so voluminous that the index alone ran to 750 pages. This was a case that City fought line by line, day by day, chargeable hour by hour \u2013 and continue to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n City\u2019s hierarchy are clinging tight to the belief that they can back themselves out of their corner once again. <\/p>\n They did earlier this decade.<\/p>\n UEFA found the club guilty of breaching its financial fair play rules in February 2020 – they were hit with a two-year ban from European competitions and a \u20ac30 million fine.<\/p>\n City won the case on appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), however, with a ruling being issued that UEFA\u2019s allegations were either \u201cnot established\u201d or time-barred under competition rules.<\/p>\n The two-year ban was overturned and the fine was reduced to \u20ac10 million as CAS acknowledged that City had failed to co-operate in the initial investigation.<\/p>\n That escape may have allowed City to go on the merry way in the Champions League, but it created fractures within the club that may evolve into an irreparable break with the latest news.<\/p>\n Former manager Pep Guardiola spoke with the club\u2019s board following the UEFA ruling and believed their side of the story.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I tell them: \u2018If you lie to me, I will leave and I will no longer be your friend.\u2019,\u201d Guardiola said.<\/p>\n If the legendary manager sticks to his word, it is unlikely he will be appearing in the chairman\u2019s box at the Etihad to watch successor Enzo Maresca\u2019s side anytime soon.<\/p>\n The findings certainly hurt Guardiola\u2019s legacy.<\/p>\n