I've yet to meet a man city fan that isn't living in cloud cuckoo land, and I'm sure I never will. Every single one is completely delusional, they've fully convinced themsleves that this is all part of some global conspiracy by the football elite to keep the plucky underdog of man city down. Absolute bonkers stuff.
They really don't get it. The only way man city can be where they are right now is by playing outside the rules. How exactly are they explaining a club with fuck all fans worldwide pulling in mega bucks deals? Mega deals from sponsors based in Abu Dhabi. Every man and his dog knows what's going on.
When you have a manager who will do whatever it takes to be successful as a player and as manager, combined with owners who will do whatever it takes to be successful, when you study the history of these people, it doesn't take much to believe they'd happily do whatever it takes to achieve their goals.
What is it about doping that makes man city fans get so enraged? From a manager's history of doping, to breaking anti-doping rules multiple times, to financial doping. It all leads to every trophy won by them as having a giant asterisk beside it. This isn't the opinion of just Liverpool fans, it's everyone who lives outside of the bubble that man city currently live in. Nobody is deliberately setting out to get you, you've completely fucked yourselves all on your own.
Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano said City needed to fight FFP "in a way that is not visible or we will be pointed out as the global enemies of football", according to Der Spiegel
The documents provided by Football Leaks made it clear just how brazen Manchester City was willing to be. Beginning in 2012, the team devised a special construct to systematically circumvent FFP rules, with team executives outsourcing costs to other companies, effectively hiding them from UEFA auditors. If they spent more during a season than intended, they had their sponsors from Abu Dhabi increase the fees they paid to the team and backdated the money transfers to the beginning of the season.
UEFA investigators didn’t believe the club’s assertions that certain sponsors from Abu Dhabi had no connection to the sheikh. They suspected that those companies were also utilised as surreptitious investment vehicles to inflate the club’s revenues.
German news magazine Der Spiegel says City and PSG overvalued sponsorship deals to help meet Uefa's Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. And it says that in 2014 the clubs negotiated with Fifa president Gianni Infantino, who was then general secretary of European football's governing body Uefa, to agree reduced punishments.
In its latest claims, Der Spiegel says Manchester City used "creative solutions" to avoid costs, calling their endeavour 'Project Longbow'.
That included selling players' image rights to an external company, therefore writing off that cost from their accounts.
The external company paid City "almost 30m euros" (£26m) and were then reimbursed approximately £11m a year in secret by owner Sheikh Mansour's holding company, Abu Dhabi United Group.
Uefa found City had breached FFP rules in 2014 and the two parties reached a settlement, with City paying a £49m fine - £32m of which was suspended - while their Champions League squad was reduced for 2014-15.
Der Spiegel calls the settlements "weak" and claims Uefa "wasn't even entirely aware of the degree to which it had been deceived".
It says that Uefa was unaware of the arrangement with the external company and it was only raised when auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers took a closer look on behalf of the European football governing body.
"This was a very good deal for MCFC," a PwC analyst, said, according to Der Spiegel. But the magazine said the analyst "was having trouble" figuring out "how the [external company] expected to make a return".
Documents also suggested that Abu Dhabi United Group had invested more than £1.1bn in 2012, four years after Sheikh Mansour took over the club.
The timeline is all there, it has fuck all to do with a slight misunderstanding, UEFA moving the goalposts, or some crazy conspiracy just to target man city. When everyone is playing by the rules apart from one or two, it's anti-competitive and there are consequences. There will always be consequences to what man city are currently doing.