Manchester City and the FFP charges

 I thought that I would stop following football. I told myself that after Leicester City won the Premier League in 2016. But somehow football has this way of turning up surprises regularly after a few years. There would be the amazing Champions League semi-finals of 2019 where Liverpool and Tottenham would reach the final after amazing comebacks against Barcelona and Ajax. Then there would be the euphoria of Liverpool winning the league in 2020 after a 30 year drought. 

After Arsenal won the league and ended a 22 year drought, I would have thought there wouldn't be anything that sensational for quite a while. But this Man City stuff is pretty exciting. It helps you to delve into the murky waters of alternate history. What if all that stuff didn't happen? What if Sheik Mansour's project never came to fruition?

The thing about when clubs have wealthy sponsors and they pour money into football clubs to buy them the best players and pay them the highest wages, it's financial doping. Football then becomes about financial engineering as much as it is about sporting excellence. That takes away from the true spirit of competition. 

The beginning of the Man City project wasn't very auspicious. They weren't an instant success like Chelsea were. We also have to talk about Chelsea football club. Mourinho said that Pep Guardiola won his 6 premier league titles illegally while he won 3 premier league titles legally. That is a big fudge. Chelsea Football Club's two titles in 2005 and 2006 are legal, but they were basically bought with Abramovich's money. Thank goodness we had Alex Ferguson to win back 3 titles in a row, with the last great team that he assembled – the one which won the UCL in 2008. But the precedent had already been made: you could go out and buy a good team with the best players and you could win trophies with it. 

It is true that Blackburn Rovers did it with the 1995 team, grabbing Shearer and Sutton on record transfer fees, and that the team fell apart pretty quickly when the money dried up. And it's also true that Newcastle was bankrolled by another local millionaire for their 1995 team. I'm sure there were also teams in the 1980s with wealthy sponsors, except that it was very shabby off the field so I don't think it was the kind of thing that would have attracted millionaires. I think that maybe people don't bring up Blackburn and Newcastle so much because there are some feelgood factors: Blackburn would always be the plucky underdog who had the heritage of being one of the greatest clubs in England prior to the founding of the English League. And Newcastle had the charisma of Kevin Keegan to defray the accusation that Sir John Hall was basically paying for everything. They were the great entertainers. 

But Chelsea was more sinister. First, it was foreign money. Then, in hindsight, even though there's no evidence that Abramovich himself was an enemy, or that he was guilty of anything else other than financial doping, the fact is that in 2002 Russia officially became an enemy of NATO. And that put a shadow over everything else that Chelsea did. Chelsea did not play a fixed form of football. There was the Ancelotti version who scored a record number of goals in a season. There were the version of Mourinho's second coming, which saw them win 2 league titles under himself and Conte. But the iconic version of Abramovich's Chelsea would be the one who parks the bus, and only conceded 15 goals in the entire season, which is a record that Arteta's Arsenal may come close to breaking one day (there was a season when Arsenal conceded less than 20 goals under Wenger, with George Graham's defence). But they just defended better and attacked better and had better players, and could sign a lot of good players and allow them to rot on the bench. 

So you had a foreign ownership from a not so friendly country, and he's winning all the prizes by playing boring football. I don't think Chelsea was very well liked, and I remember suddenly becoming a big fan of Man U in the 07 season when they finally showed the world that somebody other than Chelsea could win the EPL after Mourinho. 

At this point, I have to mention that a lot of people tried to bankroll big clubs, and it didn't always succeed. There was Leeds United, where George Graham built the nucleus of a side which under David O Leary would start challenging for the title and go into Europe. Except that it was a very highly leveraged project: they may have gotten away with it if they had qualified for the champions league for the second time, but they missed out narrowly. It was a sliding doors moment. Another sliding doors moment was that when Abramovich was looking for a club to buy and bankroll, the last 2 clubs he considered were Leeds and Chelsea. 

There were millionaires who tried to bankroll other clubs. The Icelandic consortium tried to push West Ham. There was a businessman called Mandaric who was involved with several clubs. After Chelsea, there was a time when Everton, Aston Villa and Man City were the “upper half of the table” sides who could have been captured like Chelsea were and turned into a “project”. But nothing more came of the Aston Villa project at that time, and Everton never got past the David Moyes ceiling. There were also a lot of clubs that went bust. Sunderland were not well managed. 

Then when Abu Dhabi buys Man City, it seems like the same thing all over. An oil billionaire buys over a mid table side, and gets in a lot of expensive players from all over. Then they spend their way to the title. For a while I thought that Man City were going to fall flat on their face. It's hard to remember now, but back then their project was derided as being “the noisy neighbours” by Man U, who were flying high from their 06-09 three-peat. Robinho was their first marquee signing, a very gifted player who unfortunately never lived up to his potential. He thought he was signing for the famous club in Manchester, not the other one. It was a ragtag bunch of “could have beens” and misfits. The club manager was Mark Hughes, who was good enough for a mid table side, having done some good work with Blackburn Rovers. But he wasn't good enough to manage a club . At that time, the names in the club were Carlos Tevez, Zabaleta, Micah Richards, Nedum Onuoha, Vincent Kompany. 

After Mark Hughes was fired, Roberto Mancini came in, and he brought a lot of top level players to bring Man City to the next level, including many players who would eventually become club legends, like Yaya Toure, David Silva, Sergio Aguero. There were also Samir Nasri, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli. The most significant signing was capturing Carlos Tevez from Man U to Man City, together with that infamous poster, “welcome to Manchester”. That was a pointed jab at Man U because Old Trafford is apparently outside the citi limits of Manchester. 

The finale of the 11/12 season was truly amazing. Man U were on the decline. They were clearly not on the same level as when Ronaldo, Tevez, Saha, Hargreaves, Van Der Sar and Evans were playing. But they were still a top team. The title run in was epic. From when Man U were beaten 6-1 by Man City, Balotelli making Mancini wonder if he was an asset or liability, Mancini playing mind games by telling everybody at one point that he had given up on the title chase. But Man City caught up in the end, and negotiated the run-in in a white knuckle ride. For them to face defeat at the last hurdle, and still find some way to succeed in the end, that took a lot of guts. 

One reason why Man City didn't seem so sinister at first was that they had this image of being loveable losers. They were one of the most likely teams to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. They were, and are still the only team to have been relegated as defending champions. They had a proper rivalry with Matt Busby's Man United in the end of the 60s but only managed to win 1 title. Their darkest hour was in the 90s, when they were relegated. I think there was a game that they had to win, but they miscalculated and thought a draw would suffice. They weren't very good, in spite of the fact that they had one of the best players in Georgi Kinklatze. And they suffered 2 relegations in quick succession to find themselves in the 3rd tier of English football. 

There was also that time when Robbie Fowler could have gotten Man City into Europe if he had scored a penalty, but he missed. Stuart Pearce as a manager was too clever by half when he sent on David James as an attacker. 

People called this “city being city”. But to have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps (and a lot of spending money) to get from being lovable losers to FA cup winners and then league champions by the skin of their teeth. You cannot mistake that that league win and Alex Ferguson retiring were the 2 incidents that marked the change of guard in Manchester, from Man U being the top dog and Man City being “the noisy neighbours”, to Manchester City's 15 years of dominance. 

Pep Guardiola was not a cup manager. If anything, his speciality was the league. He was an expert at managing the run in in the league. If Manchester City was chasing you in the league, you were fucked, it was as simple as that. There was that time when Liverpool and Man City went head to head. It takes something very special to deny the title to somebody who's won 97 points in the league. 97 points would get you the title on most premier league seasons, including the ones where there were 22 teams in the league. 

Then there was that time when they went 0-2 down against Aston Villa on the last day, and Gundogan and company had to score 3 goals in order to win the league. And somehow they did it. And let's not forget the times when they chased down Arsenal, which is not as difficult as chasing down Klopp's Liverpool. But they did it. They had that run where they won 6 out of 7 titles. They beat whoever they had to beat: Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool, whatever. Instead of “city being city”, they suddenly were so steroided and overpowered that they looked like monsters. They had great mental strength, apparently. Maybe not in the cups but certainly in the league, where you could falter a bit here and there but the law of averages were always on your side. 

Suddenly, facing the charges of financial doping and cooking the books and lying to the premier league authorities, and facing the possibility of having to give back all the trophies – I think there were 10-20 of them during the sheik Mansour era – looks like “city being city” all over again. 

Guardiola does have a few weaknesses. One of them, obviously, is that he has only ever managed at clubs where his players were so good that they represented an unfair advantage. When he was at Barcelona B, he managed the best B team in the world. Then he became Barcelona head coach, and that was the only time he was the underdog, as a coach who had to prove himself. By the end of the season, he won the treble, but with the La Masia kids (and Messi was a La Masia kid). He had the best team in Spain with Barca, the best team in Germany with Bayern Munich, and Man City had the wherewithal, at least they thought they did, to get all the best players. 

That's the thing about doping. Of course it's unfair. Even when the playing field is tilted against you, it feels like an almighty struggle to fight tooth and nail against Liverpool or Arsenal or Real Madrid. Man City would feel that it would be ridiculous to award the FA Cup to Stoke. I would agree with that, because at the very least, Stoke should have to play the team that Man City knocked out in the semi-finals, which was Man United. And you should only be allowed to win the FA Cup if you can beat Man United. 

Another aspect of the Man City charges is that people associated with the club have been denied all the wrong doing. Such is the nature of the financial doping that only the club management – not the on-field staff or anybody associated with the playing – can say they had anything to do with the doping. If they were naff enough to think they could get away with breaching the FFP rules, then I guess they are delusional. After the Hormuz crisis, you realise that everything they have is built on sand. They are the noveau riche who doesn't understand the concept of “easy come, easy go”. They don't have the necessary survival skills to do anything else other than to hold on to their wealth. They have no football skills, except the crucial ability to ascertain who are the best people to run the football side of things. Maybe they know on some level that their empires are extremely fragile, and they don't care anyway. They've had to deal with the threat of Iran for years and know that it could all get wiped out in an instant. The great infrastructure projects they have built are all kaput because they no longer have any seaborne transportation networks. 

There were calls for Man City to be kicked out of UEFA competitions, and they managed to fight it off with lawyers. So they probably thought they could get away with the premier league charges. That's why a lot of the players and Pep Guardiola can say, this is outrageous. I didn't know. They could make like it was believable that they were lied and cheated to, and they could pretend that they were the real victims. 

I think that was the tacit deal they had with their players and staff. The upper management protects them by not revealing anything to them. Then they'll go on and play and give their best and not have their reputations tainted by association with the Abu Dhabi regime. 

Man City were a team that fought hard. But when you think about the Pep Guardiola era, he could always find the players that he wanted. Give me Raheem Sterling and John Stones, and they just appear just like that. To be fair, he used his money wisely. Bernado Silva, Kevin De Bruyne and Gundogan were his best players, and they all cost less than Virgil Van Dijk. Man City had the most money to spend on players, and they spent the most money on players. But that didn't mean that they bought the most expensive players. They didn't sign flops like Man United did. They simply decided to have a good player in every position. Their least expensive player was more expensive that everybody's least expensive player. 

It was very suspicious that Pep Guardiola could simply chop and change his squad, almost at will. Joe Hart was shipped out almost immediately, as was his replacement, Claudio Bravo. He could dispose of Kalvin Phillips and Jack Grealish as the rare expensive mistake. When his team was falling apart, he could just go out and get Cherki, Semenyo, Donarumma and Guehi. While Liverpool had to rely on Salah / Sane / Firmino for years, or run Wijnaldum into the ground, or play the same players 60+ matches a season. Arsenal would have a permanent injury crisis because it's a matter of time before Rice or Saka or Odegaard or Havertz get injured again. 

Then again, it was very annoying to see that Man City could simply circumvent the rules because they felt like it. There has to be some kind of a reckoning involved. I can't think of anybody who's breaking the FFP rules as brazenly as Man City are. They decided to take a risk and see whether the rules mattered. I think that everybody has to play according to the rules. It was unfortunate that Everton and Nottingham Forest got fucked, but now I see that this was a necessary step, that you had to screw them over first, before you moved on to Manchester City. Nottingham Forest and Everton were on the receiving end of a warning shot that was meant for Manchester City. You had to say, “I'm not coming after you because you are Abu Dhabi, I'm coming after you because you are breaking the rules and ruining the premier league for the rest of them. 

There was a time when Man City dominated the league completely. During the 100 point season, it simply seemed that the previous champions – Chelsea, Leicester and the older incarnation of Man City – didn't matter at all. Arsenal and Man United were in a funk at that time. Tottenham were a distant second or third. Liverpool had only started their rebuild under Klopp. It was hard to fault Man City for bringing Guardiola to England. Guardiola showed everybody what was possible in football. Even if the book was thrown against Man City, Guardiola would have given English football a gift that would last forever. He would introduce them to tiki taka, to pressing, to the extensive use of data analytics. The conversation around football would forever change because of him. People would understand what was pressing, playing from the back, winning the ball back quickly, keeping control of the ball, and discovering which areas of the pitch to overload. These were obscure and academic concepts before Guardiola, but they would become part of the common discourse after his arrival. Klopp's geigenpressing football was different, but they spoke the same language. 

The second big change that Guardiola made to this league is that his ideas became widespread, and it would be the great leveller in the league. It used to be that footballers had to be athletic and skillful. Today, there is a third dimension, and that's how good you are at mental chess. You could be mediocre at the other two, but if you could fit into a good system, then you could perform at an elite level. Mid table sides could win the game by simply having better tactics against a side with more conventionally good players. That means that as opposed to the past where you needed great technical skill and physicality to get ahead, today, the number of potential good players is much higher, and mid table sides in England could acquire better teams. 

So that period of Man City bossing the league would be short lived. Man City would be like Arsene Wenger's Arsenal, who would forever change the way football was played in England, and benefit for a few years by being on the vanguard of that change. But once everybody else learnt what you were up to, there's no way of maintaining that superiority against the rest of the league. 

So that muddies the picture considerably, because now Man City are the team that made the EPL the greatest football league in the world (at least a better version of themselves). 

The last question that I would ask is: if it were no longer true that wealthy owners could buy their way to success, does it mean that they no longer want to pour money into the league? That's the message that I got when the Saudis are starting their “conscious uncoupling” from Newcastle, when they realised that even with bucket loads of cash available, there was no way to spend it on the club.