Manchester City was found guilty of more than 100 charges stemming from the club allegedly breaking financial fair play rules, and now, according to multiple sites, other Premier League clubs want multiple sanctions to be handed down. At the root of it all is something greedy.
Maybe City will be relegated, with enough points deducted that the only outcome is that. Players for the Blues will remain, at least most of them, as Erling Haaland, Antoine Semenyo, and others are under contract for many years to come. Seemingly, no player has an out based on the charges the team faced.
But while the billionaires who run the bigger Premier League clubs want Man City to be sanctioned and, some hope, eliminated from league play, the overriding issue is a flawed one. Teams can only spend 85 percent of revenue on a roster. 30 percent more can be spent using a multi-year allowance.
Manchester City was always facing a rigged Premier League
The problem is that the bigger clubs have a historical advantage and will almost always take in more money through sponsors and other entities than the smaller clubs would. Even if a smaller club goes on a multi-year run of success, the bigger club has the advantage.
This means that clubs like Manchester United should, in theory, always be able to outspend clubs like Manchester City and acquire more impactful and expensive players. It's a rigged system.
This is ultimately what the Abu Dhabi United Group was faced with when trying to quickly build Man City into a perennial power. City needed time to build up sponsorships, as the fans were already in place and will continue to be, no matter the outcome of all the charges. Did Sheikh Mansour or other executives break the rules? Maybe or maybe not, but they have been found guilty of doing so.
Forget the amount of money a person or group has while owning a club. That isn't the issue, but maybe it should be. Did the Abu Dhabi United Group accrue elite players for Man City because they couldn't afford it? Not at all; they easily could have. The problem was that the Group had not yet, on paper, spent enough time raising the revenue and therefore was not able to afford great players.
This is why the whole guilty verdict is extremely complicated. Etihad Airways spends a lot of money to sponsor Manchester City, and it is based in Abu Dhabi, of course. The implication being that City somehow manufactured the amount of cash needed to bring in players like Erling Haaland, but the cash was real.
Ultimately, Manchester City is likely to be punished, and maybe the Abu Dhabi United Group will be stripped of ownership. Meanwhile, the Premier League clubs like Liverpool and Man U will go on as normal, outspending the lesser clubs because the rules are in their favor.
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