The merest hint of contrition or humility would be welcome, wouldn’t it? A few press-released sentences from the vast, faceless, deeply unattractive entity that Manchester City have become, saying that they are sorry for having conducted themselves in a way which has been found to breach the rules of British football. That they regret bringing one of our most famous clubs into disrepute and letting its supporters down.
It won’t be coming. As the world took in what anyone with a basic cognitive function has known all along – that Abu Dhabi has been systematically syphoning cash into City’s coffers through inflated sponsorship deals, to dodge financial spending limits – we were treated to yet another of those dismal little statements from club chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak, drowning in victimhood as he told supporters everything would be fine.
People wanted to ‘undermine’ Manchester City, said Al Mubarak – or ‘Mr Chairman’, as City’s media team call him during interviews for the periodic happy-clappy club website interviews he gives. ‘We will not give them that opportunity.’
The sight of this Gulf higher roller telling the ‘City family’ to sit tight whilst making veiled threats of more legal warfare to come has become grimly familiar. It was the same when the Premier League first announced they were charging City with 115 rule breaches. An ensuing 79-word City press statement on that occasion included the club’s risible claims that they had provided ‘extensive engagement’ and a ‘vast amount of detailed materials’ to those investigating their conduct. What planet do these people actually think we are on?
City’s fans actually clubbed together for a banner reading ‘Manchester thanks you, Sheikh Mansour’ after the Abu Dhabis arrived in 2008. But what has happened to their club, reputationally and culturally, feels like an annexation, now. No one owes any deference to the faceless scion of a Gulf state dynasty who has barely visited the place.
Sheikh Mansour and his people must be quietly taken aside, instructed to sell and told they have no right to run a football club here
Such was Abu Dhabi’s naked desperation to burnish their global reputation by reaching the top table of European football that financial spending rules were deemed a minor inconvenience. An obstacle to be expertly circumnavigated by an ownership which considered itself so much cleverer than everyone else. When UEFA introduced a Financial Fair Play system, Abu Dhabi even hired the accountants from Deloitte who had helped set the system up. Their vast army of lawyers came later.
Well, the grubby little ways by which the Abu Dhabis and their ‘strategic communications’ executive, Simon Pearce, spirited funny money into City across nine seasons became known and there is a reckoning now. And while the vast detailed ruling, which will soon drop with a thud, may make embarrassing reading for City executives, City’s owners are the ones on the hook.
Their humiliation is such that we may see them sell the club and leave. We were always told by their PR people that Abu Dhabi was the sophisticated face of the Middle East, smarter than brash Dubai or upstarts Qatar, but this verdict has made headlines across the globe and firmly deconstructed that notion. It is a stain Abu Dhabi will always wear at City.
But it really should not be a question of waiting for Sheikh Mansour, Al Mubarak and their entourage to decide to leave town. How, it seems reasonable to ask, can these people possibly be deemed fit and proper to run a British football club when found guilty of serial and systematic dishonesty?
Sieve through any of the documents detailing how they arranged under-the-counter income for City and you will find a flagrant disregard for the game’s rules. There was Pearce’s email stating that the ‘annual obligation’ for Abu Dhabi sponsor Aabar was £3million a year and that ‘the remaining £12m requirement will come from alternative sources provided by His Highness’. His email to the chief executive of Etihad Airlines detailing a £99m sponsorship commitment from the company ‘of which you will provide £8m.’
Then consider the pledges that Sheikh Mansour must sign up to each new season under the Premier League ‘Owners’ Charter,’ as a condition of passing the competition’s owners’ and directors’ test. ‘We will conduct our Club’s dealings with good faith, honesty and the highest possible standards of professional behaviour and sporting integrity,’ it states. ‘We will promote the strength and financial sustainability of English football. We are collectively committed to the Premier League and recognise our responsibility to support it.’
And if that leaves a shadow of doubt about whether these people should be running one of our teams, there are the rules by which football’s new Independent Regulator may assess the ‘ownership fitness criteria’ of someone already at the helm of a club. Its necessary criteria include ‘honesty and integrity.’
Man City chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak, right, gave a statement drowning in victimhood as he told supporters everything would be fine
The Abu Dhabis’ conduct has laughed in the face of those Premier League pledges and even now they seem incapable of seeing it. They have long laboured under the misapprehension that the financial sustainability rules were somehow rigged against them by a ‘red cartel’ of long-established clubs. Noone seems to have managed to get it through these people’s skulls that when you buy into British football and buy a British football club, you abide by British football’s rules. You want unfettered spending? Then set up your own league.
The ramifications of Friday’s revelation that City are guilty on the vast majority of charge were only beginning to set in, yesterday. Supporters of Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur, to name a few who have been brushed aside by City across the past decade, were wondering what might have been had the playing field been level. The Anfield fanbase will have their sharp verbal ammunition ready when City arrive there in two weeks, but that won’t right the perceived wrongs.
Immediately ahead lies the bleak and unwelcome prospect of clubs mounting legal challenges to City, even if the club are rightly relegated and stripped of their titles. For the sanctity of our national game, we desperately need a fresh start. Which is why Sheikh Mansour and his people must be quietly taken aside, instructed to sell and told they have no right to run a football club here. There should be an urgency about that process. They should not darken the door of our game for a moment longer than is necessary.
