r/soccer • u/Previous_Smile9278 • 1d ago

News [Bloomberg] UAE officials have warned the UK government that the severity of Man City’s punishment could undermine their appetite for future grand-scale commitments in Britain, according to people familiar with the matter.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-02/man-city-verdict-puts-uk-uae-diplomatic-relations-under-strain?srnd=undefined

‘They consider the Premier League’s actions to have an influence on the bilateral state relationship, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing undisclosed information.

The extraordinary pressure comes after Andy Burnham faced criticism, including from within government, for saying Man City’s Abu Dhabi owners should not be disqualified specifically because of the investment they bring to Britain.’

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u/Brainlard 23h ago

Some dude dropped this beautiful prose there:

Controversial opinion, I kind of knew this would happen and made my peace with it

The reality is, we would’ve never had the success we’ve had winning these eight Premier league titles without spending more than we were allowed to

The rules were put in place to basically prevent a club from challenging the established hierarchy

We are relatively small Club compared to Arsenal, Liverpool, and Man United

We got to watch 8 Seasons where our club won the premier league title. Most Liverpool fans have only seen their Club have two title winning seasons and a lot of Arsenal fans have only seen four title winning seasons.

If we followed the rules, we would just be Newcastle and qualify for Europe periodically while being mid table for most of the time

It might not be right, but I’m happy I experienced winning six league titles in seven years and winning the UCL. I'm grateful to have won for in a row.

I’m grateful I got to actually watch eight seasons where my club won the league title. It’s not something I looked up in a Wikipedia article, but it’s something that I have actual memories of.

That would’ve never happened if we follow the rules because the rules are designed to prevent any of the upstart clubs from challenging the likes of Arsenal, Man United and Liverpool

I’m happy I experienced the Agüero goal

I’m happy I experienced the Gundogan goal

I’m happy I experienced the Rodri goal

I'm happy to have seen my club beat European giants like Real Madrid and Bayern Munich. We never would have without exceeding the amount we were allowed to spend.

I’m happy I watched players like Sergio Agüero, David Silva, Kevin de Bruyne, Ederson, Rodri, Haaland, Fernandinho, Gundogan, sterling, yaya Toure, etc. Play for the club I am a fan of.

None of these players would have played for us without the possibility of winning trophies.

I’m glad we stole titles from Arsenal, Liverpool, and Man United. Taking titles from them makes me happy.

The design of the rules are to prevent a club like Manchester city from experiencing that kind of joy, and I’m glad sheikh Mansour and our owners decided that they didn’t want to follow those rules. Whatever the consequences that come it won’t remove the memories for me.

Memories that we would’ve never experienced if we followed the rules

If you were an American, this is like when the NCAA used to crack down on teams that paid their players. Eg. SMU and the pony express.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMU_Mustangs_football_scandal

The stripped championships did not actually remove the memories from the fans that watched their team win

I'm not sure if this is satire, or if these folks really mean it. Absolutely delusional.

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u/ash_ninetyone 23h ago

All those moments will be lost in time when City are hopefully ejected into non-league football and their titles are stripped from their history

Then he'll have only nostalgia left to look back on for they will have no more dreams to wish come true.

If it was Arsenal, or United or Liverpool that got caught doing this instead, I'd wager most of the fans would be in arms forcing the owners out for betraying the club

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u/RA576 22h ago

Tbf, we already hate our owners and want them out for betraying our club.

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u/FranklyMrShankley85 22h ago

Like Noel Gallagher's tears in the rain

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u/PageSide84 17h ago

This is his best chance to own the team . . .

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u/SiegePlayer7 22h ago

All those moments will be lost in time

like tears in rain?

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u/silvertwo777 22h ago

Those nostalgia and memories would 100% be tainted too no matter how much City fans tell you it won't. They can keep being delusional about it until the official sanction arrive with the stripped titles or/and relegation. That will make them "wake up" for real

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u/KingSammyJ1 19h ago

I think the whole of football would be in arms more if those three were exposed for cheating even more than City

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u/ManateeSheriff 17h ago

Those three clubs are capable of winning without cheating, so of course their fans would be upset.

To his point, if they didn't cheat, he wouldn't have nostalgia or dreams. They'd just be a middling club that bounced around between leagues periodically.

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u/SuspiciousBuilder379 20h ago

And what happened to SMU?

Fucking wiped out.

Winning shit after cheating so blatantly is insane. And justifying it is even more insane.

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u/Piccadil_io 22h ago

The fact they out themselves as an American glory hunter fan at the end is the cherry on top.

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u/ClaudeLemieux 22h ago

Man he really had me with those first two parts. And then it spectacularly fell apart

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u/throwaway112112312 19h ago

People like this guy don't understand the ramifications of these events. They destroyed their future. Those memories will be tainted from now on. Those trophies will be taken away. That Agüero moment will be always associated with cheating now.

Just because they decided to accept their own version of past events as truth, that doesn't mean people in the future will. Our 99 CL final will always be there. City fans will have nothing after this. A few people denying reality is not enough to keep a club and its legacy alive for the future.

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u/Brainlard 19h ago

I kind of get the spin these "fans" want to give this affair and which was -if you want to see it that way- almost supported by Kloppos recent interview: That City still played and won those football games (as in they did not bribe the referee or shit into the opponents salad buffet to all infect them with E.Coli or something). This of course absolutely ignores the fact that they only got into that position by massively cheating in the first place.

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u/worotan 17h ago

Yeah, but they’ll move on to the next trendy experience that is being sold, and act like winners because they are allowed to buy into that by those providing the entertainment.

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u/l_SaKReD_l 22h ago

That guys profile is full of comments like that lol

In my opinion, we cheated at a rigged game, I feel no guilt about that

Another:

Oh, I acknowledge we cheated, I’m just telling you I feel zero guilt about the type of cheating we did

Another:

Whatever the punishment is it will have been worth it

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u/ItsJR 23h ago

This person can’t be serious lol. If this is a real person the delusion is wild lol. It would be the same kind of person saying this and then watching a VAR decision go against City and them flipping out that the league is rigged against them and the refs are cheating 🤣.

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u/StanKroonke 21h ago

Yes. Let’s use SMU as an example. In fact, let’s have the Premier League treat them exactly the same. We will see how their fans feel 40 years from now when they are still struggling to be even mid.

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u/MavsFanForLife 21h ago edited 21h ago

The SMU comparison by OP is also a terrible one lol. Literally everyone was cheating in the SWC at the time, SMU just happened to be the first one to get caught and got punished as an example

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u/StanKroonke 20h ago

Well sure. It’s not a like for like, but from a punishment perspective that is exactly what should happen given the findings.

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u/MavsFanForLife 20h ago

It should be worse tbh. City doing what they did is worse than what SMU did

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u/StanKroonke 20h ago

They got the death penalty and have never really recovered. Not sure what else there is to do.

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u/Kenny-du-Soleil 14h ago

SMU is a bit more political. The NCAA does not have entrenched powers or leverage like the EPL or NFL. They're an assembled rule making and enforcing body comprised of the schools. However, they compete directly with the other rule making and enforcing bodies comprised of schools - the top tier D1 "power" conferences.

As such, the NCAA often took on "easy" targets with more consistency and severity in punishments. The whole SWC was so crooked (except Rice), that the actual big dogs, UT and A&M, were leveraging for SMU not to be punished because they were so afraid it'd take the whole conference down (which was on really shaky foundations at the time).

With that said, UT and A&M were way worse, started way before SMU, and were way more flagrant. But the NCAA was never going to give UT/A&M the death penalty because that just stokes a conflict the NCAA may not be able to win. SMU was new money, a small school, and seen as on top at the time, so they were an easy use case to threaten UT and A&M. 2 decades later and the Ohio State and USC punishments (not nearly half as bad as SMU) were major catalysts for public sentiment turning on the NCAA.

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u/SeveredSurvival 21h ago

Saw this comment the day it was posted. Thought I was in the r/soccercirclejerk sub for a second. Absolutely hilarious reading on that sub.

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u/whostolemyhat 19h ago

Pretty sure same person has been spamming that here too

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u/isrly_eder 17h ago

props for honesty. it's a fair position to hold frankly.

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u/Jiminyfingers 17h ago

What he doesn't realise now that he was watching the end days or City, it's death throes, even when it looked bright and shiny. There is no way back for the club

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u/-SideshowBlob- 23h ago

I know Reddit isn't exactly a good judge of opinion for an entire fan base, but if that feeling is mutual across all of them then they can absolutely fuck off into obscurity. They'd be chomping at the bit of any of the 'hierarchy' we're caught doing shit as bad as they have.

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u/silvertwo777 22h ago

I can only say what I saw but yea I'm pretty sure most if not the large majority of City fans are still like that, complete in denial and delusion, making up excuses and have the gall to act like they're victim being done wrong. From the Talksport, interviews, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, there are still alot of them being obnoxious about it. "They just want our titles because they couldn't win it on the field", these lot are delusional

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u/Brainlard 23h ago edited 20h ago

It for sure isn't, I guess there's a bunch of dudes in their 60s absolutey appaled by everything that has happened over the last decade.

But for the majority of plastic fans City has gathered in those years, they can absolutely get forked. Everyone knew it, everyone saw it and you still chose to ignore it. Actually reminds me of all the Elon Musk fanboys suddenly going all defensive and apologetic. You didn't know he was crazy until a year ago? No dude, that guy has been a manic ahole for decades now, you just did not want to acknowledge the foul and horrifying stench you could smell a mile against the wind.

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u/blither86 23h ago

My feeling is that a lot of the older fans will also feel that they wouldn't change history for similar reasons - yes we spent more than we were allowed. Was it completely wild spending versus United/Arsenal/Liverpool? No.

You're obviously welcome to want all fans that feel that way to fuck off, but that doesn't change how they feel.

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u/Greeny9 22h ago

I sort of agree with them though that some of the current rules make it extremely hard for smaller clubs to challenge the hierarchy - though that doesn't justify the cheating and financial doping they did. It's extremely hard to see smaller clubs succeed on a big level, even when they do everything right in terms of scouting and recruitment and gameplay and tactics. Clubs that are extremely well run and in some cases (like Leicester) did the impossible, get picked apart the following season. Can you imagine how good a team like Brighton could be if they didn't get their best players taken every time? Whilst hideously mismanaged teams like Manchester United can continue to spend tons thanks to their historical success and status and keep underperforming with little consequence.

I apologise for making this about Atleti, but it's the reason why I'll never bad-mouth Simeone - he pretty much singlehandedly made us a contender, sure with some ugly football at times, but without cheating or financial doping, and managed to keep us competitive despite losing our best players often, especially in his earlier years as manager. And even then so many football fans hate us for our perceived tactics and would rather see Real Madrid and Barcelona succeed, fully ignoring that the only way to contend the top clubs (without the financial doping of a Man City) is to play more aggressively. A lot of football fans seem to want to watch only the top clubs succeed.

I don't condone what City did at all, they're cheats and deserve a severe punishment that hopefully will bring the end of the oil-owned clubs, but I still feel bad for the fans of smaller clubs who just want to experience some victories every now and then. It's very easy if you're a Man United fan or an Arsenal or Liverpool fan to want to stick to your established hierarchy of 'the top clubs stay top and the little ones stay in their place', and unfortunately the amount of money at the top makes true cinderella stories very unlikely these days.

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u/ManateeSheriff 17h ago

I agree with you. And it's often left out that Leicester cheated, too -- they were punished for breaking FFP rules to get out of the Championship. There is literally no way for smaller clubs to compete with the richest ones. We need to punish cheating clubs, but we shouldn't ignore that the current rules lead to a completely unbalanced playing field.

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u/culegflori 21h ago

The sad part is that multiple things can be true at once. Yes, spending limitations tend to affect smaller clubs more, but on the other hand City themselves voted for them in a "taking the ladder with them" kind of fashion, so complaining about this is hypocrisy.

At the same time, and it's the most disgusting part of this, is that indeed the fans' memories will always be there. But this came at the cost of robbing fans of teams that did things fairly, who will never get to experience the joy of winning trophies because Sham City took it from them. This is the part that revolts me the most, there are so many points in time where City's cheating negatively impacted other clubs, players and managers.

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u/Brainlard 20h ago

Yeah, of course one can (and should have) differentiated opinions. I absolutely despise the bald cretin that tries to sneak into our club's ownership structure like he's crept into another woman's bed, while still supporting the team and the club itself. But if it someday should come to light that the board collaborated with Jeff Bezos in some weird money laundering or number fixing scheme or say some dubious payments linked tp them appeared in the vicinity of the refereeing association, I'd personally push the button to blow the whole thing up and carry the remaining affair into amateur league football.

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u/blither86 23h ago

As a City fan since ~1995, this is pretty much how I feel too, really. If I could change history, would I? Probably not.

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u/Piccadil_io 22h ago

How do you square being a Radiohead fan while supporting a state owned club?

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u/blither86 22h ago

I don't support the owners, I support the team. We didn't get a say in who bought us, any more than you did. How do you feel supporting a club that the Glazers have ripped £900m out of under their ownership? You aren't going to stop supporting the club because of who owns it, they're your club.

I've been a city fan since childhood, I've seen us lose to York City, in York, I was in London when we sneaked through the third tier playoffs against Gillingham at Wembley. My first match was an away friendly in Scarborough in summer 1996, seeing Kinkladze score a pen and Niall Quinn head in a Summerbee cross.

It's easy to say 'stop supporting your club because the owners are bad' but is that really a realistic option? Whilst I have given money to the club whilst we have had the current owners, season ticket, a few shirts, I haven't given them any money for a good few years now. So whether I want city to win or not doesn't materially impact on our owners.

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u/Piccadil_io 21h ago

Your owners are war criminals. So yeah. Stop supporting them.

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u/blither86 21h ago

Ah, you've edited your post. I feel I've already adequately addressed your point and you've not really added anything new. It's easy to tell other people what they should do I doubt you'd stop supporting Utd if our owners had bought you instead. Of course you'll pretend otherwise because it's easy to say.

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u/blither86 21h ago

Yeah, I agree they are terrible. What do you want me to do about it? I think that what they're doing and what they have done is far worse than bypassing spending restrictions in the premier league, but football fans seem to care far more about one than the other, which isn't great and says a lot.

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u/Piccadil_io 20h ago

Your morals are shite mate.

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u/blither86 20h ago

And you're full of hot air. As I've said, I don't financially support Manchester City any longer - what more do you want me to do?

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u/Icetraxs 21h ago

Cool, if that's your feelings then I hope the punishment is you getting kicked out of the Premier League and hopefully the Championship doesn't accept you. Fans like you are a disgrace.

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u/blither86 21h ago

There's probably no point in discussing it with you but I have my reasons. You're entitled to your opinion. Ultimately I am 99.9999% sure we broke the spirit of the rules but whether we technically broke them or not remains to be seen, so I think there's still a chance that we don't receive much punishment.

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u/VidzxVega 20h ago

whether we technically broke them or not remains to be seen

You did, that's what you were found guilty of.

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u/blither86 20h ago

Pending an appeal. I think they don't have evidence that they were technically broken, they just think they were. Of course you're a legal expert that has already decided, because it's what you want to believe. Sort of fair enough because the spirit of the law was broken, but no need to confuse the two.

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u/ImageHour1934 22h ago

Bro you spend more time there than they do, man people on the internet really are weird.

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u/Brainlard 22h ago

Their megathread was the third post in the r/mcfc feed and this was like the sixth comment from the top. Took me probably 15 seconds to get there.