As a devoted fan of Manchester Cit-eh, we need to have a little chat. I’ll include the Gallagher brothers in our chat along with a few other long-term die-hards, like me, who were actually fans of the club ‘before the billions arrived’. In the pre-Sheikh Mansoor days when we were just another middle-of-the-road, win-nothing, try not to get relegated, hiding in the massive shadow cast by our red-shirted brethren across the road, bunch of northern losers and tossers.

Then the Emirates arrived. Bringing its billions and billions. Which were used to, basically, buy a new football team. A good one, this time. Better than good. An amazing team filled with the best of the best of international stardom. A team that even Roman Abramovich could only dream of creating. But even The Oligarch realised that there were limits. That any club was only allowed to spend a percentage of its income each year and could not be funded by a billionaire’s piggy bank. So if Chelsea only earned 100 million quid a year, that put the limit on expenditure at some figure below that. Iss ‘financial fair play’, innit?

The only ways round it are to increase your income or reduce your expenditure. Unless…

Unless you’re Manchester Cit-ehhhhh!!! And you’re owned by a man who laughs at Financial Fair Play. Who scoffs as fiscal rules and sniggers at accounting regulations. In Mansoor’s mind, there is NO problem which can’t be resolved by just throwing more money at it. And as he has so much more money than anybody else, he was always going to ‘win’.

So he brought in the best manager around, Roberto Mancini, and the best player in the world, Yaya Toure, and he bought Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany and every fantastic player he could find. All lured by massive salaries unmatchable by other teams. In particular by teams who, kind’a, play to the rules. And instead of paying Mancini 20 million a year; the club paid him only a small part of that. The remainder was paid to him for being ‘an advisor’ to the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Because it was nothing to do with football. Obviously. He advised them on… errr… headscarves, maybe Italian marble for the palaces, which cars were more economical to run in a 60 degree climate.

Similarly, Yaya was only paid a part of his salary by Manchester City. The rest by some offshore, tax-haven-ed shell company with no means of support. Director: Sheikh Mansoor.

And then, for any end-of-year shortcomings, that was paid to Cit-eh as a ‘sponsorship deal’ for the naming rights to the Etihad Stadium. Increasing the club’s income to the levels necessary to avoid falling foul of FFP. And if some of these payments actually came directly from Mansoor’s personal account, which they did, and he’s a director of Manchester City; WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH THAT???? Honestly, this is just jealousy on the part of the other clubs. We have done nothing wrong. All 130 charges are totally spurious. Even though we’ve been found guilty on each and every one of them.

We shall appeal this travesty of justice, of course. Otherwise we’ll be terribly ‘sanctioned’. Possible even ‘thrown out of the Premier League’!!!

I’m curious as to how that would work, exactly. Would Cit-eh become an ‘un-club’? Just vanishing up its own spreadsheets? Or would it be relegated to Lower Leagues? Banned from Europe? Forced to play Dagenham & Redbridge every Saturday for all eternity? If it’s just ‘a fine’, that would be a massive win for City. However big it was. Just more proof, as if it were needed, as to how much money Abu Dhabi has.

I’m not ‘app-eh about this. Not ‘app-eh at all.

‘App-eh Saturday

A xxxx