As I write this, Fulham have capitulated at home to Manchester City by four goals to nil. Man City has now assumed the top spot, having played the same games as us. It feels inevitable that they will win the Premiership this year….unless!!.
They say it is the hope that kills you, but I am not sure about that. I am starting to think it’s the ability to launder money within a complex organisation that allows offshore payments and 115 other rule breakages that eventually kills your belief.
Of course, if you hide behind that excuse, then it will be met with sour grapes by other clubs that have long surrendered any interest in winning the premiership. But just stop and think about the fallout of Manchester City being found guilty of any of these charges.
If we consider the clubs that have been relegated during this period, it’s evident that they have lost crucial points to Manchester City in their league programme. Teams like Swansea City, Watford, and Cardiff, to name a few, have narrowly been relegated, possibly due to the unfair advantage of playing against a rule-breaking team. The financial loss they’ve incurred in TV payments and other areas is staggering, all because they were not playing by the same rules as everyone else.
Now, those teams have never been able to get back into the Premier League, so it has hit them very hard indeed, financially and also from an opportunistic angle, as they have not had the pleasure of being invited to lucrative pre-season tournaments in the Far East and Americas, which might have increased their subsequent fan base.
Consider this: these teams have been deprived of over £85 million pounds of TV money plus additional income over a 2-3-year period. This includes parachute payments that might have been deferred by a year or so if they hadn’t lost those points to a club that had been cheating. The financial impact is staggering, and it’s a direct result of a club not playing by the rules. They may have narrowly missed out on a significant amount of additional revenue due to TV deal upgrades, which is also too much to count on your fingers.
When we delve into the potential consequences of Man City’s actions (yet to be proven, mind you), the implications are staggering. Arsenal, for instance, narrowly missed out on the Champions League to Spurs a couple of years ago, and it cost them an estimated £55 million in revenue by being dumped into the Europa League. The legal ramifications of the counterclaims from all these clubs, who will realise the extent of the financial doping during this period, are uncertain. How the lawyers will handle this is a question that remains unanswered.
One thing it will be, though, is incredibly messy and not something that should have ever been allowed to happen in the first place.
This next week should be dramatic and something that is replayed for years to come, dare I say Agueroesque, but if Manchester City do win the Premiership this year 99% of fans will just think, “so what”, and that’s a shame.