The End of Manchester City

Elliot Smith0:26Entire football world shocked by revelation that Manchester City have been found guilty of doing what everybody knows they were doing. This is the ArsenalVision Podcast. My name's Elliot Smith, you bought me on Twitter at Yankee Gunner. A big couple of days for the word allegedly, as it drops down the page rank on Google's word search. We can drop the allegedly because Manchester City, as it is being reported by the Athletic and multiple global news outlets, found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges brought against them. Finally, finally, the revelation that they are guilty of doing what literally everyone knows they were doing. And it seemed like it was having an effect already because Mark Gahey, Nicole Riley, maybe their minds were elsewhere as they made some silly mistakes against Spain. And then, you know, just to show that Bernardo Silva is true scum Manchester City at heart, he kicked the crap out of Martin Odegaard for no particular reason, away from the ball and tried to damage and injure Martin Odegaard. Proper see you next Tuesday in. So glad that him, his legacy, and the club's legacy are in the mud, damaged irreparably. And we will discuss today the impact of this news. We will discuss what could possibly happen, the timelines by which it will possibly happen, the potential punishments, the legacy of their cheating on the game, on the fans, for the rival clubs, for the global reputation of the league. We're gonna discuss it from just about every angle. I think it's important to state that a lot of us, myself definitely included, are still processing.

Elliot Smith1:54What this means and trying to work through it together collectively. News continues to come out. I also think it's time for celebrating and appreciating people who have done some pretty brave reporting all along the way at great personal cost. You know, I can think of quite a few journalists who have been out there reporting on this from the start, ever since the Football Leaks emails. I think that was back in 2008, if I'm correct. I mean, that's how long this goes back. Tw the well the emails were leaked. When were they leaked? Twenty eighteen. Right. Did I say two thousand eight? Yeah. Right. Sorry,

Clive Palmer2:25Twenty eighteen's when they were linked. But the case is from two thousand nine to two thousand eighteen.

Elliot Smith2:30I meant eighteen. Yes, thank you for that. But moral of the story is that there's been a lot of good and brave reporting being done and people who have been dragged through the mud and put through a lot of hardship along the way, but they've helped push this to the point it is today in a big celebration of their hard work, just reward. So it's time to get into it. No announcements or promotions to tell you about today other than that you always know where to find us and we'd be happy to have you wherever you are and we're happy to have you here today and here to discuss it with me is Clive. Hello Clive. And Tim, hello Tim. All right. I think the natural starting point having said what was broken, 114 of 115 charges found guilty. That was Ornstein's line. City have obviously put out a statement saying that they respect due process on the basis of Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent, impartial, fair minded regular, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of self-interested nonsense, trying to keep their fans on side. The Premier League has said nothing publicly yet, but Tim, I'll start with you. How shocked were you by this announcement? And what was sort of your emotional reaction immediately after the news broke?

Tim Stillman3:35Yeah, h how shocked by the announcement. I g it's weird, isn't it, 'cause we've been waiting for it for three and a half years and then it happened and it's like it's like that gift from the office, right? Like when they do the fire drill and it's the like, my god, my god type thing. In one sense I am shocked and in another sense I'm not. You mentioned there, Elliot, the email leaks from two thousand eighteen. There is a part of me that's like why are we all behaving like this is a surprise? We've seen the emails. We've seen the emails with Manchester City employees using their Manchester City email addresses, you know, essentially to say, ha ha ha, look at all this shit we're pulling. So it's a bit like I'm I'm definitely one for respecting due process and all of that, but it's a bit like we do know this, this has been subject to a high profile leak. I guess then it just becomes about your confidence in the actual system to administer justice. I went quite big quite early that I felt that there would be a pretty strong level of justice administered. And I think first of all, the actual financial rules in football I'm finding with having conversations about this are so poorly understood. I think the

Tim Stillman4:56Nature of the charges against Manchester City equally poorly understood. A lot of people seem to think it's just some whoops, we just got a couple million a bit like the Everton and Forest things where it's like, yeah, we overspent a little bit, sorry about that. Like, this is not that. And if you read what's in some of those charges, it's incredibly serious. Like, incredibly serious. But the reason I went quite big quite early, that I felt that there would be a level of justice Administered, which to be honest it is still TBD, is another thing that's really poorly understood. The Premier League brought these charges in the first place, right? And they brought 115 of them. And I don't know if you remember when that story broke, there was not a single leak. They just slap, they just came out. And that tells you the Premier League looked at what happened with UEFA, looked at how City were able to get around things with some due process stuff, and the Premier League were like, We're not making that mistake, we're not briefing anyone on this, this is staying absolutely locked away until we're ready to come out. And that shows you there was a level of seriousness about these charges, and the Premier League should really be applauded for that. The rest of this is not in their hands anymore and hasn't been.

Tim Stillman6:17For a while, but what the Premier League did was: here's 115 charges. The level of investigation and resource required to do that is enormous, and there's five years between the leaks and the charges, and that tells you they took this very seriously. And the kind of thing for the Premier League at the moment, even they're in a bit of a bind. Again, it's not up to them the punishment anymore. But they're in a bit of a bind, right, where whatever happens, the credibility of the Premier League is damaged because we know that what we've been watching, now we know for sure, has not been real. And the Premier League are in this kind of weird scenario where whatever happens, either the punishment is too soft and that doesn't look good, or the punishment's really severe and like Man City like they could fold as a result of any punishments levied. I d I don't think they'll want that and I don't think that that would be a good outcome either. But basically the Premier League have made a decision that whatever happens here is bad. If we don't do something about this, it's bad. If we do something about it, it's bad. And they've gone for the right path. They've gone for the credibility of this league is damaged, but at least let it be damaged for the right reasons because we've shone a light on this.

Tim Stillman7:41And and so I was reasonably confident. However, I did think when they brought that many charges that possibly and I might not be wrong about this, possibly a lot of the thinking was we're gonna throw a hundred and fifteen of these charges. Not all probably not all of them will stick, but a hundred and fifteen is a lot to dodge. Right? You might you might be able to dodge fifty of them, but that's still a lot. And so they threw the kitchen sink at this. And that makes me think that they probably did that, thinking they might not all stick, but you can't like you're not dodging 115 of these. But and it turns out, like, if you know, the reporting holds, which I'm I'm sure it will, given where it came from, 114 of them, that tells you that th that they're really banged to rights here. And another thing, just in closing, Elliot, that gave me confidence quite early. Was do you remember hearing that stuff about how Man City were questioning that one of the commission supports Arsenal or something like that?

Tim Stillman8:46That's like that is weak source. That it's like, listen, there could be there could be other clever angles that just aren't out in the public. But I was like, is that seriously what you're going with? That's how you're planning to gum up this process with that? That's very, very thin gruel. I'll stop there because the rest of it all

Elliot Smith9:08Yeah, that was Murray Rosen KC, the then chair of the judicial panel. The Times reported in May twenty three that City questioned his involvement because his chambers profile listed him as a member of Arsenal FC. He picked the three person independent commission. So I you know, I mean, as you point out, very, very weak. Just to draw a line under your comment about the severity of these charges and the number of them and just how severe these are, let me just give you the details on this for people who aren't studying it. 54 charges of breaching the rules for accurate financial information spanning 2009 to 2018. Manager and player pay, 14 charges, 2009 to 2018. Non-cooperation, 2018 to 2023, 35 charges of failing to cooperate with their investigation supply documents. Premier League profit and sustainability rules, seven charges from 2015 to 2018, breaching the league's own spending rules. And UEFA financial fair play, the Premier League rules require clubs to comply with UEFA's licensing and FFP rules. They breached that from 2013 to 2018. Five charges there. So there's an awful lot there. Clive, you've had some time for this to sink in emotionally, the weight of it. I found that I started feeling more measured immediately because I've had so long living under the specter of these charges that I haven't really let it sink in what it means to be found guilty. And I think the thing that has made me more angry as time has gone by.

Elliot Smith10:34Is the charges were almost used as a stick to beat us. Anytime someone proposed the 115 charges, even within our own fan base, there would be people that would say, You can't keep hiding behind 115 every time we finish second. You can't keep hiding behind 115 every time we don't get a player. But that is exactly what this impropriety was designed to do: tear the rival clubs asunder, force them to chase their tail, competing with false financial might. With with which they would never have the capacity to compete, and then create intranescent arguments within fan bases about how they compete against a financially doped organization. So this made me more angry because it made me realize that the 115 became a wedge that divided fans within other clubs, as they rightly recognized that the 115 were the reason City were able to be so successful, but s also had to try to compete within the context of those charges hanging over them. I've gotten more angry as time has gone by. And I'll talk about the impact and we will talk about the impact collectively on football. But emotionally and in terms of your reaction to this news over the last couple of days, how's that sunk in and how are you feeling today?

Clive Palmer11:45Yeah, so obviously I don't get too emotional, generally in life.

Elliot Smith11:48Mm. Leave that to me.

Clive Palmer11:50You yeah, you got that one sorted, mate. And but yeah, if you if you look at it f as a whole, if you look at it from a football thing side of things, just think about it, just basics, just basics, right? If you look at a league table and look at the wages paid to the champions, it's normally the guys that s pay the most normally win the most, right? Just very simple basics. So if you are paying the most yet you are hiding how you're paying, then you are presenting your books in a way, which is in a fraudulent way, and then you're you're attracting the best people. And all a football club is is a collection of people, whether it be talent off the pitch or on the pitch. If you can attract the best people because you can pay the most money, then hide the fact that you've paid the most money, then everyone else is competing against an unfair playing field really. And that's actually quite sad. And we sort of knew that. And we knew that. When you're seeing the commercial value of Man City very close to Real Madrid, you think, hold on a minute. I used to go to Main Road. So I used to go to Main Road. You have, girl, I thought you would. I've been to Main Road. And Tim, Main Road,

Elliot Smith12:54I haven't, just to be clear.

Clive Palmer12:59He's not here. You remember those days, right? So and I never thought for a moment that they would have a similar commercial value as Real Madrid. So straight away, it doesn't add up. But I wasn't confident, as maybe others were, because the baddies never get caught, mate. They never get caught. It they just don't. Because they get themselves entrenched within the English game, English society, and they become very difficult to take down. So the Premier League need a big clap for actually going for this because it's only going to damage them. There's no winners here. It's going to damage the brand, it's going to damage everybody else. And s and so there's no winners here. But it comes it even goes back further to Man City. And this all started with Chelsea, I'm afraid. They they opened the door to ownership coming in with different motivations what we were used to, and they just did what they did. They bought all the players and Man City thought, I fancy a bit of that. They bought into Man City, the Commonwealth Games Stadium, all nice and neatly packaged. Investment into the UK. I tell you what, go into your favourite AI app right now and just do a little search for Abu Dhabi Investment in the UK. You will be shocked.

Clive Palmer14:11The amount of investment there is out there. And once you let a nation state into your game, you are now in a situation where, hold on a minute, if I have to do something, this is gonna cost many, many people in different walks of life a lot of money and jobs. Forget about opposing fans feeling upset about the fact of the joy they missed out. Just forget about that. Because we're never gonna get that time back, right? So that's just gone. But when you see how entrenched they are in the UK, you've got to ask yourself a question. Hold this just can't happen again. It can't happen again when where states are allowed to buy into football clubs because the influence becomes too great. And it becomes greater than what happens on the football pitch. And so at least they try to pull up the drawbridge, right? And it's not gonna benefit anybody else. Am I angry? Yeah I'm angry. Did Man City make us buy Mustafi? No, they didn't. Right? Well they had Vincent Company. I did a read a little look today, Tim, of the twenty eighteen League Cup team. Remember that? Will I be there at Wembley? And you look at that Man City team, but look at their bench, and you realise what they were doing at the time to build that team. We've only just got there now, all these years later, and look how long we had to do it over a period of time where we have a strong team and a strong bench, and we finally won after twenty two years. What Man City have done

Clive Palmer15:37If circumvented the time it takes to build a club. They've done it at a pace which is really, really quick. And they've done that only way they can do that is to do that maybe allegedly illegally. So they couldn't wait for the organic growth. They just wanted to do it at the behest of everybody else. And when you are in the Premier League, you are just a group of twenty clubs and you sign off on all these rules and you are that's all the Premier League is twenty clubs. That's all it is. It's not some seek organization. They're just twenty clubs that abide by the rules and they chose to sign off on these rules and then chose to circumnavigate them and chose to go a different direction. That for me makes the punishment and they're gonna get onto Elliot. But that for me makes me think, hold on a minute. Do you belong in this club of twenty? Do you really belong in this club of twenty? How are you going to make others trust you again? Do you really belong? If Nottingham Forest to couldn't quite sell a player and they go over on PSR and get punished, you know what? Bad accounting, didn't quite get the price they wanted, couldn't sell a player to Brentford in time, blah. They go over and they take a four point hit or wherever it is. You know what? That's football. That's football mismanagement at the accounting level. I can see it, I can understand it. But when you get an elongated period of time of hiding funds, not cooperating with Premier League investigations, paying

Clive Palmer17:04Double books on to certain people, players and management. While we are trying to fight not just we, the collective we are trying to fight with that. It's very, very difficult to take, I'm afraid.

Elliot Smith17:16How do you come in and establish yourself as a power in English football from a position of relative weakness? First of all, no one believes that you suddenly have these revenues. So let's let's set aside that that artifice, the idea that these revenues could have existed naturally, organically, and the charges seem to have proven that not to be the case. But think about Arsenal. Let's keep this a little Arsenal specific just for a moment, since this is ostensibly an Arsenal podcast. After the Invincibles, Arsenal were one of really two of the biggest clubs in England and certainly the world. And that was what Manchester City wanted to compete with. And what happens? We're trying to build a stadium. We're trying to live within the financial realities of paying for that stadium and going through a different period in our club's history in terms of how we're trying to stay at the top of the game. Atabayor, Nazri, Cliche, Sanya, Torrey, all the city. What do you do if you're Manchester City? You say, Who can we target from the big group? Who can we knock down a peg? Because if they're knocked down a peg, we can move up a peg. Who can we go after? And yep,

Tim Stillman18:19Sterling as well from Liverpool.

Elliot Smith18:21Sterling from Liverpool is a great shout. Absolutely. They went after the clubs they could go for, weakened them, strengthened themselves at the expense of those teams, and were able to leapfrog giant clubs like Arsenal and Liverpool. And I want to say something to the people that would say, But Elliot, the F FP rules, the financial regulations, really they came in to calcify league structure. To allow the big clubs to stay ahead of the smaller clubs, to make it harder for the smaller clubs to get into their cartel, as it's sometimes called. And let me be clear about this. Even if that's true, and there may be truth to it, those were the rules. They were agreed to by the member clubs. And you may not like them, but if they are the rules, you follow them. Manchester City could have lobbied to get the rules changed. They could have lobbied to other smaller clubs to say these rules benefit them, let's get rid of them. They didn't do that. Instead, they flouted those rules per these charges. They undermined the rules of the organization they participated in. And in doing that, filtered down damage throughout the footballing pyramid, including the increase of prices for players, the increase of prices for tickets, this escalation of financial warfare requiring clubs to seek owners from other countries, like the United States, by the way.

Elliot Smith19:41Who had the wherewithal financially to help their clubs compete in this new model because the ownership of privio previous generations did not have the financial capacity to compete in the new landscape. And the prevention of rules that could have changed the way that worked. So there's damage all the way down and throughout this league. And by the way, that's going to lead to potential lawsuits from virtually every member club. Probably a class action. They've reserved the right to take that action, by the way. So those rights have been reserved already. This has a long way to run in that respect. This is the end of Manchester City. That is the only outcome I see possible. The literal end of this football club as it exists. It will have to be. Because there will be endless legal cases brought, not just by the league, but by member clubs within English football and potentially throughout European football as a result of these findings. So I think forced sale or the complete dissolution of the club is the only outcome. We'll come to that in a moment. But Tim, the reality is that

Elliot Smith20:41The f the way they distorted the financial landscape meant that they not only had an advantage over other clubs on the pitch, they had the ability to distort the way other clubs had to start thinking about competing to win the things that they want to win and to keep their fans happy. And so while fans are clamoring for teams to go toe-to-toe with this financially doped club, the costs are going up. This created an immense amount of inflation inside of football that has had damages for just about everybody involved and everybody who loves and cares about football. So is it possible to really get to the bottom of the impact of what they've done beyond just the sporting implications of the titles? And we'll talk for a moment coming up on what should happen to those as well.

Tim Stillman21:27Yeah, no, and you're absolutely that that was something I really wanted to mention as well. That like a another thing that's really poorly understood. If you flood a sport or any industry or business with money, it does not generate itself. You are creating a hyperinflationary effect that we are seeing in football, where football has never been more lucrative, it's never got more revenues, but it's having to keep pushing for even more because the cost of competing has been hyperinflated. And so what clubs are doing is they're earning all these record revenues, but it's not enough still because it's not organic. It is money that has flowed in from elsewhere. And on top of that, what these charges say is a lot of that activity has been concealed as well. So what we've essentially done, football has put regulations in to try to quell the impact of this so that we have fewer Portsmouths, so we have fewer leads. So we have fewer berries, you know, clubs just like going to the wall trying to compete. Particularly in the case of like Portsmouth and Leeds, that's more pertinent to like someone Man City, like clubs who nearly bankrupted themselves trying to compete. And and you're you're absolutely right, like my season ticket price is still going up. I think it's gone up 10% last two or three years, right? I'm not

Tim Stillman22:53I think Arsenal have something to answer for there as well, don't get me wrong. But a lot of that is because the price of competing is so, so high. And that's because of money that has flooded in from outside. So then you're chasing your tail afterwards, trying to generate that revenue on top. And but I think in terms of like the previous damage, I think it's incalculable. It's absolutely incalculable. I do think I'd I don't know how much jurisdiction the Premier League has here to really do this. But I almost feel like what's got to happen for the sake and the sanity of football, and it's unsatisfying, is to just go, we can't relitigate the past. Like we just can't. So I'm not really exercised about I tend to think just as a point of principle the title should be taken off Man City and not allocated. But yeah I think that almost what I guess I would like to see happen is almost the Premier League among themselves to say, Look, we can't reliquate the last seventeen years 'cause this will go on forever and I followed South American football, right? And this

Tim Stillman24:06This stuff happens a lot and it's so unhealthy. There's a Brazilian club called Hessefi. They won the league in nineteen eighty seven. There was a legal case around it. The league title was only officially awarded to them in a court in two thousand nineteen. You can't have that. You can't have that. It will go on for years and years. And I almost feel like what the Premier League have to do is like, right, we're not gonna re litigate, but in order to satisfy that thirst for litigation, we're gonna throw the book. At Manchester City and we're gonna do it properly and we're gonna get them out of the league. Now, this maybe brings us on to the punishment conversation. I think it's difficult to just relegate them because then the EFL have to accept them and they have to like get rid of someone. So then you have to do a points deduction that effectively relegates them. I think you guys covered this on Friday though. That's fraught with difficulty because you don't want a scenario where all of their games are meaningless because there's too much there's too much potential for skullduggery there, about which games they decide to you've almost got to do like a it's fifty points. So you've got a small chance if you win every point of staying up so that's meaningful. But the damage historically, shall we say, is totally incalculable. And and you know, to re arsenalize this a little bit, and this is small beans across like the whole

Tim Stillman25:32Spectrum, but there are lots of other podcasts and lots of other articles that are going to deal with that. Something I feel very sour about. And Arsenal are okay. We've just won the league. We're all right. We we're not like the real victims here. You know, if I were on a Liverpool podcast, the fact that Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool got one Premier League title, that's a bit of a disgrace. But it's what I what we can't get back is the credibility we lost. Arsenal haven't won the league for twenty two years, they're not competing, and then you get like dickheads Bernardo Silva, they finally manned up and all this stuff. And like we can't get that back, all that criticism we got for basically not being out able to outrun someone who's got a jet pack on. And there are again, there are people in the media, I think, who have to reflect on some of the things they have been saying. Over the last five to ten years and reflect and say, was w was I being a bit stupid there? And like I said earlier, I'm sorry, this is not just something that all of a sudden dawned on everyone because those emails were leaked in 2018. We can all see what they said, so people knew the context in which teams like Arsenal were trying to compete, and I think a lot of people need to reflect on that.

Elliot Smith26:56Th there's two contracts. One with Manchester City, one with Al Jazeera. Same s same person signed both. Okay? Like that was for Mancini, Roberto Mancini contracts, right? I this is out there. This stuff is out there if you want to see it. I mean, look, you only have to look as far as this summer. Do we get Morgan Rogers if City don't go to a hundred and sixteen million for Elliot Anderson? You know what? These prices get inflated that way. They go to a price no one else can go to, and then everybody else costs more. Right, that they can go to 125 for Enzo. Right? And by the way, I again I cannot emphasize this strongly enough. There will be people that will say, Boo hoo, you just wanted to stay the powerhouse financially while the other small clubs couldn't compete. That is not the point. And saying that gives cover to criminality. The rules were established. If you don't like them, you can change them, but you must follow them. And they did not. And I another reason why I think this is the end of Manchester City is look at the LA Clippers. The LA Clippers were involved in the NBA in a similar-ish kind of situation where they funneled money to a player around the rules using advertising schemes. Not only have they been their owner can't go to games, can't be participating in the club for years, the executives have six month bans. They have five years of draft bans, they can't get first round draft picks for five years, but there are now criminal cases open, wire fraud, tax evasion, potentially RICO charges.

Elliot Smith28:24This isn't just going to lead to lawsuits from other clubs. There is potential criminality here that will need to be investigated now. Fraud, tax evasion, right? Things like that. And it, by the way, it isn't just the sporting part of it, because there are people that'll say, well, the money never won a game. The money never scored a goal. Of course. Hey, if you let me pick the 11 best players in world football and put them on my team, I'm going have a good team. No one could deny City were a good team because they were able to build an all-star team. But they didn't just do that, did they? Because Darren England. And Michael Oliver were paid 20,000 pounds to go to Abu Dhabi in referee games. Do we really want to pick at the scabs of that? Do we really believe, are we so naive as to believe that there was nothing going on there untoured? We don't know. But certainly the association is damaging. And we can look at some of the rulings and we can look at some of the decisions that were made in games. So the spirals of this, the tentacles of this dig into everything. And that, Clive, for me, is why I think it is very difficult to identify the correct. Punishment here because the tentacles of this touch refereeing, they touch the sport the player comp acquisition, obviously, they touch criminality, there's going to be compensation for other clubs. So d have you started to think about a framework of punishment that would make sense? Forget what could happen. What would make sense to you as a framework of punishment for this kind of wrongdoing?

Clive Palmer29:46Yeah, it depends where your priorities are. My priorities are not Manchester City but the rest of the Premier League and English football as a whole. And the most important thing, once you get past the emotional side of what the should happen, what couldn't happen, you can say they need to be expelled. You've said it there you go, clipped up out there on the internet. They are expelled. Then what happens then to the Premier League? What you think that the Spanish league and the German league are just and the French league are looking at us laughing, thinking I knew there was something dodgy about that league? That a whole league reputation suffers. We're all part of that, right? We all love the Premier League. So we're all part of that. I used to get really, I still get upset, but really upset about the Chelsea coming in and then City coming in. But what people did is they accepted me with open arms. They knew there were some things that didn't smell right. But the league was growing. People were earning. Some of those media people. They they took a blind eye. Some were really brave and wrote books about it and stayed in the room and really highlighted it. And we know those people are. Some of our old our old executives stayed in the room, fought against them, even to the cost of their own reputations. We know who those people are. But Manchester City as a club are very aggressive. Very aggressive legally and very aggressive in their actions. And it's very difficult for some people to put their head above the parapet.

Clive Palmer31:09And say what we all knew needed to be set. Because there are lawyers out there and they've got a lot of lawyers. As Ellie, if you got money, you got the best lawyers. It's as simple as that.

Elliot Smith31:18Well they clive, they're on record. They said they'd rather spend millions and millions and millions on lawyers than ever settle the case or reach a settlement here. So th they are on record saying they would rather paper their opposition to death.

Clive Palmer31:30Yeah, exactly. And even now that's a tactic, right? And that's a tactic to be, is it adversory and really be aggressive in how you do this? And and they've chosen that path. I actually think that the leak, however it happened, doesn't really matter, was maybe a potential to say, This is now out there. I'm flying a kite, Nancy. You have a chance before we come out with a formal announcement to say, How am I gonna be? Do I want to show any contrition? Do I want to reach out and reach a settlement for the betterment of the English game? What's the first thing we've heard? We've heard their chairman come out and say, don't worry about it, we've got this all covered. We're really, really confident. Nothing's changed since this date in 2023. And it's like, they don't care. They literally do not care. And that I find sad for the for the English game, but I also find sad for the Man City fans that are absolutely worried at the moment. They have fans like we do. They've been going for many, many years. They were there before in the Paul Dikoff days. And they've they've had a good laugh at everyone's expense, in particular Manchester United, who I feel incredibly sorry for, with them coming in, disrupting the whole city. Talk about parking tanks on your lawn like Abramovich did.

Clive Palmer32:48Karaiki, they've really parked on their lawn and absolutely dominated them for a decade or so. And they're they've had to s wear that, right? So So yeah, it's I there's so many tentacles to this. It's almost like which one do you want to be upset about the most? But when I sit and I breathe and I say, you know what I care about the most? I care about very fortunate enough to go to Arsenal every week and watch a Premier League game, which I am so invested in. And if you mess with my investment because you can't bother to wait to do things organically, you're not in my good books, mate. You're not in my good books. And there are t hundreds of millions that tune to the Premier League every single week and you have just dismissed them for your own gains. So for me, if you want to go back to punishment, now you've got me going, Elliot. Wanna go back to punishment,

Elliot Smith33:42There we go.

Clive Palmer33:43There's only one punishment that suits me, really, and that's expel them from the Premier League.

Elliot Smith33:48Yeah, that's it.

Clive Palmer33:50And and the fines should be significant, so they can be redistributed amongst the Premier League and down the down the tier of football to make sure EFL clubs get some of this as well. And that's how you deal with people that actually put everything about our in our game to the back to the secondary, to their own personal beliefs. And we all know we want to compete. But there's competing and there's competing. And I don't think they care about the rest of the English game. So for me, expel and move on from there.

Elliot Smith34:21Yeah, Clive, I couldn't agree more. I do want to cover a little bit about what happens this season. I it's boring, but I want to talk a little bit about the sporting impact of this season. When we think this could wrap up and we could have something, and I wanna say something by the way, just to make sure that it's out there. Everything we're saying on this episode of this podcast is based on the reporting that a hundred and fourteen of these charges were found to be confirmed. Obviously, were that not to be the case, that would change what we're saying on this podcast, but it's based on that wide global reporting from legitimate news sources. So important to have that out there. The word allegedly isn't totally dead, is it? But we should we should just get that out there. Tim, before we move on to this season, the sporting impact for this season, a little bit more on punishment, a few things. Some of the reporters have talked to experts in this and have said that it's unlikely that stripping titles would be the preferred punishment. Now I want to be clear. I get that stripping titles is a non-satisfactory punishment. For example, if you said to City right now, here's your punishment. Hundred million pounds and all your titles strip. They'd snap your hand off to take that. Because the money mount means nothing to them. And they've already won those titles and everybody celebrated them and we got beaten for them. Mikel Arteta could've lost a job for not competing with this team. Jurgen Klopp, to your point, won title, right? A l a lot of teams that could have won FA Cups, that could have won other things, didn't didn't make champions leagues, things like that. You can't get that back. But I think you strip the title and do other stuff. I wouldn't

Elliot Smith35:47Have the titles handed to the second place team though. What I think would be really powerful, and Clive talked about this on Friday Night Clive a bit when we were first working through this in real time. I think you strip the titles and you don't replace them. And what that actually does is it creates a shame that hangs over them for years. Because when someone looks up who won the Premier League in this year or that year, and it says no one, it continually pumps fuel into the engine of reminding people about this shameful moment in football history. And so by leaving it blank and Clive, you want to come back on that quickly, yeah.

Clive Palmer36:20Yeah, only because I everything you said there I agree with 'cause I said it on Friday. But I actually had a further thought and I wonder if you guys agree. Because then you have a gap in the Premier League history, right? Which you continually have to ask about, right? So I wind up by putting a an asterisk next to it. Then the only t person that needs to answer that question, you've got Man City asterisk. The only people that need to answer that question is Man City. And not the Premier League. If you take it out, maybe the Premier League has more chance. For I don't think either's the worst thing in the world, Eliot. But I am worried about the stain on the league. But you know what, mate? Sometimes you've got to rip the plaster off, isn't you? You've got to rip the plaster off to go to move forward. Don't worry about this, worry about that. Rip the plaster off. Feel the pain. We all know football works. Mate, soon there's a big game coming for the weekend. We're all into that big game. And then Mahage doesn't make a substitution. We're all after him. And and it moves on very, very quickly the news cycle. So rip the plast off, take the pain, 'cause that will sustain you amongst the other big five leagues in Europe. Make sure you're at the forefront of the Champions League. 'Cause that's what really, really matters. So rip it off, mate. Take it. Take the pain.

Elliot Smith37:34Yeah, i go ahead, Tim, please. Mm-hmm.

Tim Stillman37:34Yeah, there's there's gonna be d I kind of repeating what I said earlier, there's credibility damage either way. So let's do the credibility damage but be in the right. And and like I said earlier, the Premier League deserves credit because that's what they've done. They've taken the path

Clive Palmer37:47Yeah. Very brave.

Tim Stillman37:48That we know this is staining our product, but it's the right thing to do. And also the other point of punishment is deterrent, right? Is like if this is what you do to the competition and they've already missed some opportunities here, right? Chelsea, they should not escape the fire here because Chelsea were found guilty of some serious stuff as well. And obviously the context is different because they self-reported. I still happen to think. They allowed that to count far, far too much. That should have led to a more lenient punishment, yes, but they went far too far the other way. And so in a sense, we've already whitewashed a little period of Premier League history there and said, yeah, well Chelsea were cheating, but is what it is, isn't it? It's very important this opportunity is not missed. This is massive, this is global. Everyone knows about this and there has to be sunlight on it and it and it has

Tim Stillman38:50At at an absolute minimum, it has to end with them not being in the league anymore. And I and

Clive Palmer38:55Premier League. Yeah.

Tim Stillman38:56I don't think that just means going down to the championship, doing what Juve did, right? Juve went down to Serie B, they won it, and they were back winning leagues three years later. It has to be more severe than that, I think. I think the punishment should be staged over several seasons. And you could say, you could even make the argument instead of like a points penalty. That effectively ensures relegation, you could just say, Do you know what? We're going to dock you 20 points for the next five seasons so you don't get in the Champions League. So you probably won't go down, but no Europe. So you don't get any of that money like for five years or like 30 points over five years or whatever. Like their legs have got to get cut off somewhere. But I think they've got to come out of the competition because they've violated the trust of all of the other clubs in there, of the rule makers, of the fans, of every of their own fans, whether their own fans want to accept that or not, that's none of my business, frankly. I don't care. I don't care about retroactive punishment, really. Like I said, as a point of principle, I think you make a great case there, Elliot. They should definitely have the titles taken away. They shouldn't be reallocated. We should have null and void on those years so that it stays historically. But ultimately what I'm really interested in is the future.

Tim Stillman40:16Punishment and it has to be harsh, it has to be severe, particularly because, like you say earlier, a lot of this is legally like on pure legal grounds, incredibly dicey. But I think as well as that like the this the just the viol like the lack of cooperation here. Not even a lack of cooperation. This is like lack of cooperation even suggests we're ignoring your email or something. Exa exactly, but that

Elliot Smith40:48Well, there's thirty five charges of non cooperation. So I Yeah.

Tim Stillman40:52That's almost too passive a word for it. It is refusal. It's refusal. It's not we forgot to it's exactly that. Yeah.

Elliot Smith40:58It's antagonism. It's oppositional. It's adversarial, right? It's yeah. Yeah.

Clive Palmer41:00It's more it's worse than that. It's worse than that. They they are quite aggressive off the pitch, right? Very scary. Very scary.

Elliot Smith41:04Yeah. Well, the there are stories of trackers being put on people's cars and there are pe people who have been doxxed. There's all kinds of nasty, nasty shit that went on here. And I just think, look, the f the absolute foundation of any sporting endeavor is a set of rules that people agree to abide by. That is true on the pitch. That is true in the boardroom. That is true wherever you are. You sit down to play poker with 10 people. If one person keeps cheating, you don't let them keep sitting at your poker table. You can't play poker with them. If there is a club that every time there's a referee taking charge of a match, you don't know if you can trust their judgment. If every time they go into the transfer market, you don't know if they're being accurate and fair in the way that they're pursuing the acquisition of that player. If every time they participate in a League meeting, you don't know if payments are being provided to certain people to get a certain outcome. How can you be in an organization with a member like that? This is a member based organization. They are a member. That see, that's really the fundamental thing. Again, you can say the rules favor Arsenal and Liverpool and United, but they're the rules and the members agree upon them. And the members can change them. So you have to abide by them or you don't have a sporting organization. They did. Yeah.

Tim Stillman42:20They changed PSR, right? And they changed it to SCR. Okay. Might might, people will still have issues with SCR, but

Elliot Smith42:26The rules are different now. Yep.

Tim Stillman42:28They changed them. So e even something like third party, what was it? Not third party ownership. Exactly.

Elliot Smith42:34A P. T. Associated Party Transactions. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Tim Stillman42:37Even that, right? Like I think this is incredibly murky that the Premier League clubs are like, no, no, we want to keep those in. But ultimately there was a vote held and the clubs agreed that you could do APT, right? And that's it's like the Premier League is democratic in that respect and you have to get fourteen clubs minimum to vote for rules and to ride roughshod over that and say, No, we're we're above all that, we're more important than all that you can't have that in your competition.

Clive Palmer43:08Yeah, and those APT rules, Man City pushed them and Man City pushed them to change. If they weren't happy from the financial rules, they could have pushed for them from within the building. But they chose they chose not to, right? My worry in all this is the Premier League now are sort of on the outside of this. So it's all done by is it three unknown people, independent regulator of some sort. And so the Premier League s the Premier League can

Elliot Smith43:29Mm-hmm. Yep. Panel of three yep. Panel of three j judges.

Clive Palmer43:34Only suggest a punishment from where they are. Obviously they're gonna have a strong line, but they can't so we're we as Premier League people, us three, we're thinking they gotta do this, they gotta do that. Actually the independent panel may have a different view of what p what punishment will should be and could be. And Premier League can only suggest that. So my worry is that where we are with our emotions as of match going fans and people that care about every single game, may not match the independent panel per se, and then we can end up with a disconnect. Go ahead, Tim.

Tim Stillman44:05It's also very difficult because it's unprecedented. Usually punishments are based on precedent and there isn't one. And what you find when I understand this can't go to CAS, but when stuff goes to CAS and stuff like that, you almost always find it gets diluted. And Elliot, you've been an attorney. That's how the law works, right? The law is like you have to be totally and utterly, utterly, utterly sure, and you have to be able to prove it beyond every single reasonable doubt. And that's how this stuff can get. Diluted, but the other fine line, the Premier League of walking, there are undesirable things, right? That what like however we all feel about it, Manchester City folding, for example, would be a really bad outcome as well. And and all joking aside, nobody should want that, and so you need to be careful not to levy a punishment that makes that likely or possible. Too much and so there is and again you guys talked about it on Friday, you can unin you know, unintentionally threaten the credibility of the league with certain types of punishment. Like i it is a bit of a fine line and I'm really interested to see where it goes.

Elliot Smith45:19Two things quickly, then we're going we are going to talk little bit about points deductions, when they could happen, how it affects this season. I want to talk all about that, but a couple of things. One, remember the standard or burden of proof here is a bit different. In the Cass case in 2020, it was comfortable satisfaction. All right. In this case, it is balance of probabilities. In the US, we would call that preponderance of the evidence. It's simply over 50%. There's a lower burden of proof that has to be met here. In a criminal trial, for example, it's beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt, beyond reasonable doubt, different standards for burden of proof. The burden of proof bar here is lower, which means they have been able to meet it. It might be different if they went to a court. They cannot get to court very easily. This is important to understand. They get an appeal, okay? And let's just do this timeline because it's important. They'll be within a certain period of time, I think it's like 14 days. They yeah, it is 14 days. City of the League can appeal. The appeal can last five days with a 12 week target for having a resolution to that. For them to get to high court would be really difficult. There's the arbitration act. Only S sixty seven and sixty-eight are permitted. Clubs have waived S sixty-nine, which is the points of law. So they'd have to show there was some serious irregularity, a lack of jurisdiction, which clearly would not be the case here, or a serious irregularity. That's a very, very high bar to meet. CAS is not applicable. They can't get there. So really they have a difficult path to get anywhere other than their provided app appeal path here, which again.

Elliot Smith46:43They have 14 days to file for, a five-day hearing, a 12-week target to have it done. So, that this should move quite a bit quicker. The league does have the prerogative to announce the punishment immediately after the sanctions hearing and potentially put it in place immediately. I think that's murky because then I think that you could say that that is prejudicial and they could go to court and ask for it to be stayed. So my guess is that the sanctions will be announced potentially after the sanction hearing. But stayed until the resolution the finality of the appeal. But we'll see. Let's talk about what those things could be. Let's talk about the impact on this season in particular. But I want to caution you about one thing. The playbook that City's gonna put in place here is very clear. They're going to get all their influencers and all their media talking what about ism? What about the red cartel? What about the rules that were designed to keep Arsenal and Liverpool and United at top? What about when the Red Cartel tried to do the Super League? They're just as guilty. Their hands are unclean. They're not ethical either. That is a distraction technique. At the end of the day, they will try to get you to think about everything other than what happened here, which is that Manchester City are guilty of 114 of 115 charges per the reporting, and that their impact on the sport is incalculable as we've discussed. So we will get into that more in a moment.

Elliot Smith51:13Clive, let's let's just get to this part of it. Expel them. Fine. Dissolve them. Fine. Ownership gone. Fine. All those things could potentially be reasonable. Outcomes, strip the titles. Again, agree. But let's set all of that aside for a minute and let's just talk about the sporting side of it. A potential points deduction. Now, realize it's if we're lucky, I think a potential punishment could come into play by spring of 27. Or, you know, and people might say it can't it couldn't even possibly be that soon. I think it could, but it could not. They could also decide to try to put it in place after they announce it, even prior to the appeal. But what is a reasonable if we're doing points deductions as a punishment, what is a reasonable points deduction? How do you even think about what to do with that?

Clive Palmer51:59Yeah, so Hart says expel them to the to the moon, right? That's what you do. And once you breathe, you think, hold on a minute, yeah. What's the best thing to do with this sort of case? Because of their reach, because of their success. And they've won eight Premier Leagues. That's a lot of success. They won a treble, won a Champions League, They're so bored of winning league cups, their fans don't even turn up anymore. And I didn't go to Carlift this year, but I heard from people that went it's it was all Arsenal fans. And it was like a party and they just don't they don't bother. They've had too much success. They're bored of it. Right? So that's on that side of things. And I must admit, the thing that's making me the one I'm coming down on is the one, the twenty five, thirty point thing for five years, for example. And I think what that does is that slows down the sporting ambition of Manchester City. That means players will not be playing in Europe. So the best players will not want to go. So it changes their model. And it changes they're gonna have to have different type of players that wanna wait, be around maybe younger players. They're gonna be in the league, but they can't be in the Champions League 'cause they haven't got the points. And I think that's probably 'cause because they're so integral, that's probably a s a reasonable way where you can preserve some reputation in the Premier League, but put them into a situation where they're slowed down. I've seen this in other parts of the world,

Clive Palmer53:24Rangers, for example, got put down to the bottom league. I don't think Scottish football has recovered since they did that. 'cause and I know people have said in the comments, but Rangers were one of two clubs, really strong. They took one out, which really took away the competitive angle of things. Well, it still suffered for it, and there's more than just one club in the Premier League. There's twenty. You still want there to be a level of competition, which is the thing that we get so excited about. We get excited about that Fierce competition from people who can be patient and can wait and can be smart. The three B's, for example, we can all name, they are they're learning how to compete. They're so smart. Look what Liverpool have done in recent years. Manchester started to struggle a little bit, they're trying to find a way like we did. We have worked it out and finally got there. How good did it feel? And my goodness, am I so happy that we beat them last season while Pep was still here and no one can say we didn't we beat a damaged man city? We beat a strong Man City for the first time in the tr in a title race. Every time they've lost the titles when they've not been in the race. But they were in the race and we beat them. And I feel so proud about that. And it's really important. That's that's a mark in history. And so yeah, I think that mid table os obscurity may not suit everybody, but I think it's maybe the best place to land. But I also feel strongly that the fine should be significant.

Clive Palmer54:53And because there are lots of clubs out there that could do with some money. Right? And and I think that can be redistributed. And I'm really strong on that. The football pyramid in the in England is absolutely wonderful. And if there are people gonna try to put it under threat then they should be punished financially. I'm not talking about twenty million like Chelsea got. I'm talking about hundreds of millions, impossible, and that can be sent down the league.

Elliot Smith55:16Yeah, I will say that, there was a there was a steroid era in baseball in the United States, a doping era, and there were players like Barry Bonds who were guilty of doing it. And th there is this weird thing people do that say, Well, on the pitch it was just players playing football and look at how good they were. But it's kinda like in the baseball thing. Imagine being the player that wasn't taking steroids, trying to win the home run title against someone who was. You cannot compete. And then you start doing unhealthy things yourself or unnatural things yourself to compete, or you throw in the towel. So I mean it and by the way, the impact there is that most of those players from the steroid era were just denied admission into the Hall of Fame. Their records were not celebrated. And I do think shame works. You know, I want to be clear about this. Sponsors don't want to be associated with shame. Fans, new fans don't want to support the shameful team. Shame works. Shame works to shrink. The impact of the sports washing project. Right. And and Clive, you want to come back on that?

Clive Palmer56:18Sorry mate, that's a brilliant, brilliant thing about Shane. I just wanted to say that with the Tour de France, for example, and it was going through its really bad period. I can remember this clearly because I love my cycling and cycling history in particular, and a lot of the major cyclists in the past have obviously got a stain against them. But there was a period when, say, German TV just stopped covering the Tour de France. I can remember it clearly. My god, no German TV covering the Tour de France. We want to get to it, we don't want to get to a stage where TV contracts are not as Valuable as they once were. Sky's position as a chief broadcaster needs to be really thought through, and they need to be very careful with what they say. We were quite critical about them on Friday night because an hour in I hadn't said anything. But they've got a lot to be thinking about right now. And they can add their own pressure, by the way, to this. Because they are they've they've got an investment in this game, and basically Man City have besmirched that as well, you know. So the technicals on this area w we could be we could spend every single day this international break talking about this and we wouldn't cover it properly. It's that broad.

Elliot Smith57:20Yeah, we still have to talk about Pep Guardiola's legacy, things like that, but shame does work and I players don't want to be associated with a shameful club, sponsors don't want to be associated with it, Tim, and fundamentally, you know, I mean, look, I'll just use my eyes. I don't have brand numbers to back this up, but like the Lance Armstrong thing, Lance Armstrong's brand in the US used to be unassailable. You saw so many people with that merchandise and like after you know, after he was stripped to those Tour de France titles and was found to have been doping, you know, there was there was a big impact on that. So shame does work, you know.

Tim Stillman57:49It really does. I think that's a really good point. And that's that's another reason I'm not hugely exercised about the retroactive side of it, because ultimately that will be decided anyway in the court of public opinion. And the court of public opinion will tell you everything that Man City achieved in that period is irrevocably stained. And it just is. It's as simple as that. And there is nothing that anyone associated with Man City can say or do to claw that back. There's nothing in unless they win the appeal and new evidence comes to light or anything like that that shows like no no guilt. Whatever happens. To their Wikipedia section, to the Premier League website. Even their forward even if their you know, punishment going forward is not deemed satisfactory, public opinion will decide that that all of that is worthless, really. And again, I'm not interested in what Man City fa fans think about that. That's their business. I think if they come out with nonsense, you can push back on it. But how they reckon with that morally, whatever, that's it's none of my business. I don't care. And it's not for me to adjudicate.

Tim Stillman59:05And that's the nature of fandom as well, isn't it? Let's be honest. If this was us, we'd at least prevaricate a little bit around some of the kind of moral quandary of this, but they cannot get that back, that kind of public opinion. And actually, they never really had it, to be honest. And w the grand irony here is that a lot of fans quote unquote wanted them to win the league quite a lot because it was like the next best thing to it being unallocated. So there's there might end up being a real irony that that might literally be the case. That like most people don't care about Man City, and it's like, god, I d I don't want Arsenal winning it, I don't want Liverpool winning it, Man City winning it, I can ignore that kind of thing. And there might be a grand irony here that that might literally have been the case. However, and I think Andrew and James discussed this very, very well earlier as well. Some of that has been really unhealthy as well over the last couple of years. You you can't have a situation where no one feels strongly about the champions. You can't. Like we get frustrated with the public perception of Arsenal sometimes, and that's our right as fans as well. But at least some people feel something about us, right? Even if it's they don't they score from too many bloody corners or whatever. You know, and that's fair enough. Like you want the champions to provoke some kind of feeling, be it

Tim Stillman1:00:27Admiration, cynicism, dislike, like all of that is important. You can't have a situation where people don't care about the champions because they kind of think they're cheating anyway, and because they haven't evoked any strong feelings in anyone. And that's you know, I guess if you're looking at this as a I always think sports washing is a slightly misleading term in that. I don't necessarily think these guys are trying so much to launder their reputations, maybe a little bit. It's more a soft power play, right? It was for Roman Abramovich, I think it is for Man City as well. I don't think they're trying to convince football fans and, people on Twitter to like them or like Manchester City. It goes a bit higher than that. And that's the other thorny thing here, right? Like Abu Dhabi in terms of investment, that's that's a big old tentacle. The current Prime Minister of the UK was until very recently the mayor of Manchester. And one of the things that's thorny about this is, you know, the Abu ADUG. They have genuinely done a lot of renovation work in the east of Manchester in particular, which has been really beneficial for the area.

Tim Stillman1:01:47And you know, those you can hold those two truths. The reasons that they were doing that, of course, again, is probably soft power. But so there's so much that's complicated here in terms of, you know, political relations where our own Prime Minister is a bit like, god, actually you did some good stuff for me while I was mayor and I was able to get like the reflective glory of like the investment in the area and that's probably helped me to become Prime Minister. There's there's all sorts of directions here, which is which is could be so damaging. And again, it just goes to show why nation states shouldn't be allowed to own football clubs. And that's another thing that's coming out here, isn't it? Because there's always been this it's not it's not it's not Abu Dhabi that own Manchester City. It's the Abu Dhabi I forget what the U stands for, something group and it and it's like yeah but we know who that is really. Kind of thing. And actually a lot of that probably gonna be quite bullish about that now. And if you're Manchester City, is that your way out of trying to get the punishment levied down a little bit to exert political influence? And it's so so murky. And I all I know is that however vindicated, righteous some of us might rightfully feel, I feel like that. I'm not gonna lie about that.

Tim Stillman1:03:13None of this is good for football. None of it is good. It's it feels like a real reckoning to me. It feels on the same level as when the FBI went into that hotel and no not Watergate, but it feels like I think it was twenty fifteen when there were like arrests made at FIFA level and the FBI and Set Blatter's deposition. It it feels like that to me and it feels like the ripples of this could go on, whatever the punishments, whatever happens, the ripples of this are gonna run and run for quite a long time, I think.

Elliot Smith1:03:52But what you cannot have is you cannot have crime fatigue. You cannot have cheating fatigue where people just say, football's been bent forever, it's so corrupt. Who who cares? This can we just get the games back? I just I just want to watch football. That's the problem. The the problem is that there are a lot of people, and by the way, I understand if you're in that group, who just wanna watch football. And that's that's an issue. I mean, I do have to laugh. I think the United Arab Emirates officials privately cautioning that a harsh verdict against Manchester City could damage diplomatic and bilateral relationships with the UK, is raising a lot of questions already answered by their we're not doing soft power exercise t-shirt. But here's what we need to do. We need to let Tim go and I do want to talk about this season. I think this season is still a live conversation. I want to talk about Pep Guardiola as well. So Tim, we'll let you go from here. But Thank you for doing this. And I think it's fair to say we're probably going to be discussing this a little bit more in the coming weeks and months.

Tim Stillman1:04:57Yeah, hopefully. We should. This should stay very much top of the agenda. This is putting aside the Arsenal side of it, it's incredibly serious for the sport and you're right, we can't get fatigued about this.

Elliot Smith1:05:10Yep. All right. Thanks, Tim. So Cleve, I've been thinking a little bit about the competitiveness of this league season and the impact that this has. The first thing I would say just right off the bat, let's say they were able to hand down punishment next week. I know that's not likely. I think you do have one risk, which is let's say it's a hundred point deduction that you know is going to relegate them. First of all, the EFL has been saying they might work to keep City out of their leagues, which would be great. But you still have a league season to play. And this is where it's difficult. First of all, if you give City the season off, if you basically say, hey, you're gonna be relegated no matter what, they become PSG. They rest for the FA Cup, they rest for the League Cup, they rest for the Champions League, they go win all of those. And that's the worst case outcome. And then, by the way, within the league, they can decide to play their players against this team and not that team and really distort the competitive balance of this league season in a major way. So it's almost like shooting one bullet at their head and one bullet at your chest. It's it's not ideal.

Elliot Smith1:06:11But again, I understand people that think it needs to be a severe penalty. I tend to love the idea. I think expulsion and dissolution and ownership being expelled, all of those things should be done. But barring that, I do sort of like the idea of a 35 point penalty each of the next four seasons or something where they probably can't get into Europe. They can't win the title. They they have to fight to stay up so the competitive balance stays there. But just from a player standpoint, I mean their agents are going to be saying things to them in their ear. Do you want to stay here? Should we try to get you out of here? What do you they're gonna be saying to their agents, what does this mean to me? Can I get out of my contract? How City have started their league season on fire. They've won five of five, but by the same token, I think they, there are flaws in that team that we could talk about from a footballing standpoint. How do you see this impacting this league season and City's ability to be competitive across multiple fronts?

Clive Palmer1:07:03Yeah, so you started there with some punishments and I think

Elliot Smith1:07:05Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Clive Palmer1:07:07The punishment I don't think we can gauge it. Let's be honest. I don't think many of us thought it's gonna be a hundred and fourteen out of a hundred and fifteen charges would be found against them. So it's very difficult to gauge what could happen. But one thing that has changed, Elliot, since it's all started is there's now an independent regulator and that's at government level and they have got the ability, I believe, to listen to podcasts this weekend. To literally force a sale of the Man City. So that's the scale of punishments on the table here. It's just completely different to anything we've ever thought about. So when it comes down to effect to players, it almost feels small at the moment. But the effect to players, I don't know about you, but if it was me and I was working for a company that may not be as stable as it was until the for this announcement, I'll be thinking about my future. Football career is extremely short, you want to be in the best environment. I always qu quote the examples, not always, but I didn't last week, a few days. The examples of Declan Rice and Jude Bellingham, for example, that could have gone to Man City and signed the checks like everyone else has. But they chose not to the and Jude Bellingham used the words I want to go to a storied club, a club with history. And I thought, what a smart lad you are. Do you know what I mean? 'Cause

Clive Palmer1:08:24What a smart lad you are. Are you I want to control my career in a known entity. And by the way, we weren't just not perfect, right? And then same with Declan Rice. Declan Rice could have walked to Man City, stood next to Rodri and you we might as well have turned out the lights. Do you know what I mean? That literally that would have been it. And they forced the price up for him and he decided to go to Arsenal because if he won at Arsenal, it would mean more. Boy, did it mean a lot in May. Did it mean a lot? It certainly did. So he's been proven right. So have Man City players who by the way. They've taken their money. Lots of tier players do. Lots of youth players have done. They've taken their money. They're offered life changing money. It's very difficult to look at them and say, You should have seen through this. Very difficult. Someone taps you on the shoulder and gives you three times as much as anybody else. What do you do, mate? If you're an executive, three times as much, what do you do? You take it, don't you? You take it, you try to if you're you try to look beneath it. That must be okay. It must be okay. My dad always say to me, son, there's no such thing as free money in this world.

Clive Palmer1:09:24There just isn't and there's a price to pay for it. And I hope they pay that price. As for the players, let's see what happens. Because I remember the time Tim's gone now, but I remember the time we got our two points deducted back in the day, Arsenal, and that galvanized us massively. You might as well give us a league title that moment. It literally galvanized th they might be galvanized and say, you know what, we're gonna band together, we're gonna show everybody we're gonna win this league no matter what. And they could literally win the league before punishments have been handed out, which means what are we watching? And it comes back to it earlier. The bit that makes me emotional is please don't mess with my match day. It's very important to me that I can look and see and believe what I'm watching. I can remember when Ben Johnson got caught. Remember that one a few years ago when that happened that and the seismic hit when it was just like, my god, the Olympic final hundred meters and it's steroids. I can remember that press conference. I just didn't want to believe it because I just couldn't believe what I saw. Then I was told what I saw wasn't true. And that really hurt. It really hurts me that I love my sport. You know what I mean? And and athletics has had to struggle since then. Cycling's had periods of struggle since then. It is it's I don't wanna get too dramatic about it, because the Chelsea case showed you how some of it can be washed clean very quickly,

Clive Palmer1:10:43'Cause they're not okay, they may not be as bad, but some of what they did was not great. And they just walked away and they're completely clean in this, right? So things can change very quickly with messaging and PR, et cetera. But I think the court of public opinion is really speaking here earlier and it's gonna hit the players and hit their agents and I think it's gonna hit their motivations.

Elliot Smith1:11:03Yeah, I think that's correct. I mean, the other thing is and I almost feel bad for some of the rival managers in a way because every manager and maybe even every player in their press conference is gonna be asked about this for a while now. And you know, if you're a manager and you're trying to stay focused on the game in front of you, do you really wanna be expounding upon Manchester City's legal liability and what it does to the to the competitiveness of the league and thinking about years past. No, managers are crazy, right? They they're so focused, laser focused on the next game, they don't want to think about that. But they're gonna be put in that position. And, you know, I mean, Mikel's in the uncomfortable position of having obviously been at Manchester City. Now, I think to point the finger at an assistant coach at a club during that time is unfair, but it will happen as well. There'll be some people that decide to weaponize it in that way. So that's something that he's gonna have to wear. With Pep Guardiola, a lot of this falls squarely on him. You know, he spoke very clearly and loudly about this in the past. He just happened to depart this past summer, which obviously looks a little bit shady, and turning over some of their senior players in the same summer as well. How does this make you rethink Pep Guardiola, if at all, in terms of sort of his legacy and his quality as a manager?

Clive Palmer1:12:19Well, so I've met w I love you know, I l I think back to the Sarne Sterling team, which I really admired. You know, from a purely football tactical side of things, I really liked that team. We were nowhere near it, right? So you could mire other teams at that point. And what the top table looked like. And you can't for me, I just really enjoyed seeing that team. He's created some of the best teams I've seen in my life, his Barcelona teams, for example. I just love those teams, you know, even though they hurt us. Hey look, I don't know what to say. There's some people saying he's never won the league about the best players in and that his reputation yeah, he

Elliot Smith1:12:56In any league.

Clive Palmer1:12:58Yeah, but he's positioned himself to have the best players. He went to Bayern Munich, he scowled the German market, he brought in the best players that he saw in Germany, brought them into the Premier League, took the players from our from Liverpool and really smart, saw the Monaco team, took a players out of there. He's just really gone for it and why? Because they can afford to. W while we're buying Pablo Marie, right? They they can afford to go and get collar off and players like that that were top of their game at the time. And we had to go a different way because we have to cut our cough accordingly. And we're not the only ones, by the way. We're not the only ones. There are other teams and people not gonna want to hear it, but they're we lost the best team in our history, maybe to Abramovich, right? In two thousand three, two thousand and four. He came in and everything changed thereafter. And that team got disbanded and new ground came along and we had to we had to behave in a different way. Spurs had the best team in their history right in the middle of this Man City era. Right in whether you like it or not, the Deli Alley, Son, Kane team was right there and they could have done more and they weren't able to. Right. So and there are many stories like that. I know people don't want to hear the Spurs story, but let's be honest, we know our football, right? At that period of time, they beat us for five years in a row in the league. So let's be honest, they were better.

Clive Palmer1:14:16And they were very close to winning more things. As for the Klopp team, you know, Marne, Salah, Feminino, you know, Wine Haldeman, Henderson, these are this is a top, top, top level team. They had to fight against this team, got to 97 points, and didn't win the league. And this is all underpinned. Don't please don't stop at 2009 to 2018. This is all underpinned by that period and it's continued on thereafter. You know, and it's allowed them to be a brand that can attract people, that can compete with the very, very best in the world. And let's not talk about what happened to Real Madrid, Barcelona, fighting to compete with these English teams, right? To the point where they have to get together and try to create their own super league to try to make sure they can create an environment that kills the rest of the game. That's how desperate they were to try to compete. When you're the top of the tree, you create the fiscal environment for everybody else to follow. With their monetary power, they created that environment for everybody else and we have to live within it. We finally overcome it. Finally, you know, but it's taken a long time and others haven't managed to do it in the past.

Elliot Smith1:15:30If you take out nation state clubs, City and PSG, Mikel Arteta has three titles and two champions leagues. I mean, that that's what he's trying to go up against. And there are very few people outside of Arsenal circles who are going to quote feel bad for Arsenal. We have a billionaire owner, we have immense revenues, we have the capacity to compete. I think one thing that's overlooked with City, you know, can spend a lot of money and spend it badly. Manchester United exists, right? We can we can look at how you can spend a lot of money badly. Tottenham Hotspur exist. City can city can afford to paper over their mistakes, their errors, their 100 million pound flops, their 80 million pound flops. They can drive the price up for other players too, which prevent their rivals from getting players that might have s otherwise strengthened them. So, you know, there's a lot of things they did wrong that people just sort of overlook. One thing, also, by the way, that money allows you to do, not just buy better players, but get better executives, get better people behind the scenes. Better training, better doctors, better sporting directors, things like that. City are a very well-run club because they have the resources

Clive Palmer1:16:39Are the best people?

Elliot Smith1:16:40To be run like a Fortune 500 company. I mean, the thing people forget about football clubs, football clubs are very small businesses. These are very small businesses. You know, there are tire companies that make a hundred times the revenue of Arsenal football club, right? Like these are small businesses, they just touch a lot of lives. They they what do they have? 600 employees? There's a there's a software company you never heard of that's got five thousand employees and ten times the revenue of Arsenal Football Club. But Manchester City can be run like those bigger companies and acquire the talent of those bigger companies and have the wherewithal to compete in a way, not just on the pitch, but organizationally, that some of these other footballing organizations cannot compete as well. Where the PEP thing gets hard for me. Pep is clearly one of the most talented football managers in history. That just is what it is. You look at tactically what he does. Once you give him great players, what he's able to do with those great players is beyond question. Now, the fact that he had all those great players, that's where the cheating comes in. What makes it hard for me with Pep, though, is when you start to say things like Were there referees who went to the Emirates? Did those referees give them favorable calls? Were there things beyond just the sporting advantage?

Elliot Smith1:17:51Then you start to say, well, yeah, if you've got refs who slightly favor you and a financial capacity that other clubs don't have, how much did you actually achieve? So I think Pep is a great manager, but I think the extent to which I will think of Pep as the greatest is damaged by this, irreparably damaged by this. Not to mention that I think from an integrity standpoint, you probably have a responsibility to not want to be associated with it. And if you choose to be associated with it. Then you take the risk that your sporting accomplishments get wiped away if you're found guilty. I think that's the deal, right? You can't say, I'll benefit from the fraud while it's going on and then leave and not take the punishment from the fraud when it's found guilty. If you're going to stay at the club knowing these charges are hanging over them, you have to accept the hit to your reputation if those charges are confirmed. That's how it works.

Clive Palmer1:18:45And he s he came out very early and said, I've been told everything's okay and if it's not okay I will leave, but then proceeded to stay for another three, four years, right, and win everything else and go from there. It's where do you stop with this, Elliot? Where do you stop? I mean, think City beat Stoke and Watford in the FA Cup final. They've not won trophies in their recent history. You know, where d where do you stop with this? You know, and 'Cause you start thinking about nation states, just think about PSG and Man City, for example, and you start to think about the Madelawek penalty and you're thinking, Why didn't the referee give it? You you can you can not sleep over this stuff, mate. You really can,

Elliot Smith1:19:23Yeah. Yeah. It's really upsetting. It really is upsetting when you think about I mean, to the two seasons ago when I think about some of the refereeing decisions, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but you can't look at a hundred and fourteen of these charges being confirmed in the way City have operated and not fall victim to conspiratorial thinking. You can't. You can't help it.

Clive Palmer1:19:42And it you just got you know, there are times we've spoken even this summer we've spoken about the fl you know the Transa window and I've used words like fiscal discipline and got a couple of slaps in the comments for it. Because we all want a new striker here and there, don't we? But the most important thing for me is the values of the club. And I've said it a million times and I'll continue to say it, and I know it's boring, but the values of the club is really important to me how they operate. If I feel they're operating not so well, I get really upset by that. Everyone makes mistakes, right, in a world where you've got a hundred million people looking at every single word on your website. But those values are so important. So right now today, touch wood, the way our run, even though I don't agree with absolutely everything, but I do agree with the values and I do agree that they need to show discipline to stay within the rules so we can look at our club and say, Okay, mate, why don't you just get this and get that so we can fight off these other clubs? But I'd much rather do it at a pace that we can do it at. Be sustainable, it's really important and for those people that wanted those extra strikers, well we all do, but it may breach a Eurefa rule to do it. I'm hoping today that we all feel like, you know what, I'm glad we're on the right side of history and I and I hope we are. Because

Clive Palmer1:20:57You never can tell, right? I hope we are.

Elliot Smith1:20:59See, this is the thing, right? And this is where I think City will try to find purchase in their attack against these charges is I don't need to believe my club is morally flawless or perfectly ethical to know that what City did is wrong. And and that don't that's where the whataboutism will creep in. Because they will try to say, well, you did this or your sponsor did that or your player did that. And they're right. Because none of these clubs are perfectly well run, none of them are perfectly ethical, but the rules that create the framework for the sporting competition they participate in are the essential foundation for the fairness of the game. And every member club agrees to them. And City violated those rules a hundred and fourteen times, and they distorted the competition and they distorted the price of football globally for everyone.

Clive Palmer1:21:55For all of us. Yeah.

Elliot Smith1:21:57Whether you pay a fee to a broadcaster, whether you pay a season ticket, whether you pay to travel to places, whatever you do, City's financial doping impacted you as a football supporter. And you don't need your club to be the paragon of ethical virtue for City to be in the wrong. That is not how this works. Right? So I believe again, just to come back to where we started, that the impact of this goes very deep. That potential criminal investigations could be warranted, just judging by the precedent of other situations like this. Now, granted, the Clippers case is in the United States, so it's bit different. I think that there's political ramifications, as Clive has touched on, the impact and Tim touched on the impact in Manchester locally and the UK government. There's the fact that City are a major part of a redevelopment and revitalization of Manchester, the town, and what that does for the local community. I can understand if you're in the local community and you feel thankful to these people, regardless of the way they undermine the sporting fair you know, the s fairness of the Premier League, they revitalized an area of your community. I mean, like that. You know Yeah.

Clive Palmer1:23:07And you trust your club, right? You trust your club. You naturally want to trust your club. So I don't blame those people.

Elliot Smith1:23:12But but fundamentally the tentacles are everywhere. And then what will UEFA do? How does that get impacted? Player registrations. It's it's a mess. And I can see why it took so long to rule on this, but now how you unwind it, how you unravel it, how you punish it is almost as complicated because it touches so many things. So now we have to do the hard part though. Maybe the hardest part. We have to take a deep breath and be patient. Because the likelihood is that the Premier League will not make any announcement. They will not want to do anything to give City leverage or argument for appeals to other courts. The appeal will be filed. The appeal will need to be handled over that 12-week period, roughly. And then, you know, that that's when we could potentially see announcements. So if within 14 days the appeal is filed, and if the appeal takes place within 12 weeks and it's another, let's say, a week of the hearing. You you could be looking at fifteen weeks before there's really anything else that comes out of this but trips and drabs. And that's gonna feel hard and it's gonna feel like, it all went away and it never mattered. That's why it's important for all of us to keep reminding people that this is going on. But for a while, Clive, I think the next step is probably a bit of patience, unfortunately.

Clive Palmer1:24:29Any but I have a hunch this could be dealt with quicker. Because in the f in the sport of football, which is a massive sport, this is the number one story. And there's something called reputational damage, mate. And every day this continues now. This is out there. This is out there. One one four out of one five. That's pretty complete. This is out there. And I think there needs to be a calculation made about reputational damage to Abu Dhabi to Manchester City to the Premier League, someone's gonna have to have a word to say this could go bad, really bad for you, if you continue this. We have a government led independent regulator that sits over top of football that can mandate things, that will be on the Premier League. This could go bad. This is a mahogany room conversation that needs to be had. So I if Man City decide to Drag Raymond through the courts for another couple of years. At the end of it, they will have literally zero friends. Zero friends in the game. And they have to ask themselves, can we come back from this? We can't come did you know can

Elliot Smith1:25:38Do they want to? Do they want to? It's a lot going on in the region. Do they do they want to? Do they still have the appetite for it?

Clive Palmer1:25:44Can they come back from this like today, in the next few weeks? Or they go two years down the road and do they think people's anger will grow or will it lessen? I think it will grow. I think it'd be complete across the game and across Europe. And then there is only one option then if it doesn't go f well for them. And even if it does go well for them, the damage will be y is you couldn't repair it. You just couldn't repair it. And so so yeah, I don't think it's gonna take a long time. I think sense needs to prevail. And that aggressive tactics from that club and their chairman, etc. I think that can't last much longer. You just can't.

Elliot Smith1:26:21Yeah. Well we will we will see. And it is certainly complex. I mean the fact that this leaked during international break is probably the worst possible thing for Manchester City 'cause they can't just get back on the pitch and play and wipe this off the headlines with sporting results.

Clive Palmer1:26:35Guess where they're playing next game, isn't it?

Elliot Smith1:26:37Anfield. Yep. And I mean that's the club this is City Pool romance. I've never understood it 'cause that's the club that probably suffered maybe more than even Arsenal suffered most at the hands of City. United. Yep. Yep.

Clive Palmer1:26:46City United so Liverpool and United suffered a lot from them in the north west, massively. I think we suffer a lot from Chelsea, if I'm honest with you, and City belatedly, definitely.

Elliot Smith1:26:56Yeah. Yeah. T it's just a terrible situation, but it's a moment of reckoning and the reason the punishment has to be stiff by the way is because you have to make sure no one wants to do this ever again because the punishment isn't worth the crime. That's what you need to make sure is the case here. A bit of mental health advice. I wouldn't get involved talking to Manchester City fans about this. Don't have an expectation of them, you know, seeing sense. It's just not worth it. It's not worth getting into a tribal argument over this. And as a final point, I will simply have to say everything we've said on this episode is predicated on the fact that the reporting is that a hundred and fourteen of a hundred and fifteen charges have been found valid, confirmed that they've been found guilty of those, and our conclusions are based on the presumption that that's the case and that they are guilty of those charges. So were that to change, obviously you'd change your opinion. But what do you know? World shocked that thing everybody knew was going on was going on. You know, I mean that like it is funny the extent to which anybody allowed themselves to pretend otherwise. I think we leave it there. We will talk a little football this week, certainly. Our first episode of Bad Takes will air on the Patreon. I can't wait for that episode. Some might say that's every episode of the ArsenalVision podcast. But no, this

Elliot Smith1:28:07One is specifically a an airing of bad takes, a safe space for bad takes. And if you want to join us for that, we'd love to have you for that. There's gonna be a lot of different opinions on this episode, I have no doubt, and we'd love to hear them because this is a very, very tricky topic. Some people have done thousands of hours of work researching it and reporting on it. And, we are going to get, by the way, a sports lawyer on the podcast. We're going to get some of the experts on this on the podcast as well. So a lot being lined up to get you some information that will be helpful understanding it. But Clive, as always, brilliant job today. And I look forward to continuing to keep this in the line of sight for as long as possible.

Clive Palmer1:28:38A brilliant job from team as well, by the way. Thank you very much.

Elliot Smith1:28:41Thank you. All right, everybody. Love ya. We'll talk a little more football, to the extent that that the international break is worth football worth talking about. We'll all decide on that later. But until then, we love you and we will talk to you after Arsenal Tad Leeds now.