Man United fans pretending they were on even footing with the rest of the league during their dominant period is hilarious to me. You could always and still can outspend all but a handful of clubs in world football.

Should I take this one or does someone else want a crack?

So only attacking players can be world class?

Gimme some of what you’re smoking

Best comment.

I don’t see why Burnley would sack Kompany after last season. They will take the extra money from a season in the PL and use it to improve things, then likely get promoted again, maybe with what they need to stay up.

I don’t feel bad for them because they get to play Man U this week and get free points

Oh don’t you worry, we have another couple losses in us

This makes so much sense it’s hard to believe something like it hasn’t been proposed yet.

I mean they had to dig really deep into their pockets to make this happen so it’s class.

Edit: this is a joke, I do think it’s a class move.

I knew Leicester would be brought up here but let’s be honest that’s a pipe dream within a pipe dream that somehow came true.

There is no perfect answer for this because you are 100% right. It’s exploitative not to allow smaller teams the growth and financial power they would need to actually challenge for titles. It’s equally exploitative to allow crazy spending by only those who how the means. There needs to be a middle road and we haven’t found it yet

Even as a city fan I just want to say I appreciate your sentiment in your last paragraph. Something needs to be done to FFP to make it easier for clubs to rise like city did, because FFP really does make it impossible for “smaller” clubs to challenge a title which means that there will never be even footing. Older and more established clubs who spent more in the past will always have the edge.

As for city specifically, I read the CAS judgements and they found nothing financially suspect, even when reviewing the time barred stuff. So I wouldn’t say the process is “deciding upon a punishment” at this point in time as much as it is deciding if a punishment is warranted. I doubt we’ll ever agree on that but I do appreciate you mentioning that things need to change to allow teams to replicate City’s rise in a “fair” way.

obligatory comment about those Man City crooks, even though this has nothing to do with them

The fact that anyone thinks the FA like City is a mystery to me. Both UEFA and the FA hate city and that’s why we boy anthems and turn our backs.

Firstly, Thank you for mentioning what most people don’t; the fact that there were only a handful of teams that could realistically win the league and UCL because of FFP. So the footing has never been even. People like to pretend things were perfect before Chelsea and later city came around with the money to compete, but it was not at all that way.

To answer your question; I would absolutely take the memories and things I’ve seen over the past decade or so(93:20 top of my mind) even if that means we get relegated to the championship. I also think it’s highly unlikely we would stay there for more than a season, particularly if even just a few of our players stayed. It would honestly be kind of amusing to watch us absolutely destroy the championship, but also kind of sad for the team the actual championship teams.

With that said, my ideal situation is that we are cleared of all charges and people just deal with the fact that someone new became dominant fairly. However even if we are cleared of all charges we all know that won’t happen. For the rest of time rival fans will claim we bought or strong armed our way out of the charges.

Surprised to see Gvardiol to be honest. I’m happy with his performance so far but I wouldn’t say he’s settled in as easily as a lot of players do.

If that same situation happened for you and we scored from the free kick we would never hear the end of it. That handball had absolutely no effect on the game whatsoever, so why give a free kick for it when that will have an effect?

To be fair we are not known for our diving, we are known for drawing fouls. There is a difference.

Plus if any team attacks as much as city and has as many touches in the box as city, they will get more penalties.

We often lead the league in touches in the opponents box, so that easily translates to leading the league in penalties won.

Even as a city fan I though the pen was soft, but not a clearly wrong and “corrupt” decision. Soft pens happen all the time.

Not giving that was the right decision and if it was anyone but city, no one would mention it.