Manchester City were last night banned from The Champions League for two years by UEFA, who found them guilty of seriously breaching Financial Fair Play laws.
They are set to appeal the decision through an arbitrary court yet as well as a £25M fine, a drop in the financial ocean to the Abu Dhabi ruling family -funded club, are set to face sanctions from The Premier League, whose laws they have also contravened.
As revealed 18 months ago by Der Spiegel, the Etihad club held a disgraceful sense of entitlement when it comes to flouting the rules - a 'We're Man City, we're above the law' mentality that flies in the face of football fairness.
“Of course, we can do what we want.” was Man City board member Simon Pearce's arrogant response to an internal E-mail asking him about the legality of sponsorship payments as they swept illegal sponsorship amounts under the carpet of their accounts.
While Man City officials hope their ban may be quashed, many in football want the opposite - further sanctions against the mega-money club who have bought the Premier League title and further domestic competitions often in suspicious circumstances.
Demotion to League Two is the ultimate penalty that The Etihad club could receive in accordance with new Football League rules that could even see Man City swapping the Manchester derby with a lower level grudge match against Macclesfield Town.
At the moment, such a scenario is deemed to be unlikely with a Premier League points deduction also on the table - this season - although again many are calling for further sanctions including removing points - and Premier League titles - from other seasons.
From Man City Stars to Man City*
There has been talk of 'Tainted titles' in this Premier League season in context with the help Liverpool - or LiVARpool as they are deemed by their critics - are perceived to have had from officials, especially by the Video Assistant Referee.
Most notoriously, the clear handballs at Anfield when the ball struck the hand of Reds wing-back Trent Alexander-Arnold TWICE when Liverpool beat Man City 3-1 in a crucial game that stretched their Premier League lead at the top to eight points in November. VAR checked both decisions yet awarding neither, something that rankled with the remonstrating Pep Guardiola on the touchline and Liverpool haven't looked back and now lead the title by a ludicrous 25 points.
Yet in previous seasons before the introduction of VAR, Man City had an extraordinary amount of decisions go their way by referee error or bias, something obvious to me watching Newcastle games intently and the writers and fans of other clubs, not least Liverpool fans who recall Raheem Sterling given offside on Boxing Day, 2013.
Sterling was so obviously onside as shown by the lines of pitch yet was flagged offside - a "hard one to take" in the words of Reds manager Brendan Rodgers "as they're not even in the same shade of grass". Liverpool were denied a certain goal.
The errant Linesman's flag became a feature at The Etihad as evidenced by the graphic above showing similar incidents from Man City's games against would-be title rivals Arsenal and Liverpool, whose respective managers at the time especially Arsene Wenger complained of the decisions and bias they faced when playing Man City.
I explored Man City's 'modus operandi' in depth in a previous Scorum article - 'Man City Cheats Must Face Quadruple Justice For The Sake of Football's Liberty' (click the hyper-linked title to read it) and how that specifically applied to the 2018/9 Premier League in 'Whowunnit? The Real Story of Man City's Premier League Title Win Over Liverpool?' after being alerted to what I saw as clear bias towards Man City by officials when watching NUFC.
Man Cheaty? How Manchester City Got Away With It Against Newcastle For Years
It was a game Newcastle played away at The Etihad on October 3rd, 2010 that first alerted me to the alarming refereeing bias suffered by opponents against Man City.
Our new star player Hatem Ben Arfa had his leg broken by a wild tackle by hacker Nigel De Jong without even a free-kick being awarded by referee Martin Atkinson and Newcastle suffered two penalty injustices, one at each end of the pitch as then manager Chris Hughton said:
"My first impressions were that Mike Williamson had played the ball and also the fact that it was outside the box. They were confirmed when I saw it again.
"My first impression when Shola Ameobi went down was that his standing foot had been taken away from him and that was confirmed as well. Absolutely (it's a penalty). We've already seen it. Lescott loses his footing and of course - absolute penalty. It's a tough enough place to go."
The injustices suffered at the hands of Man City by Newcastle were just starting and became a running theme of the games between the clubs over the years.
In a Premier League encounter in January, 2014, Newcastle's Cheick Tiote screamed a 25-yard volley past then England goalkeeper Joe Hart yet referee Mike Jones and his linesman wrongly found reason to disallow it to the anger of the 50,000+ St. James' Park crowd and the disgust of NUFC boss Alan Pardew who had succeeded Hughton.
Then when Steve McClaren took his Newcastle side to The Etihad on October 3rd 2015, coincidentally five years to the exact date of the Ben Arfa leg break and double penalty game, Alexander Mitrovic took the lead for a rampant away Newcastle side and looked to have scored again and doubled the lead until again a linesman wrongly flagged the goal offside stopping a goal lead from doubling and changing the game.
The most recent galling example of the Man Cheaty refereeing advantage over Newcastle came on April 19th 2016 when Rafa Benitez was attempting to save the relegation-threatened Magpies from the drop as Man City went for the title.
In the 14th minute, Man City won a free-kick and while it was being set-up, Sergei Aguero was clearly standing in an offside position which many Newcastle fans in the crowd were shouting about.
Referee Kevin Friend was well-placed to see the fact Aguero was offside and his linesman was looking along the line so had no excuse not to see it and flag.
Neither did and Aguero scored and newspapers dubbed it 'The Great Toon Robbery' as Newcastle were denied what would have been a vital win and three points & were eventually relegated.
That's four games and at least six big, clear, game-changing decisions that Man City have benefited from against Newcastle alone in the last decade and Man City were crowing about the Premier League's longest unbeaten run before the game at St. James' Park when finally, a good refereeing performance by man in the middle Paul Tierney, who disallowed an Aguero goal & awarded the game's goal-winning penalty to Sean Longstaff - finally led to a deserved victory in Jan 2019 when Matt Ritchie scored.
This was just Newcastle in the Premier League yet Man City have a recent history of very favourable to the point of obvious bias in all of England's domestic competitions leading to their recent dominance and a treble last year.
TalkSport's Adrian Durham led the calls for Man City "to do the decent thing and offer Swansea a replay" after an especially dodgy game at Swansea's Liberty Stadium when Man City overturned a 0-2 deficit thanks to another Aguero offside special winner after a soft penalty equaliser with no VAR being used.
Even Pep Guardiola was embarrased by this, apologising for it, & it will be interesting to see how he adjusts to the fall-out from Man City's Champions League ban and any other sanctions that are yet to imposed by The Premier League authorities.
What is certain is that Man City's 'luck' - which always conveniently deserts them in The Champions League when they are subject to foreign referees not domestic English officials in thrall of the wealthiest club in the land - is over and they have been rightly expelled from Europe and the world's greatest club competition, having barely made a dent in their years attempting to win it without extra referee influence.
Ever since Man City became one of the richest clubs in the world, they have played a game in England where the normal rules from Premier League and English officials seemingly do not apply to them until VAR was introduced this season and diminished their unnatural advantages and success with it. Now, having been caught red-handed off the pitch for cheating the financial rules, its time to apply its severest penalties. SL
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