SENTINELCELTS

Morning, all.

Some of you may remember that about ten days ago  I said I was looking forward to an international break for probably the first time ever. The reason for that was obvious-it meant three weeks that I didn’t have to watch Celtic  stinking the place out every time they went onto the pitch, watching while we were giving up fourteen or forty shots on goal against even the most ordinary of opponents. In short, we had a three week break from tearing our hair out while hoping that our management team might somehow conjure up a winning formation. 

Even though we have a two point lead at the top of the table, this isn’t a great time to be a Celtic supporter. There are too many problems at the club, and too many employees who simply shouldn’t be there at all. That includes everyone, from the backroom staff, medical staff, playing staff and all the way up to the boardroom. But we know all this, and we’ve discussed it loud and long on here. I’ll leave it alone for the moment, because it turns out that our problems are only little ones compared to those that some clubs have. While I could mention the €2.6 m debt currently strangling Barcelona, Manchester City is  the obvious one.

City are the most successful club in England over the last fifteen years, and have doubled their trophy count during that time. Countless league titles, cups and even the Champions League have been paraded at the Etihad, previously the stadium built for the Manchester Commonwealth Games. Not content with getting the stadium handed to them on a platter, they then sold the naming rights to an airline. £400m, an amazing windfall (twice!) for a club which had spent so much of the previous three decades in the lower divisions. And might do so again soon. 

Having been bought as a sportswashing vehicle for Abu Dhabi in 2008, the emirate wasted no time in splashing the cash, but rules were soon introduced to ensure that spending was related to footballing income. Owners could no longer spend their own money to buy success, it had to have been earned through acceptable channels. And City have been found guilty of inflating that income by almost £1bn between 2011 and 2018 alone. 

Even worse for the club, the EPL released this bombshell during a three week international break, when the sports hacks are crying out for anything topical to write about. And they’ve seized upon it with gusto! Not for them the tears for a club torn apart through no fault of its own, nor are there cries for titles to be retained as they were won on the pitch. Nobody is even shouting that City are too big, too important, to suffer the punishment that their crimes demand. No sirree, every article since the news broke has been about the disgrace that this affair has wrought, and that the club must be punished to the full extent of the regulations. 

Some of you will see parallels with the downfall of R1ngers, though I doubt any of us will see any parallel in the punishment arrived at by the footballing authorities. Lest we forget, that punishment amounted to a £250,000 fine levied on a club which was already in administration, and which was therefore unlikely to be paid. No sporting advantage was found to have been achieved as the club systematically defrauded the taxman for over a decade. No sporting penalty was actually enforced upon a club which had cheated its way to seven league titles and various cups. Let that sink in. 

Not only were the Scottish football authorities prepared to turn a blind eye, so too were the media and the legal profession. Murray retained his knighthood, Lloyds actually allowed him to cherrypick the viable subsidiaries from his bankrupt firm-£1bn of PUBLIC money, remember-nobody went to jail, nobody has ever repaid HMRC, and the SMSM are still telling us today that R2ngers are the same club, and should never have been relegated in the first place. Complete denial of the process which saw them go bust (and therefore unable to honour fixtures anyway) and a new club formed, which was allowed to take their place, against regulations, at the bottom of the SPFL structure.

They do things differently in England. Hell, even David Conn was wheeled out of exile to comment. Everyone wants blood. There is broad agreement that titles and trophies won should be relinquished in the record books. The Asterisk Years at last! There is a growing discussion around points deductions of up to EIGHTY, which would definitely see them relegated. There is also a gathering storm in the EFL, which might refuse to admit an outfit which has been found guilty of such levels of cheating-why should they be the receptacle for ne’erdowells and bounders? 

The procedure which found Man City guilty was no kangaroo court. Legal costs are estimated to be over £100m on each side, and the arguments made prior to the judgement have lasted over four years already. City have until tomorrow to lodge an appeal, and I have no doubt that they will do so, that they will fight this one through to the bitter end. That bitter end will, apparently, be decided in the UK, as EPL rules preclude appealing to CAS. The good news for City fans and the club is that the owners have indicated a will to fight, the bad news is that the opposing side aren’t going to walk away either. The cataclysmic news for the club which has dominated English football for the last fifteen years is that they have managed to do something which most of us have long thought impossible. 

They have united the English press, which is unheard of even in time of war. They have got their teeth into a target, a villain of foreign origin no less. They can expect no let up on that front, indeed they will be like a dog with a bone. And even if the legal teams manage to spin out the appeal for as long as the four years that the original hearing took, we will see a death by a thousand cuts during that time. 

The world’s superstars will no longer be queueing up to join what was once football’s most lucrative gravy train. Those that are there already will have lawyers poring over the small print of their contracts and looking for loopholes. Haaland will be ruing signing that nine year contract-though he might be lucky, and find that the appeals process stretches beyond that! In short, a win for either side may be a pyrrhic victory, attrition having already stripped the club bare. 

Meantime, you can hear Minty himself discussing events on a podcast with Souness, which definitely falls under You Couldnt Make It Up. The two people most responsible for putting the huns in the shitter, firstly by spending money they didn’t have, and finally by being careless with their correspondence on the Boumsong transfer. I’m thinking of crowdfunding a statue for them!!!!

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Above article by BMCUWP