Man City ‘ruining the league’ is better than Man Utd dominance; why Poch is taking a ‘risk’ joining Chelsea

The Mailbox gives an alternative timeline without sugar daddies as Man Utd dominate English football and Mauricio Pochettino could ruin his relationship with Tottenham fans for nothing…

Send your views in to theeditor@football365.com…

Pochettino to Chelsea?
Dear F365

Hot take, but is Poch going to Chelsea not a bit of a risk for both him and the club? I love the guy, but for a Harry Kane free kick against Villa, he could have been out of Spurs in his first season. Will Boehly give him the time he needs? He inherited a mess at PSG and achieved the bare minimum before he was out. He is inheriting a mess here too. Again will he have time to embed his style and culture? Part of what made him amazing at Spurs was the sense of unity and his ability to get a core group of young players to believe in his vision, but it didn’t happen straight away. Chelsea is a win now club, that needs to be in the champions league. If he doesn’t achieve success at the first time of asking and is sacked, will he have burnt his reputation with Spurs fans for nothing?  And then what happens if Chelsea don’t get in the champions league again? Will they not be in jeopardy financially? Anyway, if Kane does leave Spurs surely moving here will just be swapping one basket case club for another, without necessarily a better chance of winning something!
Chris, London

Seven-goal thriller…
Imagine a Hodgson-Moyes matchup producing a 7-goal thriller. Just when you thought you knew something about football…
Scott, LFC, Toronto

PS: Declan Rice looks like a caricature drawing of Declan Rice.

Funny old game
In a season where seemingly everyone lauds City and laughs at Spurs, arguably the best moments of the season for Spurs have been 3 of the 4 halves of football v. City. Funny old game.
Matt Carr, Spurs, Wilmington, NC

Man City = US Postal?
So, before I start this mail, I have to say that city have been charged with a lot of stuff but not yet tried, let alone been found guilty, but Dave, LFC’s mail today sparked a thought.

As a fan of cycling I can remember the days of the Armstrong dominance and how he famously never failed a drug test. Having read a few books on the subject, it turns out that the way his team did this was to spend more money on the science and the drugs than the testers had in their budget to detect any illegal drugs. Seems to me that this could be exactly what is being done by City only financially not pharmaceutically. Just as Juve and many other clubs in Italy have been accused of inflating transfer fees for accounting purposes (mostly it would seem by overvaluing ‘lesser’ players transfers between themselves) it strikes me that it is possible that City (and maybe others, who knows) have assembled a team of accountants for the specific purpose of beating FFP (the allegations that Mancini was paid a sum greater than his declared wage at City to act as a ‘consultant’ by a Mansoor owned club for example). All of this should come as no surprise to anyone, big businesses employ accountants to reduce the tax burden of their companies, football clubs are big businesses, therefore they will find ways to avoid financial restrictions.  UEFA may be in the position of the anti-doping bodies during the Armstrong years, their budget is smaller than that of those they are trying to catch so they can never bring a successful case. To borrow a phrase from a Guardian article, how long before City replaces Juventus in this – ‘It wasn’t only Juventus’ said a fan, claiming they were being singled out ‘No, but it is ALWAYS Juventus’ said his friend.
Steve Leeds, looking forward to playing Plymouth next season

Alternative timeline
So Man City are ruining the league because of all the things they are or do?

Had they outlawed all of these dodgy teams and sugar daddies in the first place, none of this would have happened right?

You would have had legit overlords  in Man United. Pep instead goes to manage United and takes Txiki Begiristain with him who knows how to run things well.

It would be United’s 37th title in 40 years and Arsenal fans having seem their brave challenge crushed by a red-shirted Norse terminator would have shrugged their shoulders and said “Thank goodness we outlawed any way to fight Man United’s financial dominance. We get a fair and competitive system just like in Scotland and Germany! Hooray!”
Nick

Man City and the rest of the Premier League
It has been hilarious watching fans of other teams rip into Manchester City.

These are the same feelings that fans from around the world share about your disgusting, bloated Premiership, every team in it and the deluded, pathetic, self promoting claims of being the best league in the world.

That depends what your principles are and how you define the word best.

Slainte
Kevin Wark

Why is this a debate?
The City fan in the world wants to argue that because City used their blood money well the fact that it is blood money doesn’t matter.

As if somehow through sport the blood money and its source were washed.

The crime was successful therefore it’s not a crime.

While that is an interesting point and one that every murderer and sex offender will clamour to use as their own at their trials,  I feel that it’s both self-serving bullshit and entirely irrelevant.

City using blood money was not fine but it was condoned, the Premier League deciding that any club willing to forever stain their soul for shiny trinkets should be allowed to.

The point is that City didn’t just take that blood money and use it to grow to utterly false and undeserved success, as shameful as that is on its own.

They took that blood money and decided, correctly, even that wasn’t enough to overcome their shortcomings as a club.

So City used their shame money  to repeatedly and egregiously break the financial rules that every other club – whether funded by hate and oil or not – abided by.

They used the stained baseball bat that they rolled over and allowed to be shoved into them in exchange for money on the nightstand to smash the rules everyone else still followed, gaining unassailable advantages over the rest of the league from the very foundations of the clubs youth systems all the way to the management teams at the top.

It’s not that you sold your souls for money, The One City Fan In The World, its that you used that money to cheat, and to ensure that cheating continues to have its effect for generations.

That’s why nothing you won matters, and that’s why you will be booted out of every competition you possibly can be.

And its why you cant fill your ground, and its why you know deep down you should be every bit as ashamed as people say.
Tim Sutton (Mitro 11 flip flops – Nunez 9 flops)

Wow.  A lot of lashing out from the City lads today, following some mailbox criticism. I can only imagine what the backlash will be like after the adjudicator of the PL charges hands down the consequences of sustained rule breaking.

Quick note, unlike the UEFA charges there’s no (ridiculous) time barred get out clause, nor is there the option to go to CAS (the kangaroo court where City chose 2 of the 3 judges and won 2-1 in favour of all charges) so the idea that the PL cases will go the same way as the UEFA ones is far fetched to say the least. Let alone the fact that City stopped cooperating with the investigation after the 2019 season, which obviously reeks of innocence.

My favourite point of the many ‘retorts’ was the drawing of equivalence between a couple of low level scouts still having their login details for the player database having left City for a new job with Liverpool, which likely had little to no impact on either club’s transfer strategy to…large scale financial deception/false accounting/off books payments/UEFA charges and fines/PL charges and….

Ultimately City have changed the course of history in the PL, not just for clubs that they’ve done out of league titles and cups but clubs that have been shunted down the league and missed out on CL or Europa League places. Players they might have signed. Relegations that might not have happened. If this was all done while circumventing the rules that your club was adhering to shouldn’t you feel aggrieved?
James Outram, Wirral

In defence of City…
In reply to all the vitriol against Manchester City from a fair few on here and especially the laughable mail from Manc in SA. I’m a Liverpool fan that lives in Liverpool but works near eastlands in Manchester and seen first-hand what Man City have brought to the area. The club has invested heavily in the surrounding area including the Etihad campus bringing thousands of jobs into a deprived area of East Manchester and as well as healthcare facilities and hosts a leading sports University with UCFB. Yes as a Liverpool fan I’m pissed off with City for the on the pitch brilliance which stopped us from winning multiple titles, but all this sniping and bitching at City as just a team that “bought” the league is wide of the mark.

The current City incarnation under pep is a culmination of a project that has seen City develop and build a squad that is currently without peer in the Premier league. Yes City can spend £100m on one player (as has Chelsea) in the knowledge that if that player fails they won’t be financially fucked but also the club is excellently run throughout from grounds staff all the way to the top.

I hate City on the pitch as they always find a way but off the pitch I’ve nothing but respect for the club. Yes I know the owners are from a nation of dubious human rights and “that’s sportswashing” will be levelled at my argument but for what the owners have brought to an area of East Manchester means a lot to the residents in that area. For all those that say an asterisk should be put against city’s achievements for FFP irregularities or because they have pep, or spent loads etc all I say is bollocks.
Matt (scouse and proud) Huyton

Quality mailbox content
Todays mailbox I must say was brilliant. A really quality read about both sides of the city argument with compelling points from both sides. That’s why the mailbox is important to me and I’m sure many others alike. From my perspective beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder. I find city boring because of their brilliant dominance so they don’t get my juices flowing like the superhero with a clear weakness. But of course that doesn’t mean everyone must agree with me. And remember too that many supporters of 80 odd other teams across the pyramid probably could not give a toss about this argument so it can come across like 5 drunk guys arguing in a bar while everyOne else gets on with their night.

Have a good one all
Duck

Politics in football…
Remember when we were discussing kneeling in football and there were a lot of gammon flapping their lips about keeping politics out of football?

Where are all those people when it comes to the political issue of sportswashing or Human rights abuses? Or blood money?

Funny how you only want politics out of football when it’s politics which the highlight the failings of this country and seem content to allow debate about the failings of other countries and cultures.

For the record since there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism it means all teams sit on a scale dodgy behaviour with nobody being “an ethical club” making this discussion about city or Newcastle’s finances or ownership totally void.
Lee 

Changing the subject…
Fuck me, Politics365 has taken over my favourite site again. Let’s hope for lots of VAR errors in the big games this weekend to change the subject.
Jon, Cape Town