Remember when Serie A relegated their biggest club, Juventus? The league fell off so badly that nobody watches it again. Even when Juventus returned, the league has continued struggling till today. That's the same thing that will happen if they relegate City. They need to look at the bigger picture before destroying the very league they're trying to protect.

Barcelona’s Frenkie de Jong was Erik ten Hag's first choice for midfield. United were in negotiations for several weeks, but the player declined to join. Ten Hag pressed for England midfielder Declan Rice instead. Rice, then 24, ended up moving to Arsenal in the summer of 2023 for a package worth £105m. He was instrumental in Mikel Arteta’s side winning the Premier League for the first time in 22 years last season, often wearing the captain’s armband, and has made the 30-man shortlist for the Ballon d’Or. During that same window three years ago, Ten Hag had one name on his lips at centre-forward. Instead, Harry Kane moved from Tottenham Hotspur to Bayern Munich in a €110m deal. The England captain has since scored 157 goals in 155 games for Bayern, twice lifting the Bundesliga, and is also nominated for this year’s Ballon d’Or. 📝 @lauriewhitwell 🔗 nyti.ms/4z9cp9d

Joe Cole is the only one with the right perspective on @ManCity The faux outrage about arbitrary accounting rules that have been broken get away from the whole point If you want a fair and competitive league, the rules need to change Whilst we shouldn’t condone breaking “rules” you can’t separate the fact that the rules are entirely uncompetitive and unfair They broke rules to be able to compete with the incumbent teams who basically have been given a “moat” around them which means they can outspend everyone and no one else can compete That feels more like “cheating” than what City have done in my view I actually wonder if this went to a High Court ruling, the focus might turn to anti-trust and competitiveness laws which the Premiership FFP rules clearly fall foul of

🚨 EXCLUSIVE: Manchester City’s lawyer, Mark Howard, sends strong warning to the Premier League after appeal! 🗣️“The Premier League must understand one thing: whatever decision they make, they must not take the punishment too far. Manchester City will not simply accept a disproportionate sanction without challenging it through every available legal avenue. We expect fairness, not an attempt to make an example out of our club. The consequences of this decision could be enormous!”

Interesting more and more commentators are beginning to balance their reporting on @ManCity by pointing out City's continued and 100pc insistence they will win on appeal. This fact needs to be more than a sentence at the end of every news story - the club's case is that the Premier League has got the entire thing wrong and they have never veered from that. The seismic consequences of a win on appeal need to be looked at and not simply ignored. What a story that would be.... but what do I know? I'm just a Blue! 🩵

If Manchester City supporters are firing back, it’s because we refuse, as Simon Bajkowski of the Manchester Evening News so eloquently put it, to “play the sad clowns that the deluded circus demand.” And let’s be clear: this entire legal process, together with the relentless outrage from partisan media and punditry, has become a circus that stinks to high heaven. Before Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City in 2008, the Cartel was firmly in control of English football. The established Incumbent Four had won 15 of 16 Premier League titles. They occupied every Champions League qualification spot for three consecutive seasons. City had won none. Then City emerged as a genuine challenger to the established order, thanks to an owner with the resources necessary to compete with the Incumbent Four. And suddenly, protecting football’s “financial sustainability” became the great crusade. Shockingly, the rules that emerged—tying permissible spending to existing commercial revenue—overwhelmingly favored the Incumbent Four. The clubs that had spent decades building their financial advantages could continue spending accordingly. Challengers seeking to close the gap would face an entirely different set of constraints. The established order had built its advantage. Now the rules would help preserve it. In March 2019, the Premier League, with Richard Masters serving as interim CEO, opened an investigation into whether City had violated its financial rules. Masters would later become the League’s permanent CEO through an appointment process reportedly influenced by United and Liverpool. Nearly four years later, on February 6, 2023, in the midst of what would become City’s historic treble-winning season, the Club was formally charged. The timing alone raises legitimate questions about the influence of partisan interests within the League. The commission tasked with hearing the charges was then constituted under the authority of a Judicial Panel chair appointed through a process involving Masters and the Premier League. And so the cloud hanging over City continued for an absurdly long time. Finally, on September 29, 2026, we received a guilty verdict. But that verdict came with a few rather extraordinary asterisks. First, we don’t get to know who actually rendered the verdict. The identities of the commission members remain undisclosed. Second, we don’t get to see the underlying evidence the commission supposedly analyzed—at least not yet. Instead, we’re given a 40-page, heavily redacted decision setting out the commission’s findings, while the evidence underlying those findings and the supporting appendices remain outside public scrutiny. We’re simply expected to accept on blind faith that an anonymous commission conducted its proceedings without bias, fairly evaluated the evidence, and reached conclusions fully supported by that evidence. Perhaps it did. But how is anyone outside the proceedings supposed to make that judgment? 1/2 #mancity

Let’s be clear and realistic: Premier League expulsion for Manchester City is highly unlikely. The financial consequences of losing City’s commercial revenue, TV income and matchday contributions across the other 19 clubs would be enormous. People want to watch Manchester City.

I think Gary Neville is wrong. I think the whole of the country are celebrating city’s goals. Only the Red cartel despise city winning.

Wondering if the Premier League could send @ManCity a cheque for the soaring revenues the massive global interest in our games is drawing.... Sunday's game may be the most watched ever in many global broadcast markets... bonuses all round at the PL!

Delio Onnis in action for Monaco #Monaco #Monégasques

This extra long international break was done because of complaints about too many international breaks…feels like it hasn’t satisfied anyone. Change back again?

🔴⚪️ Karl Heinz Rummenigge on Ballon d’Or for Kane: “I was the last Bayern player to win the award, so I would like to see another Bayern player win it now”. “Harry Kane has the edge there - his goals and his trophies speak for themselves”, told @ransport.

I watched the F1 film with Brad Pitt the other day, and there’s a moment where his character asks to add something to the car that isn’t really in the rules. The FIA punishes it, but the team can still race with the earlier car. It made me think. In F1, the best teams live at the edge of the regulations. Sometimes the FIA allows what they’ve found, and sometimes it says that goes too far. Occasionally the rules are rewritten afterwards. Now, City. I’m not defending them. A commission found they entered into sham agreements and broke the spending limits. A sham is an arrangement that isn’t what it claims to be, so that’s a different thing from using a gap nobody had spotted. City deny it and will appeal. But I find it useful to ask/reflect on how people inside the club see it. From their point of view, PERHAPS they believe they were doing what elite competitors do: looking at the rules, finding the limits, challenging interpretations and moving faster than the regulatory system. From the outside, you might look at that and say, “That’s cheating.” From inside the organisation, they might say, “We found something nobody had thought of.” If you believe you’ve found a way to bring money in, more or less within the rules (and the commission said it was not in the rules and it was cheating), you might tell yourself you’re just being a sharp competitor. We are all asking “did City cheat?”. But I find this question interesting too: “how did City come to believe they weren’t?” And understanding a mindset, or trying to, isn’t excusing it.