General Premier League Thread 2023-24 Mod Note in op 27/6/23 And 21/05/24

The players haven't cheated, that we know of. I have my suspicions about some players at City but I won't speculate. But with Pep's methods, who knows.

Pep was a convicted performance enhancing drug cheat himself when he was a player.

The same doctor who supplied him those drugs was then appointed to his Barcelona team when Pep was managing there. And then there was his time at Bayern Munich where Pep used to complain that the same injuries that would last 6 weeks in Germany could be healed in a fortnight in Spain.

I've heard previously that there are some partners of players being paid a salary by external sources.

One being a player that has tried to leave Man City every other summer for the last 3/4 years but somehow manages to sign a new contract a couple times in those same summers. He currently has a low (low for his ability level) release clause to move away from Man City this summer. He might finally get that move away to Barcelona or PSG he has tried to engineer a few times.

What could possibly influence a couple to change their mind to stay in rainy Manchester, and sign a new contract, after previously stating that they wanted to leave to live in sunny Europe?

It is short-sighted to conclude that because Villa haven't come near challenging for a league title in ~two decades it isn't relevant to you. But your post is an excellent example of how this all works. Football fans are so endlessly tribal, that City winning it all with no fans you know is highly palatable. If it was your Utd / Liverpool / Arsenal supporting mates winning instead that would just annoy you. This is much better.

But it does affect Aston Villa. Because presumably Aston Villa will one day want to challenge for the title again. City have established an FC Bayern like hegemony. The last refuge here is the idea that once Pep leaves, things might be different. But the structures that underpin Pep's reign, including the financial the irregularities, will prove extraordinarily difficult to compete with. If you build an unbelievable team over multiple seasons, maybe you steal one on a down year for them. But they'll be back setting the pace the following August.

To compare this to the much more organic way in which the biggest clubs in England were built is a complete fallacy. City are a naturally smaller club, that's just how it is. Their well documented struggles to fill out their stadium even as the best club team in the world attest to that. The bigger clubs were built off their bigger fan bases. Some of them were better run than others and were able to capitalise quicker during different periods - but as more money flowed into football it generally followed that the bigger clubs were the beneficiaries and / or those bigger clubs were always easier to turn around with the right management. There are exceptions here - Leeds scuttled their own ship; Forest got it wrong in many various ways at exactly the wrong time and Chelsea provided the template for a much bigger wall of money to follow. But your argument is essentially that the size of fanbases, and the history of clubs shouldn't matter. Every small little club should be afforded the same opportunity so long as they get a Middle Eastern wall of money, because those guys will never run out of money so it's different.

This is the thing though, isn't it? We now have the greatest club of all time with the platform to sustain this level of dominance…until at some point their owners decide that the investment doesn't make sense or is no longer required. Sure the club will be sold and maybe it gets bought by someone really smart. Maybe this "history" that has been bought and paid for the last ~15 years (and what is yet to be added on in the coming years) endures, and those new owners can attract and retain top talent while investing within the rules. But the far more likely occurrence is for it all to slowly crumble away in this scenario, as the reality of a mid tier club with a localised fanbase pulls down towards the mean outcome over many years. The current "sponsorship" deals will no longer be available. City will start to lose players they want to keep to Real (that this doesn't happen currently should ring MASSIVE alarm bells btw) and some day in the future the club with the indisputable greatest period in the history of the game will be relegated.

Your contention that FFPC was initiated to save clubs from frivolous owners without the cash to back it up is partially true - really it was invented to do the other thing, to try and ringfence European football from being bought by a wall of money. This was always pretty silly in my mind, for once that sluice gate of money was opened for the Qatar World Cup, the idea they would simply go away was entirely naive. If the Premier League charges are beaten by City, in the same way they already beat UEFA, then expect the same thing to happen again.

Presumably you'll be hoping that one day Villa are bought by a Middle Eastern state, so you can get in on the scam. As well you might, increasingly that is the only way you'll be able to win the big trophies.

The players are playing for a club that they know are cheats. If City have titles stripped the players will have titles stripped. You cant say city are cheats but the players are squeaky clean.

I think this is also a problem that feeds into it all, as long as city are winning the league everyone’s attitude is “well at least I don’t have to listen to my united/liverpool/arsenal mates in work bragging about their team winnning it”

The amount of people I’ve chatted to in work saying they’d rather see city win it then Arsenal is unreal and I’m shocked tbh, basically people are desensitised to city’s cheating to titles they just accept it as parity.

People are happy to complain about city’s cheating but seemingly don’t really care when they actually win the league then.

I must be missing something but why cant they mention it?

Isnt it a fact that they were charged all these times by Premier League?

There’s nothing that would stop them mentioning it, bar an editorial decision not to.

The other night on MNF, Neville said to Carra about saying something on air that he shouldn't have / couldn't talk about. So you could be onto something.

The blanket ban of Sky talking about Man City's 115 charges but at the same time happy to talk about Everton/Forest points is confusing alright.

Lance is the same as Pep so - a drug cheat.

…in your opinion

Don't tell me you're unaware that Pep was banned from playing football for taking performance enhancing drugs?

Pep said that he only took what his doctor (Ramon Segura) told him to take, before then hiring that doctor (Ramon Segura) to be the team doctor for his Barcelona team.