Man City vs Premier League TV showdown to settle ‘too many coincidences’ – pundit

Former Premier League manager Gus Poyet believes there are far ‘too many coincidences’ surrounding Manchester City’s FFP guilty verdict and wants a televised debate between the league and City to settle matters.

It was confirmed earlier this week that an independent commission had found the Etihad outfit guilty of all but one of the 115 charges against them.

The commission says Man City had arranged ‘sham’ sponsorship deals, filed misstated accounts and breached spending limits to ‘artificially inflate the club’s revenues, and reduce its costs, by more than £900 million’ between 2009 and 2018.

During that period, City won three Premier League titles, the FA Cup and three League Cups, including the 2014 League Cup against Poyet’s Sunderland.

City have officially appealed the decision and maintain their innocence, but Poyet insists the guilty verdict leaves a sour taste, and that’s without considering his cup final loss 12 years ago.

“A big surprise for me is that they were found guilty of all the charges,” Poyet told Metro. “I’ve never seen that in my life, but it’s bad for football, that for sure. It’s terrible for football.

“And especially, I think it’s bad for the Premier League and the FA in terms of control. Because for those of us who were on the other side, who tried to do everything correctly, it makes you feel like, what was going on? There was no control. From 2009 to now, nobody was controlling anything.

“And we play football in a different way, in a different kind of situation. So, I didn’t like that. We know in football, everybody tries to take a little bit of a percentage or an advantage. But here, it didn’t look like an advantage; it looked like something was taken if everything they say is correct, no?

“People ask me, did you feel cheated? And I say, well, no, because I didn’t know. It’s a feeling. You’re sitting there; you know that somebody’s cheating.

“We didn’t know. So now, to go back and put myself in that situation again is very difficult. We are in a world where we trust the people who are in charge and in control.

“Naturally, somebody has more sponsors, they have a better player, or whatever, they have better revenue. But that’s something that is natural in football. Now, here, again, if this is the final situation, it was massively different. It was tremendous.

“I mean, we’re talking about a lot. And I don’t like it. I think it’s bad for football.”

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More questions for City to answer

Meanwhile, Poyet also believes there are still more questions around City’s finances that need to be addressed, particularly given the amount of money spent towards the latter years of Pep Guardiola’s time in charge.

“I think the timing is terrible,” he said via Ozoon. “I think there are too many coincidences.

“They asked Pep Guardiola a hundred times about this case, and the final verdict is not coming until he left? Not before? Is it a coincidence? I doubt it.

“It looks to me that they’re spending more from 2018 to now than before. So, like I said, I think there needs to be a clarification.

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“It would be nice to have a kind of political debate on TV? It would be nice to have a representative from the Premier League and a representative from Man City to discuss things openly.

“I’m not talking about numbers. I’m not talking about secrets. No, no, no. The issues, the why, how?’

Poyet continued: “Is there a law that if you own a company, you can sponsor your own team? Yes or no? How simple I put it to you.

“Until we don’t clarify those things for fans and for people of football that we don’t understand legal things, we are not going to have the whole thing to make an opinion.”