Barry Breen's wobbly behind

[Daily Mail Sport @MailSport]

Forget 'Set Piece FC', Arsenal have won the title without '115 charges' lurking in the margins like Man City, without buying their own women's team like Chelsea, without petro-dollars behind them. That should be celebrated, writes IAN HERBERT https://t.co/z0bdODbQb3

[Ian Herbert @ianherbs]

Arsenal - a team pushing for a Premier League title with no financial chicanery and whilst virtually breaking even. Something rather excellent about that. Column. #afc https://t.co/Xmyn2UlzA4

[Dougie Critchley @DougieCritchley]

% of League goals scored from set-pieces (including penalties) in 25/26

Crystal Palace: 54%
Newcastle: 49%
Leeds: 44%
Chelsea: 40%
Arsenal + Wolves: 38%

And yet, it's only Arsenal who get brandished as a "set-piece team" 🤔

[Adam @AdamJoseph]

🧵 THREAD: Manchester City, the charges, the evidence, & how justice was delayed.

Manchester City weren’t charged because rivals complained or because they 'spent big'. They were charged because evidence shows a decade-long system designed to hide owner funding, inflate revenue & deceive & obstruct investigations.

The Premier League’s case didn’t appear overnight.
It began in late 2018, triggered by Football Leaks documents - internal emails, invoices, contracts - that contradicted what City had been telling UEFA & the Premier League for years.

Those emails are the backbone of everything that followed. At the centre of the case is a simple allegation: Manchester City repeatedly disguised owner funding as commercial revenue.

FFP rules require sponsorship income to be real, independent, and market value. What the emails suggest is that City’s biggest 'sponsors' weren’t paying what City claimed - Abu Dhabi was.

Take Etihad as an example. Leaked emails show City executives discussing Etihad paying only a fraction of headline sponsorship deals, with the shortfall quietly topped up by Abu Dhabi government-linked entities.

One email explicitly references ensuring funds 'come through the correct channels' so they are not detected as separate sources of funding. That is the definition of disguised equity. This wasn’t a one-off.

Emails show Etihad deals where shirt sponsorship, stadium, training kit & campus naming rights were all inflated wildly out of line with the market at the time - later confirmed in the actual contracts, not just drafts.

The numbers in the leaks weren’t hypothetical. They were real. UEFA auditors suspected this as early as 2013–14.

They found £47m of 'intellectual property' sales boosting income, a £5m 'win bonus' paid for an FA Cup final City lost & sponsorships from Aabar and Etisalat above market value.

City were fined & restricted - but crucially, UEFA never saw the full records. Why? Because City refused to provide them. This becomes a pattern.

When UEFA charged City again in 2020, they imposed a two-year Champions League ban. City appealed to CAS & had it overturned. City fans shout 'INNOCENT', shared out of context screenshots. They're wrong.

CAS did not rule that City were innocent. CAS ruled that UEFA could not meet the burden of proof - largely because City did not co-operate. City were fined €10m specifically for obstructing the investigation.

Even City's own expert witness was denied access to key information that could have disproved disguised funding. 'No evidence' doesn’t mean nothing happened. It means the evidence was withheld.

CAS explicitly stated that disguised equity funding could not be excluded - only that neither side could conclusively prove their case. That vagueness was entirely engineered.

After CAS, new emails emerged suggesting Simon Pearce, a senior City executive & Sheikh Mansour adviser, had given misleading testimony under oath. City declined to comment. Again.

While all this was happening, the Premier League had already been investigating City for years. City’s response? Delay. Delay. Delay. Obstruct. Litigate.

Court filings later revealed City challenged the legality of the investigation itself, filed repeated procedural applications, refused to hand over documents, forced arbitration, then challenged arbitration & tried to keep the entire process secret.

A High Court judge called it out in 2021. “It is surprising, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made.” That’s legal spiel for stonewalling.

This obstruction accounts for 35 of the 115 charges alone & that’s before we get to the secret payments.

City declared Roberto Mancini's salary as £1.45m per year. On the same day he signed with City, he also signed a “consultancy” deal with Al Jazira - a club owned by the same man who owns City - worth £1.75m per year. That deal was explicitly marked confidential.

Emails show City executives arranging the payments. Same signatures. Same people. Same day. The allegation is obvious: City paid Mancini off the books.

Leaked documents allege undeclared payments for Yaya Touré, including via third parties. These aren’t rumours. They’re contracts, emails, invoices. This is why there are 14 charges relating to manager and player remuneration.

Then there’s image rights. City told UEFA they sold player image rights for a £24.5m lump sum to comply with FFP. Later, they quietly resumed earning millions from image rights again.

The buyer? A company whose directors included City’s own senior legal officer. Independent journalists couldn’t even establish its genuine commercial purpose.

All of this feeds into the core allegation across 54 charges: City failed to provide accurate financial information in good faith. Not once. Not twice. But repeatedly, over nearly a decade.

Now add politics. UK government departments discussed City’s charges with the British embassy in Abu Dhabi. Those communications are sealed - because releasing them could 'damage relations with the UAE'. City insist they are not state-backed. Then why is the state involved?

Yet still, the delays continue. A 12-week closed-door hearing. Half a million documents. Years of silence. City remain 'innocent' - not because the evidence disappeared, but because the verdict hasn’t landed.

This is why the case matters. If City walk away with a fine, it tells every club to cheat cleverly, obstruct endlessly, spend on lawyers, not compliance.. & the rules collapse.

This isn’t about jealousy. It isn’t about success. It’s about whether financial regulation in English football is real - or optional for the richest club in the league.

The evidence exists. The emails exist. The delays are documented. Now only one question remains, do the rules apply to City or not?

[Chloe @chloekelly]

Run it back

[The Overlap @WeAreTheOverlap]

“I don’t think they are ready for a black superstar!” 🗣️

A powerful response from @IanWright0 following Jude Bellingham’s recent criticism in the media.

Watch the full conversation now on The Overlap YouTube channel.

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

Flow state.

[Tim Stillman ⭐️⭐️ @timstillman_]

Don’t sit on this site and spiral and misery binge and convince yourself that things that don’t matter are enormous irredeemable issues you need to fret and froth about. Listen to some good podcasts (🙂) and keep it in perspective 🤓

[Aaron Catterson-Reid @ReidTheGame]

Michael Oliver the same referee that didn’t want to ruin the game last year when he didn’t send Kovacic off. Also the same referee who didn’t yellow Doku for kicking the ball 20 minutes prior

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

God bless this woman. She knows what community is all about. ❤

[Munya Chawawa @munyachawawa]

Forget riots - why not compete in the The EDL-ympics! 🎾🥋🏓

A safe space to express your misdirected hatred 😃

[Gary Neville @GNev2]

They partied , they bet on elections , they crashed the economy, they broke every public service, they destroyed integrity and honesty in public office , they paid their mates billions , they put their friends in the House of Lords, they gave their cronies knighthoods, they went into the jungle , they lied again and again, they were convicted by police, they went on holiday when they shouldn’t and they have the cheek to question Keir Starmer’s work ethic. I would never take anything for granted but I hope they are annihilated on Thursday. The worst people and government we have ever had!

P.S good afternoon all 😊❤️

[Armando Iannucci @Aiannucci]

6 Chancellors in 6 years. 6 Health Secretaries in 5. 9 Education Secretaries in 9. If they were a Head Teacher, their school would be in Special Measures. If they ran a branch of a bank, they’d be under arrest. A disgraceful rabble unfit for office: take them away!

[Jonathan Pie @JonathanPieNews]

Election Special 4: The Conservatives.

[Nick Harris @sportingintel]

Without wanting to sound like a broken record, the issue with Man City isn't really whether they're going to be punished for breaking rules, but whether they're going to be punished for a THIRD time. They've already been done twice, in 2014 and 2020

[Paddy Power @paddypower]

To be fair, you have to take your hat off to City.

They've become the dominant force in English football and all it took was completely ignoring the league's financial rules for a decade.

[Nick Harris @sportingintel]

Congratulations to Manchester City, who have become the first club in English football history to win four consecutive top-flight titles. What they've achieved is unbelievable.

[Nick Harris @sportingintel]

Everything City have won since 2012 has been an eye roll. It's almost tragic that their brilliant manager, players and trophy record have a massive asterisk against them because of how they did it. Their fans want validation. They'll never have it.

[Duncan Alexander @oilysailor]

Most PL shots conceded since Jan 1

Man Utd 317
West Ham 308
Sheff Utd 297
Luton 290
Burnley 281

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

London derby delight ✨

Enjoy all the action from our big win over Chelsea 👇