Andrew Pickering

[Charles Stevenson @charles_stevo]

Richarlison situation is an odd one.

Played agreed to join blues if clubs could “reach agreement” but once Ndiaye told Spurs he wanted City the plug was pulled on the deal.

He could hold out a few months and then have his pick of clubs. Both parties blame each other.

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@DarrenBent about to apologise to @andygoldstein05 live on TV?! 🤣🤣

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

What about Spain in South Africa in 2010 @GNev2 😉

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@EvertonViews Patterson was decent today, probably our best player in my opinion. Aznou does look ready! But Dibling. Appalling today. The lack of quality we have to accept sometimes, but the lack of effort he put in was extremely worrying. Didn't want to be there.

[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?

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@FA_PGMOL Why don't you grow some balls and tell Mikel Arteta that if he doesn't get in his technical area he can watch the rest of the game from 20 rows back in the stand? Just enforce the rules! Someone colliding with him could get injured.

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@warrenbarton2 Next time you're on @talkSPORT can you please stop referring to Dan Burn as Dan Burns - heard it two weeks running now 🤣🤣 otherwise enjoyed listening to you 👍

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@misfitstalk @Lea_EFC It does look like Isak's right foot is playing him on, but impossible to be certain from this angle

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@kfjcomps_ They haven't said that Robertson is blocking his view. I think they are saying that he is making an obvious action i.e. Donnarumma has to wait for the ball to go past Robertson first in case he diverts it.

[Central @WestHam_Central]

Remember when some of you HOUNDED, ABUSED, RIDICULED, BULLIED our greatest ever manager because he finished 9th under these owners, this regime, this cesspit?

COMPLETE AND UTTER KARMA

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@EllBretland And the usual lazy line will come out at full time. "I picked a team strong enough to win the game." I'd make five changes right now.

[Angela Rayner @AngelaRayner]

Nadhim Zahawi’s story about his tax affairs doesn’t add up. After months of denials, the truth emerges.

His position is untenable. Rishi Sunak must dismiss him from his Cabinet.👇🏻

[UTD_MNM 🇬🇧 🇵🇰 🇵🇸 @UTD_MNM]

@Carra23 The best CB this league has ever seen, he said 😂😂😂

Yeah right! 😂😂😂

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

Fair play.

[Grand Old Team @grandoldteam]

Everton are working to resolve issues in Club View 👍

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@cfcyusaf He's not even the best left back on the pitch right now...

[Classic EFC Matches @ClassicEFCGames]

Every goal we've ever scored in the Premier League at Goodison Park.... X will block this, and we probably will end up being suspended, but whatever. Enjoy. UTFT.

#EFC

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@illthereal_ @Gunnersc0m @SkySportsPL @GNev2 But presumably you think you're entitled to your opinion and have, at a guess, much less experience as a top level manager. Football is all about opinions.

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@seanymcbride21 @keepitreal_82 @NilSatisNews And he can't defend.

[Andrew Pickering @ajpickering80]

@YourFavIyanu @TheEvertonEnd "the law was written in English to it's easy to understand if you wish to". Oh the irony 🤣

[The 1878s @The1878s]

Next Saturday during our last ever fixture v Arsenal at Goodison Park we are asking all fans to stand up in the 9th minute and sing “Super Kevin Campbell”

It would be great for the fans of the 2 clubs he loved the most to pay tribute to him in our final season at our ground, where he became an instant hero 💙