Nick

49 year Old, festival going, Old Trafford dwelling, Gaming Dad of 2.

[Paul @Uppo76]

The biggest cheating scandal since that Coldplay gig 😂😂😂😂

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@RuiPinto_FL Isn't it very weird timing. I wonder who at that department got very rich all of a sudden.

Stay safe and hope your situation gets solved very soon.

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@SkyNews We know WHAT he is. Corrupt.

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Showing their true colours here.

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@MirrorFootball Can you imagine a man is in fear that the Man City owners will kill him.
This is what we have in our premier league.

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@cityzenken_ @256Gooner Big as in a massive cunt.

[James Ducker @TelegraphDucker]

#MCFC’s key defence in its appeal over the Premier League guilty verdict was denied by its own title sponsor Etihad Airways in an extensive submission to the US government in 2015

With @SamWallaceTel

⬇️

https://t.co/GEYJT2cm7C

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@GBNEWS But City owners are nice guys....

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@andyburnham

[Jim Chimirie 🇬🇧 @JChimirie66677]

Gulf Money, Manchester City And A Prime Minister With Questions To Answer

Consider the order of events. In February, Lord Stockwood, then a minister, flew to the UAE. He met Sheikh Hamad bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who runs the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and Khaldoon Al Mubarak, chief executive of Mubadala and chairman of Manchester City. Minutes obtained by the Telegraph under freedom of information law record the minister promoting the Oxford-Cambridge corridor. Mr Al Mubarak told him the Emiratis were very proud of their investments in Manchester. A letter followed, inviting Mubadala to visit the project. It also invited Mr Al Mubarak to Grimsby.

The government wants £10bn of private money for the corridor. It has pledged £500m of its own. Abu Dhabi is seen as the key investor.

On 14 September, Mr Al Mubarak walked into Downing Street to meet the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds. The Telegraph reports that he already knew City had been found guilty. The Department for Business and Trade says the two men discussed trade, defence and security, and not the club.

The independent commission then reported. It upheld all but one of 115 charges and found that City had inflated its results by more than £900m between 2009 and 2018. City denies wrongdoing and will appeal. Every finding here is the commission's, and the club is entitled to contest it.

Then the Prime Minister spoke. Asked about the verdict, Andy Burnham told the BBC he would be "really concerned" to lose City's owners. He called them "such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester". He added that he could not "intervene more", a phrase that implies some earlier intervention. His office denies there was one. Downing Street rewrote its own statement within hours, changing "if wrongdoing is established" to "wherever wrongdoing is established".

On Friday night came the sentence that matters. Downing Street said it did not dispute reports that the verdict had undermined the UAE's appetite for future grand-scale UK commitments. Emirati officials, according to Bloomberg, say the Premier League's actions will influence the bilateral relationship.

So a foreign state is applying pressure to a British government over the ruling of a British sporting body. The Prime Minister's office has all but confirmed it.

Mr Burnham's record sharpens the point. In January 2024, as mayor of Greater Manchester, he argued that the Premier League's conduct towards Everton strengthened the case for an independent football regulator. He got his regulator. Its first great test arrived within months, and the man who demanded its independence is the one who has been heard to fret about the defendant's owners. David Bernstein, a former chairman of both City and the Football Association, told him to stay away. So did the Conservative shadow sports minister, Louie French, and the Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Anna Sabine.

Fairness requires some caveats. No evidence of a bargain has been published. Mr Burnham will say his Everton experience taught him to distrust the Premier League's process, and he has since stepped back. Conservative governments also courted Gulf capital, and they were right to want investment.

The question is narrower. A Prime Minister who built his career in Manchester, on Abu Dhabi money, now depends on Abu Dhabi money to fund his flagship growth project. Whatever his motives, that dependence hands a foreign government leverage over a regulator's decision.

The Football Regulator has powers to judge owners fit or unfit. It must use them without regard to the balance of trade. Mr Burnham should say so plainly, in public, and then stay silent. Britain can find its investors elsewhere. It cannot find another independent regulator.

"Andy Burnham told the BBC he would be "really concerned" to lose City's owners. He called them "such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester"."

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@andyburnham Honesty? really? What about your connections with certain UAE officials??
Weirdly convenient they came promising gifts 2 weeks ago, knowing they had lost their case already. Weirdly convenient that Starmer had a smear campaign hit him and convenient you became top contender.

[Dave @DaveKent101]

As I have posted before, keep an eye on the Man City revelations and the emergence of even more ‘inconvenient truths’

In my opinion this could potentially bring Burnham down and disgrace this vile LABOUR government even more so than they have been already.🤨

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@talkSPORT If City get away with this then what is the point going every weekend knowing City can cheat whenever they feel like. Lose out on league, let's spend 500mil of sham money to win it next year.
Integrity of the game is at stake. I back @premierleague all the way.

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@talkSPORT he is right. Imagine city get off most charges,City Execs will act like they won, the premier league reputation will be in tatters and their power gone.
They want to destroy the league,if they lose they want to bankrupt them.
Then we have @andyburnham being totally fine with it

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@1990sUtd @andyburnham @LucyMPowell and then a smear campaign of Starmer went on for months and Burnham is all of a sudden top in line. Political rigging going on? it's happen before many times.

[1990sUtd @1990sUtd]

When Abu Dhabi bought The Cheats in 2008, @andyburnham was Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport🤔

In 2016, 9 months before being elected (night)mayor of Mcr, Burnham refused to condemn UAE human rights abuses - as did his sidekick @LucyMPowell 🤔
https://t.co/J7RgUGJG2f

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@thecitydefender The whistle-blower fears City owners will kill him. That's who you have in charge.
This situation has really shown how stupid some people are. Luckily mainly on blue side of Manchester. So not many.

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@thecitydefender

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@footyinsider247 This was calculated. At this point they knew they had lost so sent this clown out to pretend there was new money coming and the mugs in government swallowed it.
Mind boggles how devious this set are.

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@StanCollymore @themagic_tophat As soon as City tried to pretend they had bigger turnover than Real Madrid everyone knew they were at it. Didn't need an expert to work that out.

[Nick @CynicallyNick]

@TheAthleticFC @JordanC1107 Can you imagine there are City fans, a Prime minister and some journalists backing these corrupt City owners and in the background the whistle blower fears they will kill him.
Says it ALL about who we have owning a team in Premier league!