AFCJ

Master of Science but spend my time tweeting about the Arsenal⚽️

[Sash ~ @ltarsenal]

Unpopular opinion: A fully fit Kai Havertz playing at centre forward gets us 20+ Premier league goals next season.

[Heisenberg @aromeuloko00]

The day I knew football is cooked was when we piped City 5-1 last season, and the media and rival fans started dragging us instead of City. That shit still hilarious. 🤣

[EBL @EBL2017]

Also Vinai Venkatesham at Spurs…

Mikel Arteta is “THE MAN” at Arsenal Football Club.

Just like Jürgen Klopp was at Liverpool and Pep Guardiola was at City.

Managers are the most important figures at football clubs (assuming owners don’t handicap them with a lack of ambition).

[Miguel Delaney @MiguelDelaney]

And yes, it does mention US billionaires and Arsenal’s sponsorships

But as important as all that is, it’s negligible next to the influence of a hydrocarbon global power - look at effect of Strait of Hormuz

This is what it does to football

https://t.co/42trL78ReS

[The ORIGINAL Arsenal Insider 🔍 @InsideArsenal89]

Wild when you actually look back at it.

But it’s done now.

Can’t let it hang over us!

[Gabiola @gabiola442]

Money talks 101
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[Abubakar @olabodela]

Winners are having the PL trophy parade today. Losers are reminiscing on a major trophy they won decades ago. Standards.

[Sam/FIFA Brit @FIFABrit]

For years, the running joke was “Arsenal 4th”

Then the running joke was “Arsenal 2nd”

Now they’re making fun of Arsenal for winning the Premier League and losing in a Champions League final on pens to the reigning champs

Our rivals’ biggest games this year were watching us 😂

[Adeyemi of Eruwa 🇳🇬🇬🇧 @Adeyemi_AFC]

Imagine giving Saka yellow card for this😂😂😂

[Adam Keys @adamkeys_]

Think back to where we were six years ago. This is #Arsenal Football Club back where it belongs. Champions of England and a penalty from being champions of Europe. Look what it means; the beginning of an era.

[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?

[RGill @robggill]

Yep. This was the day Arteta visited and lay flowers at the Hillsborough memorial and he was greeted by this from Liverpool fans who pontificate about class. Arteta has never given Liverpool fans any reason to dislike him but they would never disrespect Pep like this.

[EBL @EBL2017]

Tuchel’s words spot on in this press conference…

He is picking the best possible team.

A balanced squad.

Not the 26 most talented players in the country (a mistake England made in the past).

[Amir @afcamir11]

For all that talk of Arteta being a self obsessed narcissist he gave all the glory to the players last night.

No live reaction, no interviews, wasn't about him at all.

Nobody has taken more shit than him over the past 4 years for our project.

Respect ���️

[🅾🅻🅳 🅱🅰🅻🅳 🅶🅾🅾🅽🅴🆁 @OBG_AFC]

Just remember...this lot are considered "experts"..

[Dr. Rajpal Brar, DPT @3cbPerformance]

One thing I've realized this season - truly realized - is how little the pundits know or actually do any research. The amount of times I heard "psychology" used - oh Arsenal HAVE to win the Carabao cup or the psychology, oh Arsenal have to beat City at the Etihad or the psychology, blah blah - or how City's away matches in the run-in were completely overlooked - esp vs Everton and especially vs the most in form team in the league in Bournemouth - just shows you how much of opinion is formed on cognitive biases rather than actual, evidence bases. "Oh it's a Pep team, of course they'll just win" "Oh Arsenal have lost three years in a row so they're going to fold". Just the same ole narrative crap that you have to hear when any new team is trying to get over the line and now suddenly, this Arsenal team will have the bottle and they will have the mentality right? No, that was BUILT OVER SEASONS and losing was a key part of that. Stop falling for their BS, start using your own eyes and minds.

#arsenal

[The xG Philosophy @xGPhilosophy]

0.00(xWork) tomorrow morning

[HandofArsenal @HandofArsenal]

TELL EM SKELLLLYYY