🧵 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?

Whether or not a choice is made on Michael Carrick today, tomorrow, or after Bournemouth, Jason Wilcox should be announced leaving Manchester United today. Nobody involved in the decisions around multiple failed managers & transfer policy should have further say in club matters.

Bruno Fernandes has made his position at Manchester United untenable, regardless of Michael Carrick's inevitable sacking - which the club will delay making a decision on when the writing is clearly on the wall. Fernandes, Martinez, Dalot, Maguire, Shaw, Rashford, Mount, Zirkzee, Ugarte, Mazraoui all will leave the club between January & the end of the season. They either have no future, want to go or need to. Add that to Wilcox, Hargreaves, Vivell, Berrada, Ratcliffe & Glazers, so much has to change otherwise Manchester United can never be more than this again.

The revisionism & pining for previous managers of Manchester United needs to stop, it doesn't help. Michael Carrick's 2026/27 doesn't change the fact Ruben Amorim was the worst manager in the club's history, he's gone. Go support AC Milan if you miss him.

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Obviously Wilcox, Berrada, Hargreaves etc, all have to go, but any players who want to leave, have been here way too long, they need to go too. Everyone who has a hand in the environment & culture at the club has to go. Nobody comes before Manchester United. Clean the place out.

Just finished a interview segment with @itvnews to discuss the shambolic & humiliating display by Manchester United tonight, how Michael Carrick's job is untenable but the club needs to be a lot more honest with itself about Wilcox, Berrada & ownership if it wants genuine change.

In a way, I am glad Kobbie Mainoo & Marcus Rashford weren't part of this for Manchester United - so they won't be scapegoated. I am tired of individual players being hung out to dry to as the reason for this. It's a club problem - a fundamentally flawed, disgracefully run club.

Bruno Fernandes looks so checked out here, so defeated, so angry. He has been through this time & again, it seems like it is finally at the point where he's had enough. He's been incredibly poor this season, but between his injury & being fed up with the club, I don't blame him.

Keep Manchester United's ownership far away from @ManUtdWomen. The minute they actually take an interest get involved because they think it might make them some money & interfere I fear for Eva Olid & her team, who are absolutely cooking Liverpool right now.

Sacking Michael Carrick & thinking that is some cure all only restarts the same cycle Manchester United have been living on repeat. A first time CEO, an inept, inexperienced Director of Football, all who bow on command to a bunch of money hungry owners will never take this club anywhere. Without wholesale change, putting world class operators in positions of power who are actually allowed & empowered to do their jobs, this is it.

Same moment in the cycle. We're stuck on the hamster wheel & we're not getting off it anytime soon. This is who Manchester United are now.

£1.012 billion paid by Manchester United on the Glazer debt saddled on the club in the leveraged buyout. £170 million paid out in dividends. Not a single penny of their own money put in. Financially hamstrung due to years of theft & failure. Whatever this is, is what is left.

All or Nothing is going to be humiliation fetish porn for rivals. Manchester United will be thrilled because they will be able to negotiate a bigger second season deal.