Manchester City have been making a few headlines, you might have noticed.
After years of waiting on the Premier League accusations, it has been announced that an independent commission has found them guilty on 114 of the 115 charges.
This all set in motion quite a while ago, when a hacker made many internal Manchester City documents public.
Man City have done their best to delay the guilty verdicts as long as possible by employing the best possible lawyers to stretch things out.
However, even though we are set to head into an appeals process so Manchester City can further delay any punishment for the longest possible time, it feels like they are 5-0 down and only seconds of added time to go. Even if those final seconds could end up translating as months or years.
Where Newcastle United are concerned, should we be seeing Manchester City as our friends and allies or is it simply a case of laughing at them?
For many Newcastle United fans, recent years has seen them choosing to view Manchester City as indeed our friends and allies, due to their wranglings with the Premier League. A view that is largely based on a belief by these supporters that if Manchester City win their various legal battles with the Premier League, then it could and would open up the way for Newcastle United to have more freedom to use the perceived financial power of the club’s owners.
There are certain flaws in this argument, these arguments.
The Newcastle United owners have never shown any real interest in ‘doing a Manchester City’, no intention of making NUFC a spend whatever it takes project to bring instant success on and off the pitch. Instead there has been a more structured bit by bit process to hopefully bring long-term success.
A lot of the ‘Manchester City are our friends and allies’ belief has been driven by ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ thinking. As in, the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester United doing everything they can to prevent Manchester City and Newcastle United enjoying success, so in that case we should be friends with Man City due to the fact we have mutual enemies.
My belief is that none of these are our allies and friends. All four of those clubs and many others are desperately hoping that Newcastle United fail. I think two or more of these clubs have certainly worked together at times to try and damage NUFC but we are on our own when it comes to looking after the best interests of Newcastle United.
If there had been no financial limits on spending then there would have been no rules for Manchester City to break.
Which of course was the case back in the day when in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s when the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and indeed Everton as well, were spending whatever they wanted, to get what is seen now as an unfair advantage. Whether that was the Moores family using their vast football pools fortune for the benefit of both Merseyside clubs, Abramovich with Chelsea and the same/similar with the likes of Man U, Spurs and Arsenal. All of them doing it in different ways but coming back to the same thing, spending money over and above what was generated by the club itself via normal revenue streams.
If financial rules hadn’t been in place, then I think these current Newcastle United owners would probably have pumped in a certain amount more than they have done so far BUT nothing like Manchester City have done. Instead I reckon that along with the likes of Aston Villa, Newcastle’s owners would have spent a certain amount more to avoid crisis pinch points. Such as when United ended up getting themselves into that PSR emergency and having to sell Elliot Anderson and Yankuba Minteh in June 2024 to avoid getting a points deduction. The same as currently where UEFA SCR rules are severely impacting on NUFC having room to flex their ambitions.
Manchester City look to have flown too close to the Sun and with the wax on their wings now melting, they appear set to crash back down to earth.
Hopefully Newcastle United’s more patient upward trajectory will prove a long-term success…