What On Earth Is Going On At Manchester City? 

I hope this changes how football is run.

There is a precedent for this case, albeit from 1919, when Leeds City were found guilty by the Football League of very similar charges to the ones levelled at Manchester City (although on a much smaller scale). Not only were they expelled from the league, but they were forcibly wound up as part of the punishment. Port Vale took their place in the league and Leeds United were formed to replace them in the city. I'm not sure winding up is within the Premier League's power, though. And obviously things have changed somewhat in the last 104 years.

I feel in the short term of this current season this will have a MASSIVE effect on Man City with not getting either PL , CL or even getting the FA Cup.

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Manchester City to Vanarama League here we goooooooo

I was waiting for this. Alfies deep dives are always top and I know he's gonna do this story justice

As a Manchester City fan, I never thought the club would end up in one of Alfie's 'What on Earth' videos! 😂

Thank you for creating amazing content week in week out!

when Alfie gives you a dose of "What on earth is going on" you have to pay attention

Keep up the great vids Alfie! They're so informative and well-researched!

I was waiting for this as soon as I heard the news, big respect Alfie

I hope that this, and the Juve case, start mass investigations all over football to stop breaches in ffp and how football is working atm.

I love how Duncan Watmore appeared when Alfie said "what's more" lol. In all seriousness, great breakdown of the situation.

The treble, that's what's going on at city

Bayern in the meantime smiling and holding everyone’s beer, while they are running around looking for lawyers 😂 and drinking it

I love how you can explain things in a way that my pea brain can understand

Not just man city accused. Many huge international companies involved in the club being accused of cooking the books on their behalf. The former Ceo of Etihad James Hogan testified in citys favour. If found to be untrue he would likely face criminal prosecution

If Seria A is penalising Juventus it's only right that the EPL do the same to Man City because what's the difference between both situations

That ndidi cameo though 😂

I personally don't think City will get relegated. Mainly because of the financial implications with tv rights and sponsorships. But they will be severly punished in other ways. A big point deduction that will see them finishing mid-table at best. A huge fine and a restriction on their budget for the next seasons. Pep is going to go for sure in summer and they will need to offload some star players in order to comply with the limited funds. This, along with the further loses of revenue from CL participation and top 4 tv rights will make it even harder for a quick recovery. So the desirability of the club will further go down because of all this factors, the last few star players will eventually go as well leaving the club in a mediocre mid-table state battling for the 7th place at best. Yeah not too diferent from where they were before the takeover. But I must say in the long run it's not impossible for City to came back to glory through a normal path, it all depends on the executive team.

Does anyone else try to work out what Alfie searched for to get random stock images

With the UK economy is serious trouble I doubt city will get relegated, they will at worse get a huge fine and perhaps a 10 points deduction, essentially keeping them in European competition. Regarding the squad restructure that is easily doable in 3 transfer windows. They will be challenging for the league next season.

I look forward to Alfie's video in a couple of years: "The curious rise and fall of Manchester City." 😙🙃

DUUUVAL , cool seeing my NFL team pop up in the content. Between sports gambling here in the U.S. and the rampant spending and rules breaking in sports around the world, I hope it all changes eventually. I believes businesses, coaches, and players should be able to make profits and become wealthy; but the cost seems too great to sportsmanship and competition.

We love a 'What one earth is going on' vid Alife!!!

Was looking forward to your video on this when I heard the news

If players and managers are implicated in "rogue" payments and contracts, then they should be banned as well. They've helped break the law and cheated as well.

I really hope something actually happens this time... Will never forgive Guardiola his victory-lap after Man City bought his way out of the CAS-trial...

1) MCFC's dealings before FFP are irrelevant. If every time a 'law' was introduced, if there was retrospective justice, half the world would be in prison. It's very, very dodgy legal ground to be scraping through history looking for dirt. This is why the U.S has a statute of limitations. 2) UEFA cancelled FFP (under it's first guise) rather than face the Court of Arbitration of Sport, and the MCFC lawyers, due to the fact that the restrictive business rulings within FFP were, and are, illegal within the E.U. UEFA ran away from the court, only to reimpose those rules merely days later under FFP2 regulations. Thus swerving any judgement from the court, whilst still getting their own way. UEFA basically lost that case. 3) Blackrock is a parent company of many corporate interests. They are all linked. I am quite sure it wouldn't be news if MCFC were sponsored by a few of those interests, despite them all being traceable to Blackrock. 4) Jeff Bezos' Amazon grew profits by 90% during the pandemic, again there's no scandal there. 5) Don't you think it's odd that the two Arab owned clubs MCFC and PSG have never won the Champions League? I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Nothing fishy going on there. 6) Untraceable Chinese betting companies have been allowed to sponsor clubs until recently 7) The Premier League took money from BLM to make players take the knee for 2 years. 8) Manchester United are allowed to trade with £1 Billion in debt. 9) Chelsea simply take the p*ss, and the rest of the Premier League would rather take on MCFC off the pitch. They are allowed to rebuild with as much money as possible, amortisation is just as much a con upon the sport. They even had the UK Government's greasy little hands on them whilst they had no owner. 10) All aboard the Arab gravy train, for the greedy, greedy authorities trying to fleece MCFC for a payout. It happened for the World Cup, it is happening right now in the World Club Cup. These governing bodies lost billions from the pandemic, and they need to recoup their losses. This is a typical way they would do that. 11) The Mansour family are worth £3 TRILLION, so good luck having them over. They have the best lawyers in the world. They could buy the Premier League, UEFA and FIFA and change left over from, a couple of billion. 12) Keep it up, and we'll see a European Super League very soon. Be careful what you wish for. 13) It's classic that a German paper is the grounds for an English investigation. Nothing dodgy here. Bayern Munich have been advocates against MCFC since the take over.

Settling in for another classic Alfie Analysis and deep dive...🍿🍺

The video we all knew was coming. Thanks Alfie.

Do you know what the funny thing is. Even if they were to expel Man City from the Premier League, they could easily just come back up after one season in the Championship. Hell that's what happened with Fulham, that's what's happening with Burnley (who currently sit 1st in the Championship). There is also the Juventus example, a team that at one point was also disqualified from there top division and forcibly relegated, and within 6 seasons, they were Serie A champions again and then preceded to win 9 league titles IN A ROW. Forcibly relegating Juventus did nothing in the long run, and forcibly relegating Man City probably won't do much either.

I expect this event will become a movie years from now on.

What are the odds the UK goverenment steps in with their own incredibly independent investigation which overrides the PL's, and somehow by coincidence manages to find them not guilty, thereby saving face for all concerned? The PL has it taken out of their hands, no embarrassment for Abu Dhabi or the UK govt., the matter has 'been dealt with', and all goes back to normal?

I suspect the interesting here will be not _whether_ Manchester City manage to wriggle out of it, but _how_ they manage to wriggle out of it.

Alfie, always love the vids, especially documentaries like this. Love your integration of geopolitics and football without going too overboard. Interested to see what happens with Man City

Never expect anything from anyone, that way you won’t be disappointed. Let’s be honest they will pay a massive fine that will fund down the football pyramid to help lower league teams who are struggling financially. The Premier league don’t have the balls to relegate city. when they get away with it. It will ruin the prem in my eyes, saudi’s at Newcastle and boehly at Chelsea will just do what city have done and just pay a fine.

While everyone still wants Manchester City to be relegated, the news relating to the ESL relaunch by new company was unleashed. I believe Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Juventus could face the same debacle as Manchester City.

The game has been a joke for 20 years

Great video as ever Alfie - especially your conclusion: I think a big frustration for City supporters in the discourse/reporting since the charges is that this should be taken as some "A-ha! moment" whereas it doesn't change anything on either side (opposition: you bought success, City: owner investment is needed to catch up to the establishment) The supporters are City fans, not Ferran Soriano fans!

And they’ve now won the treble and looking more and more likely to get slap on the wrist 🤦🏽‍♂️

Love your videos, content and commentary - can you tell where this is going? Please do something about your narration. Content and enunciation is great - it's just the High/Low, Pitch/Enunciation change from first few words of a sentence to the end of sentence. If I didn't love the content I wouldn't bother commenting.

I can't see any other way a team can make the leap to the top tier and sustain it. Can you do a video on the history of football in Birmingham, I understand it is (was?) UK's 2nd largest city.

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I appreciate the explainer. Alfredo’s breakdowns of these complex football topics rarely miss. Unlike a certain channel that prides itself on outputting football content on s daily basis which would usually give a much shallower read on the situation. As for maan citeh, they’ll be fine. It’s fun to speculate about them being expelled from the premier league but realistically that’s not going to happen. They have too much money behind them to allow that. In football everyone has their price at the administrative level. City will bribe shamelessly like Qatar did to get the 2022 WC which was salvaged by the memorable final that settled the great GOAT debate decisively*. The premier league can fight citeh aggressively BUUUUT the premier league isn’t about to make an enemy of an organization that could be putting a lot of money in their pockets instead of draining it through legal battles. The Der Spiegle leaks are the problem for the league. They create a PR difficulty where to satisfy the public they have to make it look like they tried to enforce their own rules. But i have the utmost confidence in the premier league’s ability to work closely with maan Citeh to come up with a punitive measure that will convince the public that they took the matter very seriously but one that won’t hurt City in a way that’s particularly damaging. FFP wasn’t made to stop big clubs from spending money it was made to stop smaller clubs from spending money they don’t have when trying to get into European competitions. To me it always seemed obvious that a club like citeh could and would use such financial trickery to get around FFP. In fact come what may, i can imagine citeh would be very upset that a tabloid journalist got them in this much hot water and could be tempted to make exposing them into a more dangerous occupation to deter others from doing it in future. Powerful people and organizations don’t take kindly to having their power curtailed. Any individual doing so puts a pretty big target on their backs. *Puppet Ronnie would have to win the WC in four years time at the age of 41. His time in aretirement league would have to improve him

A follow up video once the verdict is reached would be great viewing Alfie.

Been waiting for this

This guy puts serious work in his videos 👍🏾 you watch his videos you end with knowing everything lol

Nick isn’t the only one with great research. Thank you for this coverage.

If City is guilty, they should be relegated the season after decision is made and have a 5-7 year transfer ban/cap at the very least. However stripping titles/player achievements would be a very poor decision. So many clubs could claim hypotheticals and what ifs (CL ties, relegated clubs, missing out on european football for that season etc.) That's just my thoughts

Nice touch indeed with ndidi.

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Fine work.

I feel like this is setting up a 7 biggest scandals in football history ;)

Love your documentaries.

Well done for pointing out the geo political aspect I this. For this reason, we will get away with whatever. City fans, blues you know who ypu are ", remember we were there long before and if we live long after,, they are just looking after our club and so far its been beyond great ( beating the rags 6-1 can be never taken away from us ), we need to stay together more than ever before.

Don't be surprised if, four years down the line when this legal process is complete, those 100+ charges are whittled down to a dozen and they get a 20 point deduction, but little more.

Are Leeds & Everton cooking the books as well? They seem very high on the list at 9:00 of the video, especially if you ask the question why would they be higher than Aston Villa?

Let's just add a little context here. City are the biggest team, in the biggest league, playing the most attractive football. From a neutral perspective, city is the team to watch. From a fanbase perspective, having already held the English attendance record for over 70 years, they have one of the biggest domestic fanbases in world football on top of a fast-growing international fanbase.

Alfie my man! always delivering, thanks! I hope PL make out an example out of Man City, but then again this will show if the system is corrupt or not since it will go to gouverment level no doubt.

So now that we are in May and Manchester City have won the EPL and are not far off the UCL and FA Cup as well, what if anything has come of this? It feels as though the whole thing has been swept under the carpet, whereas at the time if felt like Man City were in deep trouble. This all begs the question - is there any merit in this video come the end of the season?

a documentary on the afc Wimbledon on the nine promotions in eleven years, how they’re a fan own club and how they have a stadium in plough lane now. The story of they lost the club, how the F A allowed that and won’t allow that anymore. How they were very close to moving to ireland How they went up the English football leagues. It would be a good documentary video if you can do this. #thepeopleschannel

I always find it baffling how people bring up Chelsea when PSG and Man City get caught abusing the rules because Chelsea isnt owned by a country and doesn't lie about their sponsorship figures.

Good article(s), look forward to hearing from you in the future!

rarely comment on videos but what a well put together video, really enjoyed this and found this great! thought about a job at Sky Sports? haha

First Juventus and now Man City? I haven’t kept up to speed with football for a while but it’s insane how these big clubs are getting exposed for their shady practices.

What's going on? Two words: financial doping. Next up Chelsea and Paris At Germain.

When I was a kid, it was said that CITY stood for Conference In Two Years

Strip those titles off City!!

Points deduction this season (all wins up to this point) Void points in games to come Expulsion from the Cup and UCL

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God, I hope the PL comes down on City with their full force. Kicking out of the League, EFL refusing them, Hundreds of millions in fines, Honours stripped, It would be incredible

They'll get a token fine and maybe a brief transfer embargo. The notion that any sanctions of consequence will result is pure fantasy. 'Top' clubs always end up getting away with sort of financial BS in the end.

serious yet funny, a sign of quality content

wait this is totally why they sold zinchenko and jesus, to help balance their books more legitimately lmao thanks city for helping us win the title :))) (or at least get the opportunity to bottle it)

Great work Alfie

Day 391: Indonesia XI If All Eligible Players Had Declared For Them.

Manchester City should be expelled from the EPL.

Best German players in the premier league of all time. (Day 457) I will not give up until the video is made or Alfie himself tells me to stop. Everyone else telling me that will be ignored. If you don't believe my number, just go back to the previous videos. I'm at the bottom most of the time, but I'm there.

I wonder what role this legal case has had on City's performance of late. I mean, with all the lawyers involved they had to know this day was coming and if that was filtered down to the players, and how would they not find out, there could easily be a depressing effect on the team that manifests with reduced performance. It's not like City have fallen of the table, they are still #2 Afterall, and a couple games difference could see them even or ahead of Arsenal. So, if the legal issues are effecting the on-pitch performance then we should expect them to flounder even more through the end of the season possibly resulting in them falling out of the top 3. Last season the top 3 were City, Liverpool and Chelsea and this season might see none of them in the top 3 at seasons end.

I hope they get relegated with their oil money

I still think the punishment ends up being enough of a point deduction to make sure they dont qualify for any European competition next year, and a fine in the high seven figures.

Premier League times finally figured out how to deal with City's dominance. If you can't beat them on the pitch, throw them out of the league

Liked before watching because I've been waiting for this video

I know this was more of a serious video, but I chuckled at that nice little edit with the Hoever jersey at 15:11 when you said However

Shows a pic of Ndidi when saying the word "indeed". That's exactly why I subscribe to this channel. 👏

This could be key in the way the world of football is controlled going forward, if they're found guilty, it can't just be another case of them getting a slap on the wrist and at most a small points deduction. What they're accused of is brazen fraud that's clearly affected the integrity of the competition.

Wow. Just 2 mins ago. Lucky me. Lucky you. Lucky all of us

City should be expelled from the Premier League and forced to restart at the bottom of the pyramid.

well written and presented, thanks

Eddie Howe, that Indidi pull was Nice.

I’m glad they’re making it impossible for a club to disappear completely, like Bury, and almost followed by my team, Derby. Yes we bent the rules and yes we deserved the punishment, but no club, NO CLUB, should be allowed to die. And as a Derby fan, that even includes Forest and Leeds. Except MK Dons, who stole a club and I wish them continuous relegations forever, or just go bust.

This is a good video, but what I dislike about it is that the Juventus one from about a week ago was full of harsh critics on Italian football as a whole (despite it being only a single club breaking financial rules), whereas in this one, despite Man City have been accused of basically doing the very same, l thing, it's repeated plenty of times of the Premier League is the best of the best, the hegemon of the world and already a de-facto super league. All of which is true, but happened EXACTLY because clubs such as Man City or Chelsea (and I expect Newcastle to join the list very soon) have been doing this for years and years. I agree that Italian football has plenty of issues (with infrastructures aka stadia clearly being the biggest), but how the issues British football has have been treated in this video have 'bias' written all over it. It's either both Juve and Man City who had to falsify accounts because they weren't otherwise getting enough money to finance themselves or none of them. And I say so as a Juventus hater.

PLEASE KEEP IT REAL. Remember when Pep said if they are lying to me they are not my friends I will walk. That was never an option unless it was pre-agreed. He is far too intelligent to NOT HAVE KNOWN what was going on IMHO. He has suddenly changed his stance to we are being persecuted by 19 rival clubs but I will accept whatever the commission rules even if it means relegation and we will fight our way back to the top. He's the ultimate roll player. Good coach but I'm not buying what he's selling.

It seems that the Premier League is about to have their own version of the Calciopolis... of course, if they manages to get throught Man City's Elite Lawyers Squad and not get themselves brided in the process.

Great video btw 👍

Do a video on players that have made their name outside their own country, like weird ones not just every prem player, for example Ivi Lopez in Poland

Thank you for the information. So much fluff in the news about this and Pep valiantly trying to tough it out and talking scallops.

I'm I the only one who thinks its not just Man City, but other clubs could be found guilty as well?

I think the medium of RU-vid can actually betray the seriousness and brilliance of Alfie’s journalism. My guy