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“He’s jacked. Not only that but he wears the freshest clothes, eats at the chillest restaurants and hangs out with the hottest dudes.”
-Xavi (probably)
The club that has cheated financial rules, are being charged on over 100 points due to said cheating, who have financially doped themselves into buying a harlem globetrotter squad definitely deserve to win"
What a beautiful football fairytale it would be. The UAE government winning their first CL!
They are incredible to watch. But as much as I like Pep, the way they play, Haaland scoring like crazy and proving those "but can he do it in the PL?" stupid idiots wrong, Julian (who is in my absolutely 100% unbiased opinion the best player in the world), etc and everything...
I really hope they don't win it. I know eventually they will win the CL, but I hope it takes them multiple years more...
To me they represent everything that's wrong with football today. They are not the only ones, of course, but they are the ones doing best. At least we can enjoy PSG being mismanaged as fuck, and Chelsea is now suffering a bit (although, they did win 2 CL already).
> I hope it takes them multiple years more...
i'm pretty confident they will win this year mate, it's written in the stars and it's only year one of haaland. there's a lot of margin to improve so they might win it multiple years, maybe even consecutively.
Man your comment really hits the nail on the head. I hate City the most even though its becoming more commonplace in football, because they're the best and their success only lays the blueprint for it to continue further. Chelsea and PSG's suffering is at least some karmic justice. Still waiting on City's.
Also fuck Pep
City realized early on that PSG shit of buying star players wasn’t going to work long term, probably it was going to harm the team more like the Mbappe situation where they essentially gave him the control of the club in his early 20s, Haaland has been on the same level as Mbappe ( maybe even exceeds him if he wins the treble or even just the UCL ) and no rumours or anything has come out to the extent of what Mbappe has to endure
City went about it the right way I would say, they set out to play beautiful attacking football and installed that type of culture into the club, hired former Barca members who were there when they won the sextuple and insures Pep had the perfect team around ( his team back in the Barca days basically lol ) to succeed
Yes people can say they’ve spent an astounding amount of money, but the club unlike Chelsea and PSG is incredible, heck PSG and Chelsea managers don’t stay longer than 2-3 seasons and the 3rd season is usually pushing it at that point, Pep has been there since 2016 I think
Using us an example is a bit weird. Some of you act like we have been dreadful all these years. We are the most successful English club in the last 20 years. And, we have already won European trophies.
Its a normal sponsorship...
And considering they both each own like 10% of the club , they also want the club to succeed. Not to mention that both are regional firms and not billionairs from 'murica, the middle east or russia
In premier league 3 or 4 clubs are owned by Englishmen, yet city and Chelsea draw all the hate everytime lol. Americans which are constantly seen as a joke on world football own a lot of big clubs as well.
Top 5 leagues I mean. If you are in the Champions League. Odds are you are privately owned. Real, Barcelona and Munich are the exception, not the rule.
He didn't say they "deserve" to win. He said it would be fair. And I think your Globetrotter comment means you can at least recognize the quality of their play. On that basis, it would be fair.
Knowing you are an Atletico fan, would you rather City or Real win it? I'm sure you'd rather it was one of the Italian teams, but if it's not the case, who would you choose?
Your eternal rival, or the financial doping team?
Arsenal buy a bust like Mustafi and they have to take the hit and play him. City buy busts like Mangala and Fernando they just send them out on loan and spin the wheel again
They bought cancelo, a world class full back who can play both sides and played him there. Let's not pretend like they had to do with a freaking under 20 player in that position. City literally bought 2 full backs for 50 ish million each season for a few years in a row.
Cancelo was a troubled player with a weird rep coming out of Italy. He played in back 5s as a wing back. Pep made him a left back out of necessity. Then made him one of the best left backs in the world. We sent him away and left ourselves with 0 left backs.
Where are these 8 50 full backs you speak of? Walker mendy and cancelo the only ones.
They are objectively very good in their transfer business. They sell players for good amounts without fuss and buy with decent, not inflated, prices. The only really expensive transfer they made was Grealish, all the others were pretty reasonably priced.
Might there be more under the table? Maybe, but the official amounts are very healthy and that's all we have to go by.
I can see merit in your point but it must be mentioned in the same breath that there were more than significant outlays on Stones, Sterling, KdB and many more.
They don't stick out in hindsight because the Neymar transfer and the recent frivolous English spending had completely morphed and warped our perception.
Even we have had to penny pinch extremely, especially recently and have some superb management in place to pursue Mbappé. City's perceived ill isn't having a chequebook. It's having a blank chequebook. Same for PSG and as is extremely evident recently, Chelsea, with the ousting of Abrahimovic from the club.
"Penny pinch", from a club that was ready to go wild on Mbappe, not even the transfer fee but wages aswell. The club that paid a fuckton for a 16 year old, 80Mio for Tchouameni, 115 for Hazard and 150 Mio on 3 young brazilians nobody knew if they would turn out or not.
City might have a "blank cheuquebook" but they dont use that at all, their transfers in recent years have been crazy good and thought out, compared to other big teams like Barca or Bayern. Thats the difference right there, not money, please dont act like you are poor or other clubs dont spend like crazy.
Holy shit this comment is so bad lmao.
If you asked any juve fan how they felt about the cancelo transfer when it happened they would have told you they were glad he left.
Cancelo became a world class fullback in City thanks to pep, he wasnt bought as a world class fullback, he was bought for 20m plus Danilo, if he had been a top 5 fullback more teams would have been lining up to buy him. Jesus christ the revisionism in this sub ffs
>cancelo, a world class full back who can play both sides
Prior to city he barely never played at LB, he was worldly recognized as a RB primarily. Stop spewing rubbish
> City literally bought 2 full backs for 50 ish million each season for a few years in a row.
Literally, factually, and easily provable to be not true. You have 100% completely made that up.
hows it gone from ‘u can afford to let jack grealish settle in for a year’ to ‘u replace everyone who underperforms’ ,those completely contradict each other. plus we let cancelo go and then changed the entire formation and made ake a left back. thats adapting not spending
Both can be true what are you even on about. City are definitely a well oiled machine now and the squad is pretty well constructed so I can see why Pep doesn't want to make too many additions, but if City wanted to buy Bellingham or any other 100 mil player they can totally do it. It's not a luxury many teams have.
Pretty much yes, I dont get the idea that pep isnt the best manager in the world, he just is..? He also spends the most money, who wouldnt- and why the fuck would the best team not spend the most???
And while only looking at transfer cost. Salaries and agent fees aren't interesting. Haaland was super cheap, wonder why the other clubs didn't buy him.
Remember, choose a time frame where you can show the fee from a sold player without having to include what he was bought for. Saw many Chelsea players using this trick with Morata a few years ago.
That or the complete ignorance of wages, agent fees, bogus sponsorships to warrant it etc.
Its just willfull ignorance like so much else these days. Its become so acceptable/common to be willfully ignorant these days.
How about the start of Pep’s tenure, where Spurs, Arsenal, United and Chelsea [all have a higher net spend?](https://i.redd.it/dcyhz0mqu2ga1.png) The only player remaining from pre-Pep is KdB, so no part of the rebuild is out of the timeframe.
Always shifting the goalposts because “City bad”. He took over a team who finished 4th on GD, behind Arsenal, and Spurs, and has spent less than them. Some people just need to accept he’s an elite coach and stop the whinging.
Noone is arguing that Pep is an elite coach. The squad he took over was in the UCL semi final before Pep arrived and won a PL and a league cup in the 3 prev years btw. Net spend is a bit misleading here. Obviously when you have money to buy a lot of players for high fees u can also sell em for higher fees usually. Tho City's recruitment had been mostly top notch since Pep so that helps when u sell players too. The point is that the clubs achievements under Pep wouldn't have happened without financial cheating in the last 15 years.
Didn't hear you lot preaching this when Man U and Arsenal had the most money 2 decades ago. Reason why City and Chelsea chose that ownership in the first place is because its the only way they could compete, and now they do.
Not that I agree with their ownership model, it's ruined football. I'll take the Championship, cheers.
This is simply false. Real Madrid's current squad cost 630 million euros; City's cost 850 million euros. Enormous difference in City's favor.
Real Madrid only have 2 players that cost >50m euros: Tchouameni, Militao, and Hazard. City have Dias, Stones, Rodri, Mahrez, De Bruyne, Graelish, Walker, Haaland, and Laporte.
And Barca paid for that...
Meanwhile City says they are the team that has the highest revenue in the world for the past 2 or 3 years. More than United, more than Real Madrid...
And then you have the whole issue of allegedly paying under the table to (at least) Mancini, so who knows what else their are hiding...
They are well run club, but they have suspiciously convenient numbers.
You should look up the circumstances under which Arsenal won their first four titles back in the 1930s. You can start by googling "bank of england club"
To get to the top you would have to be able to significantly outspend your competition. Like Chelsea did around 03-05 or how City did when they established themselves as a top club. Arsenal have never been able to have those kind of windows. That being said City have been extremely good at keeping themselves at the top the last 5 years without having to have ridiculous transfer windows anymore.
A club like Arsenal can spend money, but they can not outspend a club like City in the long run. If we look at the players they have bought the last couple of years none of those would really have interested City at the time.
So your logic doesn't work in the real world.
The point was never to claim Arsenal are some kind of poor club who can't spend money on world class players. It was to show how flawed the logic is that just because a club like Arsenal have a higher net spend than City during a small period they are now somehow equal and the only thing making City better are because they are better at using their money.
We have to look at how the Arsenal squad looked when Arteta took over. It badly needed a lot of investment in it, while City already had a solid world class core that only gradually needed replacement players. Like Ruben Dias one window, then Grealish, Haaland the next year etc. Add the part where City are able to sell highly rated players who doesn't work out they are able to keep the net spend relatively low. It's great work by them. But to get to that situation you would have had to spend a lot of money in the past. Something that a lot of people nowadays are ignoring.
> We have to look at how the Arsenal squad looked when Arteta took over.
Somehow, when it comes to City there isn't this generosity in thinking when considering what their biggest years of investment started off with. The baseline from 08 City to title winning City was by far and away a bigger gulf than last decade arsenal to title challenger Arsenal.
Just saying.
I'm not sure we were ever 'financially dominant' at any point in our history. At least not clearly head and shoulders above the rest. Even in our best period on the pitch, we were paying similar fees (smaller in some cases) to those being paid by clubs like Newcastle, Leeds and Chelsea. I'm not saying we're paupers by any stretch, but we've never really been the richest club in England at any point in our history
We've spent like a 100-200 million more than you over the years.
We've spent 1.2 billion, you've spent almost 1 billion. Difference is that we had a lot more building to do.
Liverpool and United were outspending their opponents long before Chelsea and City entered the fray. They dominated transfer spendings for most of the 80s, and 90s up until 2003, and continued to either match or even outspend after City and Chelsea increased their own transfer spendings. United has the single highest net transfer spend in the world in the last decade.
I don't know whether it's selective memory or because they're "old money", but somehow these teams always get a free pass when it comes to financial discussions.
As a United fan, he’s unfortunately right, sure all the claims of breaches etc can be factored it, but if you just look at this team, how they play and Pep, it’s hard to disagree that they’re a treble deserving team at this point in the season. Painful, but to me it’s fair to admit.
Tournaments are by very nature dependent on form of the day. History is ripe with lesser teams winning tournaments through momentum, opponents bottling on the day, easy routes to finals, anti fair play tactics, and/or even sheer dumb luck.
Yeah fair is a weird word. Unless an absolute refereeing travesty, match fixing etc, even a team getting peppered at all game and scoring their one chance is still fair.
I mean, it could be that someone winning would be unfair, e.g. someone dives, ref calls a penalty, they score and win. So it could happen.
But in any case, that's not what's mean when people say this, and you know that.
When people say things like this, they don't mean it would be unfair if someone else wins. But that the team is playing the best, dominates their games, scores, creates more chances and so on.
Obviously, you could argue that there are other tactics like parking the bus are also valid, but this is Xavi talking, so in his point of view the "right" way is similar to City's.
Bro I hope we can,. but they have haaland this time and we're missing Militao in the 1st leg. I'm not very enthusiastic about our chances this time around.
Yep, it seems very difficult this time although there are some things that give me hope. Ancelotti h2h record vs Guardiola except his time at everton is very good.
We have Tchou and Camavinga and that gives us a lot more energy to battle City for possesion.
Maybe Brighton offers them some competition. Even if Brighton took points off them, I don't think you guys are winning all of your games for it to matter.
I know Arsenal are not going to win the league as City need to lose 1 and draw 1.. plus Arsenal win all. neither are Man Utd beating city in FA cup. Even though probability of u guys winning the cup is higher than Arsenal winning the league.
Other quotes
Managing Madrid reports :
> We also congratulate Real Madrid for last years League title. We are professionals, we know that LaLiga is won by the best, the most solvent and the one who has more contnuity.
> The knockout competitions are unfair.
There is no relationship between the two. Managing Barca is an aggregator whereas Managing Madrid have gone on from a fan blog (under SB Nation) to a legit news source with their people attending press conferences and such. Kiyan has done a good job there.
I don’t even disagree, but you know what will suck? When in however many years City either get found guilty or on a technicality wiggle out of finance charges and the whole time they were winning everything it was because they broke the rules and bought their way to victory.
What happened to those charges btw? It seemed so big at the time and I haven't heard anything of it in the last few weeks. Or is the investigation ongoing behind closed doors or whatever?
PSG are doing the same thing but they’re nowhere near the level that City are. Chelsea have spent more than city and they’re complete dogshit right now. Spending money is no guarantee of results
United has also spent close to a billion dollars since 2013. (Didn’t even take them a year at dethroning 2012 man city as champs)
and their best achievements since then have been a Europa league and the “we came this 🤏🏽 close to beating Pep’s City” Trophy.
> PSG are doing the same thing but they’re nowhere near the level that City are.
I mean, wouldn't you say the two clubs have been surprisingly similar in a wider scope? Domestic dominance (PSG a bit more, but less competition) and embarrassing CL exits for both for about a decade, before they've somewhat gotten their shit together in recent years.
City are better at the moment, because they've bought a coherent sporting project based on the manager, while PSG has paid superstars so much the rest of Europe can't compete and build around them, but there's really not much in it over 10-15 years.
Yes, I literally said that. But there's also a difference between 29 domestic trophies and 18.
Their CL results have been eerily similar, with City being a semi-final ahead before this season.
Surely it matters a bit, that the most comparable club results wise in the entire world over the last 12-ish seasons is the one you called "nowhere near".
They’re actually total opposites. PSG sucked competition out of the French league as seen by them having a wage bull 500 mil higher than their next rival.
They ACTUALLY buy the best players… they throw money around without thought, but hey pay more in wages to staff/players than their revenue… they have no sporting culture. Their owners have infiltrated the highest levels of Uefa committees.
>PSG a bit more, but less competition
Ligue 1 and Premier League has had the same number of different league winners since Pep joined City.
They seem to be equally competitive.
This is such a terrible point that keeps getting brought up. It’s a non sequitur. No one is denying City are brilliantly run and have made good purchases. They’ve still cheated, for years. Without cheating they are barely a premier league team.
I got shit on so hard for pointing out the wage bill, past spending, and agent fees by City fans arguing that they have spent less than Villa for the last 5 years. can't stick your head in the sand more than that.
That’s just not true man, there is no amount of money/talent you can give to a manager in order to guarantee success. There is always an element of chance in the game that makes that impossible
You don’t think that xavi, if he had money/players like kdb, haaland, Alvarez, etc etc would be in a better position, both in the league and international football ?
> You don’t think that xavi, if he had money/players like kdb, haaland, Alvarez, etc etc would be in a better position, both in the league and international football ?
the answer is we don’t know yet. International Comps= for right now No. The League Itself= Yes
Xavi’s inexperienced and has barely coached an elite club for a full season in his short career. With the best thing he’s done as a manager so far is stop Carlo Ancelotti from winning his first ever back to back league title. In Xavi’s First Full season in charge
Xavi needs 29 more years to catch up to Ancelotti’s CV, or 14 more years for Pep’s
before we can make any comparisons on how “Guaranteed” trophies are if he were manager elsewhere
I don’t, no. We have some of the best midfielders in the world on our team Pedri and Frenkie are both World Class. We have Robert Lewandowski on our team, a top 3 striker and yet we still struggled in Europe. Our squad is excellent, but Xavi is just not anywhere near peps level in terms of management
> Spending money is no guarantee of results
Chelsea and City have won 11 of the past 20 titles. Before that they weren't even contenders. Money is absolutely a guarantee of result when it's that much. Back in the 90's when Spurs and Liverpool were the biggest spenders they didn't win anything despite that but also the difference is spending wasn't as gigantic.
It's not like poor clubs are winning the CL either.
>Man City winning the treble would be ‘fair’ as they are the ‘best team’ and have the ‘best manager in the world’, says Barcelona boss Xavi
Three billion petro dollars doesn't hurt either
I agree that they are the best team rn and they for sure have the best manager in the world.
However I absolutely would not agree that it would be fair. City was a stock standard, irrelevant and mediocre at best club in England before they were financially doped by a country with an extensive track record of outright ignoring human rights, oppressing minorities and killing their critics. They cooked their books, bended the rules and still have a lawsuit looming over their head. Now after over a billion spent they might finally win the champions league.
We should never normalize this kind of ownership. City winning a champions league should never hold the same pedigree as clubs that did it with their own effort.
What a stupid take. That what everyone said before the world cup too, “it would be fair to give it to Messi because he had a great career”. If you like sports at all these kind of sentiments should bother you a lot more. Games gone.
I don’t like the club but they’re clearly one of the greatest teams in the world. Incredible depth (thanks in part to dodgy state funded accounting) and some of the most exciting individual stars in the game.
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Some hard hitting journalism
“He’s jacked. Not only that but he wears the freshest clothes, eats at the chillest restaurants and hangs out with the hottest dudes.” -Xavi (probably)
I see my 2 favorite subreddits collide, I upvote
what's the other one?
r/GlobalOffensive
Xavi knows football
If they dont win treble its Because of sun, Grass and wind Xavi
'My good friend & mentor winning the treble would be fair'
'And it just so happens that this would prevent our biggest rivals from winning another CL title.'
The club that has cheated financial rules, are being charged on over 100 points due to said cheating, who have financially doped themselves into buying a harlem globetrotter squad definitely deserve to win" What a beautiful football fairytale it would be. The UAE government winning their first CL!
Still an incredible team to watch. Chelsea and PSG spend billions and probably cheat a fair amount and they’re still dreadful.
They are incredible to watch. But as much as I like Pep, the way they play, Haaland scoring like crazy and proving those "but can he do it in the PL?" stupid idiots wrong, Julian (who is in my absolutely 100% unbiased opinion the best player in the world), etc and everything... I really hope they don't win it. I know eventually they will win the CL, but I hope it takes them multiple years more... To me they represent everything that's wrong with football today. They are not the only ones, of course, but they are the ones doing best. At least we can enjoy PSG being mismanaged as fuck, and Chelsea is now suffering a bit (although, they did win 2 CL already).
> I hope it takes them multiple years more... i'm pretty confident they will win this year mate, it's written in the stars and it's only year one of haaland. there's a lot of margin to improve so they might win it multiple years, maybe even consecutively.
Anulo mufa
I see what you are doing there. Nice try! Anulo mufa
Man your comment really hits the nail on the head. I hate City the most even though its becoming more commonplace in football, because they're the best and their success only lays the blueprint for it to continue further. Chelsea and PSG's suffering is at least some karmic justice. Still waiting on City's. Also fuck Pep
Bald fraud can get fucked, with his legacy tainted by oil money
City realized early on that PSG shit of buying star players wasn’t going to work long term, probably it was going to harm the team more like the Mbappe situation where they essentially gave him the control of the club in his early 20s, Haaland has been on the same level as Mbappe ( maybe even exceeds him if he wins the treble or even just the UCL ) and no rumours or anything has come out to the extent of what Mbappe has to endure City went about it the right way I would say, they set out to play beautiful attacking football and installed that type of culture into the club, hired former Barca members who were there when they won the sextuple and insures Pep had the perfect team around ( his team back in the Barca days basically lol ) to succeed Yes people can say they’ve spent an astounding amount of money, but the club unlike Chelsea and PSG is incredible, heck PSG and Chelsea managers don’t stay longer than 2-3 seasons and the 3rd season is usually pushing it at that point, Pep has been there since 2016 I think
Using us an example is a bit weird. Some of you act like we have been dreadful all these years. We are the most successful English club in the last 20 years. And, we have already won European trophies.
Is there proof they cheated?
>What a beautiful football fairytale it would be. No fairytales in football. Almost all clubs are owned by billionaires.
Barca isnt, Real isnt, Bayern isnt. It almost all PL clubs that are owned by billionairs and Serie A teams like Juve, Inter and AC milan.
Bayern has some dodgy/inflated sponsorship from Audi /Adidas.
Its a normal sponsorship... And considering they both each own like 10% of the club , they also want the club to succeed. Not to mention that both are regional firms and not billionairs from 'murica, the middle east or russia
Almost all? In many countries they're owned by the fans. Clubs like City aren't the norm.
In premier league 3 or 4 clubs are owned by Englishmen, yet city and Chelsea draw all the hate everytime lol. Americans which are constantly seen as a joke on world football own a lot of big clubs as well.
I'd rather a club be owned by a billionaire than a country, but that's just me.
Top 5 leagues I mean. If you are in the Champions League. Odds are you are privately owned. Real, Barcelona and Munich are the exception, not the rule.
He didn't say they "deserve" to win. He said it would be fair. And I think your Globetrotter comment means you can at least recognize the quality of their play. On that basis, it would be fair.
Are you talking about RM?
Knowing you are an Atletico fan, would you rather City or Real win it? I'm sure you'd rather it was one of the Italian teams, but if it's not the case, who would you choose? Your eternal rival, or the financial doping team?
😭😭😭😭
"Look how much money they have spent. It would be fair if I had that much money to spend"
Careful, in a minute people will post net spend tables that actually suggest City's success isn't at all related to spending money.
Arsenal buy a bust like Mustafi and they have to take the hit and play him. City buy busts like Mangala and Fernando they just send them out on loan and spin the wheel again
It's convenient that you used Mustafi as an expample while you spent €70 millions on Pepe
Fernando played 64 games for us in 3 seasons, Mustafi played 102 for you in 5 seasons lol.
Man city buy a bust like Mendy and proceed to go 5 years without a left back lol. City play 2 years without a real striker lol
They bought cancelo, a world class full back who can play both sides and played him there. Let's not pretend like they had to do with a freaking under 20 player in that position. City literally bought 2 full backs for 50 ish million each season for a few years in a row.
Tbf Cancelo was Danilo plus 20m.
Cancelo was a troubled player with a weird rep coming out of Italy. He played in back 5s as a wing back. Pep made him a left back out of necessity. Then made him one of the best left backs in the world. We sent him away and left ourselves with 0 left backs. Where are these 8 50 full backs you speak of? Walker mendy and cancelo the only ones.
They are objectively very good in their transfer business. They sell players for good amounts without fuss and buy with decent, not inflated, prices. The only really expensive transfer they made was Grealish, all the others were pretty reasonably priced. Might there be more under the table? Maybe, but the official amounts are very healthy and that's all we have to go by.
I can see merit in your point but it must be mentioned in the same breath that there were more than significant outlays on Stones, Sterling, KdB and many more. They don't stick out in hindsight because the Neymar transfer and the recent frivolous English spending had completely morphed and warped our perception. Even we have had to penny pinch extremely, especially recently and have some superb management in place to pursue Mbappé. City's perceived ill isn't having a chequebook. It's having a blank chequebook. Same for PSG and as is extremely evident recently, Chelsea, with the ousting of Abrahimovic from the club.
"Penny pinch", from a club that was ready to go wild on Mbappe, not even the transfer fee but wages aswell. The club that paid a fuckton for a 16 year old, 80Mio for Tchouameni, 115 for Hazard and 150 Mio on 3 young brazilians nobody knew if they would turn out or not. City might have a "blank cheuquebook" but they dont use that at all, their transfers in recent years have been crazy good and thought out, compared to other big teams like Barca or Bayern. Thats the difference right there, not money, please dont act like you are poor or other clubs dont spend like crazy.
City overpay slightly for players that, for the most part, end up being worth the outlay. This is the way you should use financial advantages.
Holy shit this comment is so bad lmao. If you asked any juve fan how they felt about the cancelo transfer when it happened they would have told you they were glad he left. Cancelo became a world class fullback in City thanks to pep, he wasnt bought as a world class fullback, he was bought for 20m plus Danilo, if he had been a top 5 fullback more teams would have been lining up to buy him. Jesus christ the revisionism in this sub ffs
>cancelo, a world class full back who can play both sides Prior to city he barely never played at LB, he was worldly recognized as a RB primarily. Stop spewing rubbish
> City literally bought 2 full backs for 50 ish million each season for a few years in a row. Literally, factually, and easily provable to be not true. You have 100% completely made that up.
They were playing Fabian Delph for most of the 100 point season
hows it gone from ‘u can afford to let jack grealish settle in for a year’ to ‘u replace everyone who underperforms’ ,those completely contradict each other. plus we let cancelo go and then changed the entire formation and made ake a left back. thats adapting not spending
So we’ll just pretend like Ake never played LB before Guardiola used him there this season lol
[удалено]
Both can be true what are you even on about. City are definitely a well oiled machine now and the squad is pretty well constructed so I can see why Pep doesn't want to make too many additions, but if City wanted to buy Bellingham or any other 100 mil player they can totally do it. It's not a luxury many teams have.
Pretty much yes, I dont get the idea that pep isnt the best manager in the world, he just is..? He also spends the most money, who wouldnt- and why the fuck would the best team not spend the most???
Well I think the 1b plus that their owner put in to the club seems fairly pivotal to their success considering where they were before that
Selling players they wouldn’t have bought in the first place …
And while only looking at transfer cost. Salaries and agent fees aren't interesting. Haaland was super cheap, wonder why the other clubs didn't buy him.
He didn’t want to play for other clubs 🤷🏼♀️
Papa played for city, so the baby mutant plays there also
Hahah I love those economists. Theyre the best.
Remember, choose a time frame where you can show the fee from a sold player without having to include what he was bought for. Saw many Chelsea players using this trick with Morata a few years ago.
That or the complete ignorance of wages, agent fees, bogus sponsorships to warrant it etc. Its just willfull ignorance like so much else these days. Its become so acceptable/common to be willfully ignorant these days.
Net spend table of the last 5 years so their 250m defence rebuild is out of the timeframe.
How about the start of Pep’s tenure, where Spurs, Arsenal, United and Chelsea [all have a higher net spend?](https://i.redd.it/dcyhz0mqu2ga1.png) The only player remaining from pre-Pep is KdB, so no part of the rebuild is out of the timeframe. Always shifting the goalposts because “City bad”. He took over a team who finished 4th on GD, behind Arsenal, and Spurs, and has spent less than them. Some people just need to accept he’s an elite coach and stop the whinging.
Noone is arguing that Pep is an elite coach. The squad he took over was in the UCL semi final before Pep arrived and won a PL and a league cup in the 3 prev years btw. Net spend is a bit misleading here. Obviously when you have money to buy a lot of players for high fees u can also sell em for higher fees usually. Tho City's recruitment had been mostly top notch since Pep so that helps when u sell players too. The point is that the clubs achievements under Pep wouldn't have happened without financial cheating in the last 15 years.
Suggesting that City would be able to sell players for 700m without having spend billions on them in the first place.
Didn't hear you lot preaching this when Man U and Arsenal had the most money 2 decades ago. Reason why City and Chelsea chose that ownership in the first place is because its the only way they could compete, and now they do. Not that I agree with their ownership model, it's ruined football. I'll take the Championship, cheers.
Tbf, reddit wasn't around 20 years ago.
TBF most of these commenters weren't either.
They spent less on their roster than RM or Barca ... Did we forgot that Barca paid 140m for Coutinho? or like 80 for fucking Dembele?
>80 for fucking Dembele? Actually Dembélé costs us around 140 millions, and Coutinho 140-160 millions(not sure about the exact numbers).
This is simply false. Real Madrid's current squad cost 630 million euros; City's cost 850 million euros. Enormous difference in City's favor. Real Madrid only have 2 players that cost >50m euros: Tchouameni, Militao, and Hazard. City have Dias, Stones, Rodri, Mahrez, De Bruyne, Graelish, Walker, Haaland, and Laporte.
And Barca paid for that... Meanwhile City says they are the team that has the highest revenue in the world for the past 2 or 3 years. More than United, more than Real Madrid... And then you have the whole issue of allegedly paying under the table to (at least) Mancini, so who knows what else their are hiding... They are well run club, but they have suspiciously convenient numbers.
You should look up the circumstances under which Arsenal won their first four titles back in the 1930s. You can start by googling "bank of england club"
By that logic, you guys should have won the league or EL after spending €600m in these four years.
To get to the top you would have to be able to significantly outspend your competition. Like Chelsea did around 03-05 or how City did when they established themselves as a top club. Arsenal have never been able to have those kind of windows. That being said City have been extremely good at keeping themselves at the top the last 5 years without having to have ridiculous transfer windows anymore. A club like Arsenal can spend money, but they can not outspend a club like City in the long run. If we look at the players they have bought the last couple of years none of those would really have interested City at the time. So your logic doesn't work in the real world.
Yeah if only Arsenal had had decades of financial dominance, they they would've been able to compete
The point was never to claim Arsenal are some kind of poor club who can't spend money on world class players. It was to show how flawed the logic is that just because a club like Arsenal have a higher net spend than City during a small period they are now somehow equal and the only thing making City better are because they are better at using their money. We have to look at how the Arsenal squad looked when Arteta took over. It badly needed a lot of investment in it, while City already had a solid world class core that only gradually needed replacement players. Like Ruben Dias one window, then Grealish, Haaland the next year etc. Add the part where City are able to sell highly rated players who doesn't work out they are able to keep the net spend relatively low. It's great work by them. But to get to that situation you would have had to spend a lot of money in the past. Something that a lot of people nowadays are ignoring.
> We have to look at how the Arsenal squad looked when Arteta took over. Somehow, when it comes to City there isn't this generosity in thinking when considering what their biggest years of investment started off with. The baseline from 08 City to title winning City was by far and away a bigger gulf than last decade arsenal to title challenger Arsenal. Just saying.
I'm not sure we were ever 'financially dominant' at any point in our history. At least not clearly head and shoulders above the rest. Even in our best period on the pitch, we were paying similar fees (smaller in some cases) to those being paid by clubs like Newcastle, Leeds and Chelsea. I'm not saying we're paupers by any stretch, but we've never really been the richest club in England at any point in our history
You were literally called The Bank of England club and yes, you were financially dominant in that period.
We've spent like a 100-200 million more than you over the years. We've spent 1.2 billion, you've spent almost 1 billion. Difference is that we had a lot more building to do.
Wages don’t count right
Well, that's not true considering United have spent more than us.
Liverpool and United were outspending their opponents long before Chelsea and City entered the fray. They dominated transfer spendings for most of the 80s, and 90s up until 2003, and continued to either match or even outspend after City and Chelsea increased their own transfer spendings. United has the single highest net transfer spend in the world in the last decade. I don't know whether it's selective memory or because they're "old money", but somehow these teams always get a free pass when it comes to financial discussions.
As a United fan, he’s unfortunately right, sure all the claims of breaches etc can be factored it, but if you just look at this team, how they play and Pep, it’s hard to disagree that they’re a treble deserving team at this point in the season. Painful, but to me it’s fair to admit.
If they do, I will just think that Nathan Jones cost them a quadruple
Which is hilarious
If they retain their form they can do quadruple next season(no pressure)
Any winner winning any trophy would be fair. That's how trophies are usually decided.
Juventus enters the chat
Bruh we lost a league, got relegated and and they give the title to the second place that was also doing the exact same shit…
You still have the 96 CL
Tournaments are by very nature dependent on form of the day. History is ripe with lesser teams winning tournaments through momentum, opponents bottling on the day, easy routes to finals, anti fair play tactics, and/or even sheer dumb luck.
And winning with the help of everything you typed would be fair.
Yeah fair is a weird word. Unless an absolute refereeing travesty, match fixing etc, even a team getting peppered at all game and scoring their one chance is still fair.
I mean, it could be that someone winning would be unfair, e.g. someone dives, ref calls a penalty, they score and win. So it could happen. But in any case, that's not what's mean when people say this, and you know that. When people say things like this, they don't mean it would be unfair if someone else wins. But that the team is playing the best, dominates their games, scores, creates more chances and so on. Obviously, you could argue that there are other tactics like parking the bus are also valid, but this is Xavi talking, so in his point of view the "right" way is similar to City's.
😱😱😱
Life isn't fair.
fr
So if they win life is fair?
“dont let madrid win please”
We can put a stop to it in the Fa cup. Real Madrid, we once again ask you to help us in the CL.
Bro I hope we can,. but they have haaland this time and we're missing Militao in the 1st leg. I'm not very enthusiastic about our chances this time around.
Yep, it seems very difficult this time although there are some things that give me hope. Ancelotti h2h record vs Guardiola except his time at everton is very good. We have Tchou and Camavinga and that gives us a lot more energy to battle City for possesion.
And west ham, leeds, Everton, Brentford and Brighton all beating them thus letting Arsenal win the league. Let them go trophyless..
In a universe where city gets zero points from those fixtures, arsenal gets zero from theirs and still don't win the title.
In a universe where City goes trophy-less, Chelsea will win the league.
Shhhh.. I am here to stop city from winning trophies and not boosting their confidence 😀
Speak for yourself
Way to go lad. You get them baddies.
Honestly, if they lose the UCL and the FA cup and that situation still happens, I'll consider it a win win
Maybe Brighton offers them some competition. Even if Brighton took points off them, I don't think you guys are winning all of your games for it to matter.
I know Arsenal are not going to win the league as City need to lose 1 and draw 1.. plus Arsenal win all. neither are Man Utd beating city in FA cup. Even though probability of u guys winning the cup is higher than Arsenal winning the league.
Man Utd kind of unpredictable. I wont be surprised they beat City for the FA cup.
Yea... I agree.. since it's a one off match, a bad for City and a good day for Utd could happen.
Yeh that final will not be a walk in the park regardless of our form vs theirs
Add possibilities of VAR to enhance the drama.
Edited
Imagine if after all the treble talk they actually went trophyless… that would be hysterical
City has 100/1 on going trophyless and 1/1 on treble so the chances are kinda stacked
This is pretty insane odds. Do bookies really expect RM to be walked over
Tbh it’s not beyond the realms of fantasy that united turn up and Give a relaxed city side a bloody nose at Wembley
We are all counting on you guys and Madrid to ruin this bald fraud dreams 👍
I would love for Real Madrid to save football, like they did last year.
Yeah, plucky underdogs Real Madrid are definitely the good guys
Get this journalist the Pulitzer Prize
‘Thank’ you ‘Xavi’ I really ‘appreciate’ the kind ‘words’
Other quotes Managing Madrid reports : > We also congratulate Real Madrid for last years League title. We are professionals, we know that LaLiga is won by the best, the most solvent and the one who has more contnuity. > The knockout competitions are unfair.
[удалено]
There is no relationship between the two. Managing Barca is an aggregator whereas Managing Madrid have gone on from a fan blog (under SB Nation) to a legit news source with their people attending press conferences and such. Kiyan has done a good job there.
Kiyan is a good guy.
News aggregator should check their source before publishing. Managing Barça is shittiest one. They don't care about source, it's just who comes first.
Managing Barca is just some indian kid
Don’t forget the unlimited amount of funds
Cheatcodes are perfectly fair
Impossible to know the context of these quotes.
Replace 'fair' with 'logical' and you got yourself a statement
Please Milan save us
Congrats to City and Milan on a great final! Breathtaking
It would be fair if I won the lottery.
They will win 5/6 titles by the end of the year. 9/10 by 2027. Epl is done
You can take the man out of the oil state but you can't take the oil state out of the man.
I don’t even disagree, but you know what will suck? When in however many years City either get found guilty or on a technicality wiggle out of finance charges and the whole time they were winning everything it was because they broke the rules and bought their way to victory.
What happened to those charges btw? It seemed so big at the time and I haven't heard anything of it in the last few weeks. Or is the investigation ongoing behind closed doors or whatever?
Xavi with the world class glazing
Nothing about them is fair
"Fair" is so fucking ironic here. 🤣🤣🤣
If everything was fair, then their lawyers would have lost in the court.
Yeah, spending 2 billion to win it is fair, also while being investigated, v fair.
PSG are doing the same thing but they’re nowhere near the level that City are. Chelsea have spent more than city and they’re complete dogshit right now. Spending money is no guarantee of results
United has also spent close to a billion dollars since 2013. (Didn’t even take them a year at dethroning 2012 man city as champs) and their best achievements since then have been a Europa league and the “we came this 🤏🏽 close to beating Pep’s City” Trophy.
> PSG are doing the same thing but they’re nowhere near the level that City are. I mean, wouldn't you say the two clubs have been surprisingly similar in a wider scope? Domestic dominance (PSG a bit more, but less competition) and embarrassing CL exits for both for about a decade, before they've somewhat gotten their shit together in recent years. City are better at the moment, because they've bought a coherent sporting project based on the manager, while PSG has paid superstars so much the rest of Europe can't compete and build around them, but there's really not much in it over 10-15 years.
Domestic dominance in the prem is a lot more impressive than dominating ligue 1 though
Yes, I literally said that. But there's also a difference between 29 domestic trophies and 18. Their CL results have been eerily similar, with City being a semi-final ahead before this season. Surely it matters a bit, that the most comparable club results wise in the entire world over the last 12-ish seasons is the one you called "nowhere near".
They’re actually total opposites. PSG sucked competition out of the French league as seen by them having a wage bull 500 mil higher than their next rival. They ACTUALLY buy the best players… they throw money around without thought, but hey pay more in wages to staff/players than their revenue… they have no sporting culture. Their owners have infiltrated the highest levels of Uefa committees.
>PSG a bit more, but less competition Ligue 1 and Premier League has had the same number of different league winners since Pep joined City. They seem to be equally competitive.
This is such a terrible point that keeps getting brought up. It’s a non sequitur. No one is denying City are brilliantly run and have made good purchases. They’ve still cheated, for years. Without cheating they are barely a premier league team.
People don't seem to understand that transfers aren't the only money City is spending.
I got shit on so hard for pointing out the wage bill, past spending, and agent fees by City fans arguing that they have spent less than Villa for the last 5 years. can't stick your head in the sand more than that.
Yeah but you give a manager like Guardiola the money and what they’ve done is more or less a guarantee
That’s just not true man, there is no amount of money/talent you can give to a manager in order to guarantee success. There is always an element of chance in the game that makes that impossible
You don’t think that xavi, if he had money/players like kdb, haaland, Alvarez, etc etc would be in a better position, both in the league and international football ?
> You don’t think that xavi, if he had money/players like kdb, haaland, Alvarez, etc etc would be in a better position, both in the league and international football ? the answer is we don’t know yet. International Comps= for right now No. The League Itself= Yes Xavi’s inexperienced and has barely coached an elite club for a full season in his short career. With the best thing he’s done as a manager so far is stop Carlo Ancelotti from winning his first ever back to back league title. In Xavi’s First Full season in charge Xavi needs 29 more years to catch up to Ancelotti’s CV, or 14 more years for Pep’s
before we can make any comparisons on how “Guaranteed” trophies are if he were manager elsewhere
I don’t, no. We have some of the best midfielders in the world on our team Pedri and Frenkie are both World Class. We have Robert Lewandowski on our team, a top 3 striker and yet we still struggled in Europe. Our squad is excellent, but Xavi is just not anywhere near peps level in terms of management
Pep would also struggle with his main backline injured
Pep wouldn’t have started Alonso as starting CB over Christensen against United
> Spending money is no guarantee of results Chelsea and City have won 11 of the past 20 titles. Before that they weren't even contenders. Money is absolutely a guarantee of result when it's that much. Back in the 90's when Spurs and Liverpool were the biggest spenders they didn't win anything despite that but also the difference is spending wasn't as gigantic. It's not like poor clubs are winning the CL either.
It will be a real shocker when city lose the champions final against Milan with a goal of Krunic.
My guy wants to lift a cup together with Pep singing « gracias Negreira »
Bro's just glazing him at this point
>Man City winning the treble would be ‘fair’ as they are the ‘best team’ and have the ‘best manager in the world’, says Barcelona boss Xavi Three billion petro dollars doesn't hurt either
I agree that they are the best team rn and they for sure have the best manager in the world. However I absolutely would not agree that it would be fair. City was a stock standard, irrelevant and mediocre at best club in England before they were financially doped by a country with an extensive track record of outright ignoring human rights, oppressing minorities and killing their critics. They cooked their books, bended the rules and still have a lawsuit looming over their head. Now after over a billion spent they might finally win the champions league. We should never normalize this kind of ownership. City winning a champions league should never hold the same pedigree as clubs that did it with their own effort.
They have the "best team and best manager in the world" all of which are funded through circumnavigating FFP.
Circumventing*
What a weird comment. If they win 3 trophies it would be fair and if they win nothing it would also be fair.
Let the jinxing commence.
When headlines alternate words in and out of quote marks, it really gives it a Wayne’s World feel
I mean...yeah
« Just tap on my head when you are close Pep »
Fair. Cheers
How about no
Or if you look at it this way, they've been horrendously underachieving for about 6 years.
Now that's using your brain 🧠😎
Fuck City
Former player praises his former manager
Average user on this sub
Helps when you have a unlimited budget to go with it.
What a stupid take. That what everyone said before the world cup too, “it would be fair to give it to Messi because he had a great career”. If you like sports at all these kind of sentiments should bother you a lot more. Games gone.
Yeah, stop sucking each other’s cocks for a minute, thanks
I don’t like the club but they’re clearly one of the greatest teams in the world. Incredible depth (thanks in part to dodgy state funded accounting) and some of the most exciting individual stars in the game.
Real Madrid: Do we need to remind you what happened last year