Manchester City supporters have every right to be angry about the guilty verdicts, but they need to hold their owners accountable rather than swallow the club’s claims of a “Premier League conspiracy theory”, columnist Will Unwin has argued.
Unwin suggests the Abu Dhabi regime’s arrival in 2008 transformed City from mediocrity into regular title winners, but at a reputational cost that may prove irreversible. The commission’s findings of “sham agreements” and disguised funding schemes ought to trouble any supporter who cherished the trophies won under that ownership, he writes.
He contrasts Mancini’s detachment from the breaches—the former manager made millions from one of the sham contracts and moved on—with the lasting damage to the club’s integrity. A club should reflect its community, not its owners, Unwin argues, and City’s path under Mansour has done the opposite.
The columnist acknowledges fans’ right to celebrate the success of recent years, but says any meaning in future achievements will depend on whether they are based on evidence and responsibility, not financial muscle deployed to find legal loopholes.
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