Manchester City are closing in on a fifth Premier League title in the last six seasons. With four games to play, City leads Arsenal by a point with a game in hand.
Unbeaten in 13 league games now – with 12 wins in that run – Pep Guardiola’s men are firm favourites to see off what has been an impressive title challenge from Mikel Arteta’s young Arsenal team.
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Another league crown would cement this City team as one of the most dominant dynasties in Premier League history.
Since Pep Guardiola’s arrival to the blue half of Manchester in 2016, the Catalan coach has claimed four league crowns and the same number of Carabao Cups, plus an FA Cup and two FA Community Shields.
That’s 11 trophies in seven seasons. For all their success, however, City has still failed in their ultimate goal – to assert their dominance as the best club in Europe by claiming the UEFA Champions League.
On Wednesday morning (5am AEST), they face Real Madrid in the first leg of the semi-finals, a rematch of last year’s final four match-up.
With City already into the FA Cup final, where they will face Manchester United on June 4 (AEST), Guardiola’s side is closing in becoming just the second side in Premier League history to claim that treble after United in 1999.
It would be the crowning achievement in a supremely successful era – and would silence one of the club’s most dogged and long-running criticisms, that for all their domestic success they have failed to deliver in Europe.
But another criticism won’t be silenced so easily: that City, owned by ultra-rich Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s royal family since 2008, has breached financial rules – or flat-out committed fraud – to spend their way to victory.
Here’s why City are perfectly placed to finally answer the first critique – and why the second won’t be answered for months, if not years.
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YEARS OF CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FAILURE AND THE PEP CURSE
For all the silverware they’ve amassed and the records they’ve demolished at the domestic level, Pep Guardiola’s Champions League record in charge of City has been perpetually underwhelming.
In Guardiola’s first season in Manchester, City was ousted in the last 16 by Monaco. The following three seasons they failed to get beyond the quarter finals. In 2021, the club’s great continental dream finally seemed to be in reach when they reached the final – only to lose to Chelsea.
And last year, they reached the semi-finals and were arguably the better team in two legs against Real Madrid, only to somehow fall to defeat 6-5 on aggregate. Guardiola’s side led 5-3 on aggregate heading into the final minute of regulation time before conceding twice to Rodrygo in quick succession, before Karim Benzema struck a penalty in extra time.
It was another ugly chapter in a long line of Champions League collapses under Guardiola – and one that stretched back to the coach’s time at Bayern Munich and even to Barcelona, where he twice won the much-coveted trophy.
Is Guardiola cursed?
11 times he has been knocked out of the Champions League. In eight of those exits, his team has conceded multiple goals in quick succession – a truly damning statistic.
City was dumped out in 2017 after two Monaco goals in eight minutes. They copped three in 19 minutes from Liverpool the year later. It was two in three minutes at the hands of Spurs in 2019, and two in eight minutes from Lyon in 2020. But last year was worst of all – three Madrid goals in six minutes as Manchester collapsed in staggering style.
In big European games, City panic time and time again. In the dying stages against Madrid last year, the English heavyweights resorted to desperately pumping long balls forward.
It was the very antithesis of everything Guardiola has created at City – cool and calm, relentless in their pursuit of perfection, and dedicated completely to their brand of total football.
While the players have lost their heads across the years, so too has their great mastermind Guardiola. All too often, Guardiola has tinkered with his selections, his tactics and formations in the big games, overthinking the threat posed by his rivals rather than trusting in the systems he has spent years refining to ever-greater levels.
Whether the players or the manager are more to blame for their repeated Champions League failures is up for debate.
But it is clear that both are equally motivated to end that streak.
For Guardiola, it would be a first continental triumph since 2010-11 and a third overall, taking him alongside legends Alex Ferguson, Zinedine Zidane and Bob Paisley with three total Champions League or European Cup wins.
Only Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti has more, having already won two Champions League trophies with Real Madrid (2013-14 and 2021-22) and two with AC Milan (2002-03 and 2006-07).
Ancelotti and Guardiola are polar opposites, in many ways, though they both stand among the greatest coaches of the modern age.
Where Guardiola is a great visionary, a football purist dedicated to his game-changing evolution of juego de posición or ‘positional play’, Ancelotti is a pragmatist, able to adapt to the players and tools at his disposal.
Nine years ago, the managers met for the first time. Pep Guardiola was at Bayern Munich, where he took over a team that had won a continental treble the season prior. He guided them to a league title with seven games remaining – the earliest the Bundesliga had ever been sealed – before meeting Ancelotti’s Madrid in the semi-finals.
Then came what Guardiola called in his book the “biggest f***-up” of his career.
Munich had 80 per cent of possession in the first half of the first leg in Madrid, showing their trademark possession–based approach. They dominated for large periods of the game, but Ancelotti’s Madrid scored in simple style – Karim Benzema banging in off simple squaring ball after a counter-attack. That match finished 1-0.
Ahead of the return leg, Munich’s home ground where Madrid had never won in 10 attempts, the great overthinker Guardiola made his greatest mistake.
He had planned to play a 3-4-3 formation. But his team hadn’t played as a back three in months, so Guardiola decided instead to stick to a back four. After a stunning 5-2 league win, Guardiola made an 11th-hour switch to replace his intended 4-2-3-1 with a highly-aggressive 4-2-4.
It backfired in a staggering rout. Madrid scored three in 35 minutes, and finished 4-0 victors.
Guardiola was brutally criticised in the German media. He had abandoned his principles and paid the price. But even then, few would believe he would go so long without another Champions League crown.
The criticism that followed that day have echoed down the years, with every failed tactical tinkering or counterintuitive selection.
“With Pep Guardiola I have the feeling that he always wants to do something special in big games,” former Bayern Munich and Germany defender Lothar Matthaus told Sport Bild in 2020. “Barcelona had a DNA, a system he pulled through. Pep was successful there. With Bayern and City, he tried it over and over again with changes and failed again and again.
“He always wanted to show that he could do even better. I would like to tell him: Pep, you are a giant trainer – but please keep your system!
“I would describe it as egocentric. Yes, that’s a harsh word, but it is due to what he did.”
Perhaps there is reason to believe this time will be different to that 2014 semi-final failure, or last season’s semi-final when Ancelotti’s Madrid again got the wood over Guardiola.
The big difference has been the arrival of Erling Haaland.
Suddenly, Guardiola’s preference last season for a false nine, often deploying a midfielder in that position, was abandoned.
Haaland is a genuine number nine, and he’s fundamentally changed City’s attack. His hold-up play allows City to play directly and escape pressure in their own half. His pace and perfectly-timed runs behind the defence stretch the lines and create space for the likes of midfield maestros Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan to exploit. And, perhaps more than anything else, his goals have changed City’s attack. All 51 of them so far, including a Premier League record 35.
Haaland has simplified City’s attack, precisely because his simplicity and efficiency – it is the same run time and again, with the same almost-inevitable outcome – is the perfect foil for City’s boundless creativity under Guardiola.
The pure number nine has tempered the visionary stylings of Guardiola. It might just be the answer to Ancelotti’s pragmatic brilliance – and the cure to City’s Champions League curse.
‘FINANCIAL DOPING’ AND QUESTIONS STILL UNANSWERED
It is remarkable to think that Erling Haaland cost City just €60 million after they activated his Borussia Dortmund release clause and beat out a host of rival European giants for his signature.
Compare that to the other big-money attacking signings this season: Chelsea’s Mykhailo Mudryk for £89m, Liverpool’s Darwin Nunez (£64m rising to £85m), Spurs’ Richarlison (£60m), or Manchester United’s Antony (£85m).
Mudryk has no league goals this season in 13 appearances. Nunez has nine in 29. Antony – a winger rather than a number nine – has five goal involvements in 22 matches. Richarlison has 1 goal in 24.
Haaland has more than that lot combined, proof that his transfer fee wasn’t even close to his true value. But that is the case with many of City’s signings down the years – and a big reason why one of the great criticisms levelled against them is not true.
Rival fans have claimed that, ever since City was bought by Sheikh Mansour of Abu Dhabi’s royal family in 2008, the club has spent its way to victory. In the early days, there was no shortage of big-money transfers as they outspent their rivals.
But as rival clubs have also received cash injections from ultra-rich owners, City’s transfer spending has been far from the biggest.
Since Guardiola took charge in 2016, City has spent £1.074bn. That’s less than Manchester United, who have spent £1.077 billion. But when it comes to net transfer spending, the difference is staggering.
City’s net spend is £478million, while United’s net spend over the last seven years is a whopping £835m. That’s because City have turned players into superstars – often doubling their transfer value – before cashing in.
This season, that included Raheem Sterling for around £51 million, and Gabriel Jesus for £47m – and both went to direct rivals!
In the last five seasons, City’s spend has been significantly behind some of their Premier League rivals. According to Football 365, they were 10th in net spend over the last five seasons, with a net spend of £224.97m. Chelsea, after their staggering spending spree this season, have the highest net spend in that time – £654.21m.
Manchester United’s net spend of £540.23m is second, ahead of the likes of top six heavyweights Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham. Even Aston Villa, Wolves, Newcastle and West Ham have bigger net spends in the last five years.
It is obvious that City spent plenty of money to build their squad, but their recent transfer spending is certainly no higher than their rivals. Nor is their wage bill, this season at least. According to FBref, their wage bill is just the third-highest behind Man United and Chelsea – and by some distance.
Pep Guardiola said in 2020 that his club needed to invest in order to win the league – but said that plenty of other teams were spending too.
“Listen – a lot of clubs invested. (Manchester) United, Arsenal – in periods before winning the leagues – invested more money than the other ones. When Chelsea started to win Premier Leagues, they invested more money than the other ones,” Guardiola said.
“I’m a good manager but I don’t win titles if I don’t have good players and good players are expensive. All the clubs spend a lot of money: Barcelona spend a lot of money, Madrid spend a lot of money, English teams spend a lot of money.
“If we build the club, in terms of the last decade, to compete with the elite of the Premier League or Champions League, we need to invest.”
But there is more to the picture than transfers and wages. City’s boundless financial reserves last week saw them add a 12th affiliate club to the City Football Group, this time Brazilian club Baha. This has allowed them to either develop players and funnel them to the Premier League or use their attack-minded affiliate clubs as perfect loan destinations for promising youngsters to develop in the City tactical style.
But not everyone is happy with the multi-club system. This weekend, City’s Belgian club Lommel SK was accused of receiving ‘foreign subsidies’ – reportedly around £15m in investment from City’s owners – since their takeover in 2020. The allegations came from a rival Belgium club, Royal Excelsior Virton, who labelled Lommel a “State Club” benefiting from “financial doping” and have taken them to court.
It’s not the first time that City Football Group has been the subject of claims over their finances – both from rival fans and from lawyers.
UEFA, European football’s governing body, in 2020 banned Manchester City from the Champions League for two years and hit them with a €30m fine for ‘serious breaches’ of Financial Fair Play. City were found to have lied about sponsorship revenue between 2012 and 2016, overinflating the amount they were receiving in order to ensure that their club spending was within those FFP limits.
City, furthermore, failed to co-operate with the investigation.
But City took the ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and succeeded – partially because UEFA rules put a five-year limit on matters that can be investigated. CAS found that an alleged payment that would constitute a serious breach happened before this time. The alleged breach in this case was that City’s owner used his own personal company Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) to pay a whopping £30m on behalf of their sponsor Etisalat in 2012 and 2013. This was put down as a ‘sponsorship’ payment, rather than investment from the owner.
In fact, UEFA claimed that Etisalat had not even concluded a contract with City until 2015. City’s defence was that Etisalat reimbursed ADUG that amount in 2015, and the earlier amounts had been invoiced to Etisalat (not ADUG) – despite no formal deal being in place.
Another major claim of FFP breaches came from a series of leaked internal City emails, published by German news outlet Der Spiegel in 2018. The club’s financial officers of the time wrote that Etihad – the Abu Dhabi airline being the club’s top sponsor – was in fact only paying £8m of sponsorships worth £35m (2012-13), £65m (2013-14) and £67.5m (2015-16) seasons.
The rest was coming from ADUG. Again, City’s owner was allegedly paying ‘sponsorship’ money from his own company to inflate the club’s finances – and get around Financial Fair Play rules.
City refused to co-operate with the UEFA investigation and share any more evidence around the matter, however. Their appeal succeeded at CAS – but didn’t stop the rumblings from rival fans and clubs.
When the news was announced, Guardiola doubled down on his repeated claims of City’s innocence. He said in 2020 after the CAS verdict: “We can spend as much money as our chairman or our owners want, but always, always in the Financial Fair Play rules and we showed it. We were exonerated for something we were accused of all the time.
“I don’t want to apologise for anything. I’m sorry guys. Manchester City don’t have (to) apologise because three independent judges decided we have done everything properly. It’s clear – more than clear.”
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This year, however, everything changed. The Premier League, having investigated the club for four years, charged City with over 100 breaches of its own Financial Fair Play rules.
The Premier League’s case was almost a mirror image of the UEFA legal actions – alleging City lied about their financial position and sponsorship deals, and then refused to co-operate with the Premier League investigation. It was also alleged that City was secretly paying managers more than they were reporting.
But the alleged breaches stretched from 2009 all the way to 2018 – a period in which they won three league titles, including under Guardiola. And, unlike UEFA and the CAS verdict, the Premier League case is not ‘time-barred’. There is no statute of limitations on this case.
But it’s not just about Financial Fair Play, and whether City should have been spending so much money on their stadium, their squad, their wages, and so on.
As UEFA’s former chief investigator Yves Leterme in February told the Belgian broadcaster Sporza, he is “convinced fraud has been committed by Manchester City”.
The consequences could be massive. City could be handed a points deduction (for the current season when the decision is made). They could be banned from signing players – and the reputational damage could cost them plenty of sponsors. They could be forced to pay fines or compensation. Then come the bigger potential punishments. Relegation is possible. Titles may be stripped, though this appears unlikely. And the club could even be expelled from the Premier League, an extreme and highly unlikely punishment.
The process is still ongoing – after a four-year investigation, it is expected that the private hearings before an independent commission could take another year. We won’t hear anything until the verdict is handed down – and even then, either side can still appeal.
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So what if City win the treble, becoming just the second team in English history to do so (Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United in 1999)?
They can finally deliver the club and its cashed-up owners the trophy they desire most, and etch their names into the history books.
They can answer all the questions about Guardiola’s tinkering and overthinking, and the Catalan coach can get revenge for his “biggest f***-up.”
But until the allegations of fraud and FFP breaches are decisively proven one way or another, a dark cloud will hang over one of the greatest dynasties in English football history.
City clash with Madrid at 5am on Wednesday.