'Even allowing for inflation, this thread is not worth 198 Terry Francises' - EPL 2017-18

I presume he'll be doing exposes on all the other 20 odd dodgy oligarchs that own EPL/EFL clubs, and finding some bizarre way of weaving some more Corbyn bashing into them.

tbf football clubs are the worst aspect of our trade relationships with the middle east

nick cohen is a fucking manchester united fan

he cops to that in the opening line tbf

the points gap at christmas is: 13 points. nick cohen, manchester united fan, is bitter. he takes to his computer keyboard

i don't understand why sports journalists don't write more often about well-known political facts

also owned by dodgy fucking oligarchs. It is like having a beauty pageant for pension aged men in the local Wetherspoons, comparing and contrasting good oligarchs from bad oligarchs.

democratic oligarchs are way better than feudal oligarchs, you can always vote to replace them with somebody nicer

it really shouldn't be hard to tack on "who are owned by a medieval police state" after every use of "Manchester City" in a match report tho

i say let the middle east have its fun before climate change literally makes it uninhabitable

City ownership is nothing

if Man City's attack is like genocide, then Lukaku should be arrested as a collaborator.

Conscientious objector tbh

If only more clubs were owned by decent upstanding Englishmen, the sort who'd got where they are by sheer determination and hard graft and the honest English sweat of their honest English brows.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F11b9c8da-602f-11e7-b6f8-8145f3f5d431.jpg

Our owner is one of these "decent upstanding Englishmen". He does lots of charity work in the local community to help people who are struggling to get by on zero hour contracts, whilst sitting on a small fortune made by paying minimum wage/zero hour contracts.

surprised at the reaction to the city stuff itt - not all owners are the same even if many are corrupt or nefarious. seems to react like that is to play into the hands of a secretive group that has managed to paint itself as relatively benign:

this is a good read: https://medium.com/@NcGeehan/the-men-behind-man-city-a-documentary-not-coming-soon-to-a-cinema-near-you-14bc8e393e06

"not all owners are the same even if many are corrupt or nefarious"

Yes it's arguable the American ones are the worst tbh.

i'm not saying that from a liverpool pov or whatever - i just mean each prob merits comment for different reasons. personally i was surprised to learn city's owners funded le pen in france - that's some p global meddling that's beyond the likes of ashley, who obv is guilty of quite different evil at home.

i also think the way city has been run and presented in the media had actually duped me a bit, not into thinking these are wonderful people, but there's been a v subtle and well-managed publicity campaign that's given them dignity as a club and i'm willing to admit i prob allowed myself to be taken in by it.

I never noticed that tbh, they always seemed pretty vile to me.

a lot of the stuff about how the club is run is sort of interesting or can seem clever or impressive - feel there has been a lot of focus on that kind of thing.

lol, I just drunkenly posted Middle Eatern. In terms of domestic human rights abuses The USA isn't on any moral high-ground - with the biggest prison system in the world, and their police still using black people for target practice. And I could bet on the international blood/misery/evil index, the other oligarchs ill gotten gains are just as ill gotten. Lol sorry about the quality of debate here, cos I'm not very good at it and drunk to boot!

I am not sure anyone is under the impression that Abu Dhabi is a progressive workers’ paradise. I’m also not sure that anyone could name the two clubs owned, fully or in large part, by heroin traffickers..

Either way, a critique from McGeehan, who has put the work in on the ground, is going to be more useful than lazy cliches and weak analogies from someone like Cohen - particularly as the latter seems 99% fuelled by anti-Arab racism and a need to bash the ‘hypocrisy of the left’ these days.

What are you saying, fam?

yeah whatever about cohen tho this thread seemed to veer into "it doesn't matter they're all the same" territory which clearly isn't true.

What makes a good oligarch then LG? Because I think they are all bad and I don't think anything is clearly true!

not disputing that, just saying the owners' individual activities merit reporting/distinction

I feel that the criticism of City's Middle Eastern oligarchs was a mere whimper until they started running away with the league.

isn't it nearly a decade they have been there now?

And the bad practices of American/Euro oligrachs is just called late period capitalism, nothing to report here.

Not they're all the same yes it doesn't matter

not even gonna bother asking you to elucidate tbh... don't mean that angrily

there are regional operating differences between the elite scumbag crooks that own most of the the global wealth, but to say some should have more scrutiny because they aren't from the "Land of the Free" is effectively what is being posited here imo.

that's not what i'm saying at all, ffs, i've repeated myself a few times now.

i'm saying all should have scrutiny.

And what conclusions do yo think would be made if all these amoral scumbags were given the same level of scrutiny? I don't think putting them into different categories would be very illuminating.

i dunno how what i'm saying is particularly complex - i just genuinely think people's activities should be reported so we know what they're doing. it's not physically possible for each owner or ownership group to be doing the exact same things in the exact same industries or countries or parts of the world, therefore i encourage any scrutiny or investigation into any of them, man city included.

i'm not using the cohen article as a sacred text - it was p bland - but maybe read the medium piece.

i mean this year i feel i learned a lot about someone like kroenke - it's fair to say the way he's operating is v different and wrong in far different ways to man city's owners. that's all i'm getting at - the need to be specific and to know what each owner is actually doing rather than helping them by just saying "ah well they're all the same"

To quote (or mis-quote possibly) Deng Xiaoping "If it catches mice, then it is still a fucking cat".

"i dunno how what i'm saying is particularly complex" I read this in a Chris Grayling voice!

I mean any of this in an antagonistic spirit btw, just rather drunk and my debating skills are often wanting!

lol! I don't mean obv..edit

Charlie Austin has got the Christmas present the cunt deserves, a 3 match ban for violent conduct on top of his hamstring injury.

@htafcdotcom merry Christmas from family Wagner 🎄 pic.twitter.com/eVGuTFqOEw

— Lynn Wagner (@lynnmira0809) December 25, 2017

The fuck did Fraser Forster turn into Dani alves

Good man.

Now scored as many as Messi this year, in 12 fewer appearances.

Danny Rose though.

conversely, I think Obama was pres of the free world last time Shane Long scored.

Top scorer in the world this calendar year

Still unconvinced

Southampton have been appalling.

Interesting to see Arsenal linked with Hirving Lozano this morning. Going to be a hell of a profit on whatever PSV paid for him five months ago.

That looked a penalty. Great pass.

Do I remember this ref

The skinnier one from birds of a feather or something