Absolutely Josh!

Everyone seems to have forgotten why Financial Fair Play was introduced in the first place. It was never supposed to protect the richest clubs. It was supposed to stop clubs from spending themselves into oblivion and creating a financial arms race where the only way to compete was to find a billionaire willing to bankroll massive losses. Look at what happened in the 2000s and early 2010s. Portsmouth won the FA Cup in 2008, played AC Milan in Europe in 2009 and reached another FA Cup final in 2010. Then came administration, a nine-point deduction, relegation and eventually League Two. Leeds went from Champions League semi-finalists to League One. Bolton went from the Premier League to League Two. Clubs were taking enormous financial risks just to keep up. So the Premier League clubs agreed that something had to change. In February 2013, they voted in new financial regulations designed to improve the sustainability of clubs, requiring them to work towards break-even while still allowing a degree of owner investment. And here's the funny part: Manchester City voted AGAINST the restrictions. At the time, City were already being bankrolled on an extraordinary scale by Sheikh Mansour. Their 2011-12 accounts showed a £99m loss, a £202m wage bill and almost £1bn of owner investment since the takeover. Fast-forward to today. The same financial rules that were supposed to make clubs sustainable became something City spent years fighting. And an independent commission has now found that City used sham agreements, misstated accounts and concealed the true state of their finances, concluding that the club intended to circumvent Premier League rules. Meanwhile, clubs like Bournemouth, Brighton and Brentford have shown that you can build competitive Premier League teams through recruitment, development, smart trading and sustainable growth. That's the irony. Financial regulation wasn't created to stop clubs competing. It was created because football had already seen what happens when clubs believe they HAVE to spend beyond their means just to survive. The problem isn't that football has rules. The problem is what happens when the richest clubs decide the rules shouldn't apply to them. And that's exactly why this City story matters far beyond Manchester. It is about what kind of football the Premier League wants to be.