In 2008, 15 years before Manchester City were charged with financial fraud, fans started singing “City’s going down with a billion in the bank” to the tune of Yellow Submarine. This was because the former Thailand president Thaksin Shinawatra’s 15-month ownership of City had come to an abrupt end when more than £1bn of his assets were frozen. And although Sheikh Mansour of the UAE had stepped in to save City, we were sinking fast.
Despite the UAE’s untold riches, by December we were in the relegation zone. It’s called Cityitis – shorthand for our tendency to self-destruct when things appear to be going well. In fact we won trophy after trophy.
But we continued to sing the song about going down with a billion in the bank. When the financial fair play investigation was launched in 2018, the chant got louder. Then in 2023 we learned there were more than 100 charges.
The chant became even louder and more cavalier. And now that our grubby, griftin’, cheatin’ chicken has come home to roost, you can bank on one thing (if banks still deal with us) – the chanting will be louder and more cavalier than ever. After all, this is a club that believes schadenfreude starts at home.
We brag about our failings. Other songs we sing include “Empty seats at home” (to the tune of the Beautiful South’s Rotterdam) because we can’t sell out our tickets and “Is This the Etihad?” (to La donna è mobile from Verdi’s Rigoletto, natch) at deathly quiet away grounds. It’s not about tempting fate.
Nor is it hubristic irony – we can’t sell out despite winning all these trophies. It’s simply an acceptance that one way or another we’ll always be City, always suffer from Cityitis, and come the day, despite our endless UAE riches, we’ll do a City. We don’t know what our fate, or sentence, is yet.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
