RorviverB
A few different reasons for me. Firstly the football leaks exposed City and PSG as having absolutely took the piss in terms of fair market value for sponsoring themselves. Though that evidence wasn’t obtained legally and likely wouldn’t be admissible in court. I recall emails from the club acknowledging they were missing ffp and deciding they needed another £10m a year UAE sponsorship deal given by their owners.
After that there have been articles published by respectable journalists investigating some of their sponsors. They have been getting millions a year from companies that straight up don’t exist. Companies where the CEO on LinkedIN is just an actors headshot.
It had been obvious to everyone they were financially doping in some way. Their revenues have been astronomical for years. There was no way they had managed to legitimately grow them so fast. I live in london and have seen many adverts on my Twitter to buy tickets to city games. They don’t really have many fans compared to other top clubs for one. Of course commercial income isn’t solely down to how many fans you have, but there’s no way they legitimately make more commercial revenue than Real Madrid.
Its quite simple. Ashley Cole was potentially the best LB in the world in 2006 and also somewhat forced his way out of Arsenal. All of those other players were either out of favour, or not bought as starters anyways.