Manchester City's financial breaches make last season's Arsenal hate even more laughable

Arsenal finally ended their long wait to win the Premier League title last season and as they battled with Manchester City for the prize, they seemed to have the entire footballing world rooting against them only to end up clinching first place anyway.

Unsurprisingly, the Gunners were hounded with the usual tag of 'bottlers' and accused of using the 'dark arts' on their way to claiming their 14th top flight title with rivals opting to back the giant of City instead.

As Pep Guardiola and his side were asked to "save football" from Mikel Arteta and his apparent dirty Arsenal side, the hate for the North Londoners was clear, but with City now facing a potentially huge punishment for nine years of financial breaches, that hate looks even more laughable.

Manchester City's guilty verdict make last season's Arsenal hate even more laughable

The Premier League confirmed in a statement on Tuesday night that Man City had been found guilty by an independent Commission of all charges related to serious breaches of financial rules over a nine-season period, and the majority of charges in relation to its failure to co-operate with the League’s investigation.

This followed last Friday's reports from the likes of David Ornstein and Fabrizio Romano that City were adjudged to be guilty of 114 of the 115 charges brought against them.

As part of the fallout, fans, the media, pundits, and ex-pros have all been speculating on what punishment the eight-time Premier League champions will face with the possible sanctions ranging from league expulsion and being dropped down to League Two to a hefty point deduction and long transfer ban.

The funniest part for Arsenal fans though is that a lot of these calls are coming from rival supporters who backed City to beat them to the title last season. 'Backed' is maybe underselling it as some were practically begging for the Gunners to miss out on the league to City once again.

Throughout the 2025/26 season, it grew increasingly likely that Arsenal were going to be the team to claim the prize and as the campaign went on, there was always a new way found to slate their ability. Scoring from set pieces was dark arts, being brillant at defending was looked down on and adjudged as a scared approach, and Arteta and his squad were painted as pure villains of English football.

Fastforward to the present day and the Gunners netting from a few dead balls and conceding rarely doesn't look so bad in comparison to City's behaviour, does it?

While City's guilty verdict only span from 2009 to 2018, the argument has been made that their achievements since that period should also go in vain given that they likely wouldn't have been in such a superior position had they not benefitted from breaching financial rules in that timeframe.

Football is a funny sport. One day, Arsenal will be hated and the next it's City's turn to be the villains of the beautiful game. But what doesn't quite make sense is that every single football fan knew of the investigation into the Manchester outfit during last season, yet they still begged them to save football from the clutches of Arteta and his side.

Arsenal fans will no doubt keep hold of their receipts as they look to back their side on the way to potentially securing a first back-to-back league title in over 90 years with the hilarious hate they were given never forgotten.

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