iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 3h

i think a lot of the ballers people are nostalgic for were at smaller clubs, the jay jay okocha types

Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 3h

i tend to think nostalgia does a lot of heavy lifting there. it was not particularly fun at the time watching 90 mins of mourinho vs benitez.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 3h

"conclusive proof in the data that centre back is the only position that matters"

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 4h

what happened is the passage of time continued and we entered the 2010s then the 2020s.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 15h

an unreasonable amount of this man city newsletter i'm writing is going to be about the history of railways in york

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 05/10/2026

i think this is basically why they own man city and other such western ventures. inter-emirate rivalry and trying to catch up with dubai as the "cool" place.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 05/10/2026

that is kind of what i'm trying to understand, that owning man city makes more people aware of this than otherwise would

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 05/10/2026

genuine question, if not for man city would you even think about abu dhabi at all?

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Reposted by Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️

Emily✨ @emilyoram.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Well done, the crowd’s 13

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 03/10/2026

luxembourg vs estonia is basically the super bowl for us tv numbers

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 03/10/2026

they've got to go with the huge audience game, of course

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 03/10/2026

this is pretty much how Benítez used Gerrard

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Reposted by Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️

Alex Stewart @afhstewart.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 03/10/2026

yes you can technically call bellingham a "midfielder" but come on, this is a strike partnership

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 03/10/2026

kane and bellingham are an incredibly well-suited strike partnership who will pretty much inevitably cause midfield control issues in order to fit them both in

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 03/10/2026

shout out to the tv director immediately cutting to the croatian kids when england scored

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 03/10/2026

i mean this is just what i'm going to sit down and write next

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 02/10/2026

do people want my next newsletter to be about: a) the fallout of city case and what happens next, or b) something completely different?

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 02/10/2026

i wrote about the man city case, and a history of everything they've apparently done to get to this point. check it out. www.graceonfootball.com/p/manchester...

graceonfootball.com

Manchester City and Shams: a History

What, was I going to cover something else?

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 02/10/2026

my biggest career regret is the number of times i wrote about man city like a normal football club. i deeply regret writing about guardiola's tactics in a way that had a man city fan podcast asking if i wanted to talk to them.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 02/10/2026

to the shock of no one, this man city newsletter is gonna be a long one

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

most underrated player of my lifetime, sorry not sorry

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

that's not the bit they'd object to most strongly

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

over the course of the season, though, i think people do care about wirtz' performances

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

we are not wired to seek truth when presented with new information. we're wired to figure out how to use it to gain an advantage in the tribe. it takes real, conscious effort to push back against those instincts.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

i'm not sure liverpool fans will emotionally be able to take it if wirtz is good for klopp's germany but continues to underperform in the premier league

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

"Disguised Funding Scheme" is such a banger phrase. Have any of the panel considered a career in football journalism?

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

ask fans of any premier league club bar city how they were paying for all these players and this is what they would've told you in as many words.

b) However
i) The AD Sponsor would not be liable to pay the recorded Sponsorship Fee, and
would not do so. The AD Sponsor would be liable to pay (and would in fact pay)
only the Base Sum
ii) The Tagged Sum would be payable by (and would in fact be paid by) ADUG
c) Despite only the Base Sum truly being commercial revenue (and so only the Base Sum
being properly recordable as income in the Club’s financial statements) the Club
i) Would treat the entirety of the Recorded Sponsorship Fees as commercial revenue,
and
ii) Would conceal the fact that the Tagged Sum was in fact equity
contribution/investment by ADUG.
68) By adopting the Disguised Funding Scheme the Club would thus be able
a) To give the misleading impression to third parties (including regulators and its auditors)
in its financial statements and any required FFP returns that its commercial revenues
from AD Sponsorship Agreements (and so its income generally) were far, far greater
than was in fact the case, and
b) To conceal from third parties the true extent of the equity contributions in fact being
made into the Club by ADUG

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

reading the whole decision, it's kind of incredible how it states that they were doing exactly, to the letter, what everyone said they were doing for years, with basically no nuance to it.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 01/10/2026

there's something wild about seeing "man city were shit" in such legal prose

i) ADUG’s acquisition of the Club
47) In the 1960s and 1970s the Club had enjoyed a period of considerable success. Leaner times then followed. The Club spent the 1980s in the old Football League First and Second Divisions. Although an inaugural member of the PL in the 1992/1993 season, by the end of the 1997/1998 season the Club had been relegated to Division Two – the first time in its 100+ year history that the Club had found itself in the third tier of English football. Although it returned to the PL at the end of the 2001/2002 season, the years that followed
saw the Club finish between 8th and 15th in the PL.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 30/09/2026

yeah, i think he just quietly exits at some point in the next year

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 30/09/2026

though i also think there's a principle point that if man utd believe what city did was wrong, he can't work there

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 30/09/2026

even if we ignore the lies and cheating, the actual commercial deals he signed just aren't very impressive

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 30/09/2026

domino effect of the city case is to significantly downweight omar berrada's likely ability as an executive

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 30/09/2026

honestly what are city fans even doing if they don't start making banners that say "SHAM FC"

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Reposted by Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️

cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

this is the rape culture btw. the one women have been warning you about, and were told we were hysterical and over-sensitive and couldn't take a joke, and that rape allegations ruin men's lives, and now we live in a meritocracy where the only "merit" is who has hurt the most women

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 28/09/2026

it's impossible to believe a word these people say at this point. they just lie.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 28/09/2026

it does cut both ways. the reason man city was an attractive club to buy was that they had a nice, big, new, publicly funded stadium.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 28/09/2026

like how the people who built britain's railways ended up in financial ruin as that financial bubble burst, but the tracks were still there.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 28/09/2026

the great thing about infrastructure is that manchester gets to keep all the urban development funded by abu dhabi around the stadium even if they're forced out and the club gets relegated.

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 27/09/2026

presumably the only people paying for, say, romania vs bosnia are people with roots in those countries. how profitable can it really be?

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 27/09/2026

surely the numbers of people paying for some of these games must be miniscule

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Grace Robertson 🏳️‍⚧️ @graceonfootball.com · 27/09/2026

amazon putting all the non-uk nations league games on pay per view is so scummy

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