When Everton and Nottingham Forest faced the threat of points deductions last season, you could smell the fear washing through the corridors of those clubs – haunted by the sudden specter of relegation and unable to promise Premier League football to players who they wanted to buy.
At the moment they announced a deal to pay Erling Haaland a salary of £400,000 a week, increasing over a period of almost a decade, Manchester City indicated that there is not the slightest fear hanging over them. There is not the slightest suspicion that the verdict, expected within months from an independent tribunal convened by the Premier League, will go against them.
The imaginative video of Haaland's contract signing, released by City, exuded confidence and sent a candid message to the Premier League: 'It will be business as usual here and spend for as long as you can imagine.'
It wasn't just any show they put on. The city owners' belief in their own innocence is absolute. The claim by Khaldoon Al Mubarak, their chairman, that the club's sponsorship deal with Etihad Airlines has not been artificially inflated to avoid spending rules means that if the alleged breaches of the rules come to light it would be considered a travesty . challenged every day.
It is possible that there is a clause in Haaland's new contract stating that, should such a conviction come from the Premier League and City are relegated, he can leave for a fixed fee.
But another possible outcome – a substantial fine and a moderate points reduction for City's alleged failure to cooperate with the Premier League investigation – would see Haaland still playing in the Europa League next season.
That's a far cry from the expectations of someone whose friends were convinced that the Bernabeu – a sun-drenched world of Jude Bellingham and Vinicius Junior – was next. He is apparently convinced that this will not happen.
The Abu Dhabis are currently looking towards the future. They have secured the services of Pep Guardiola for a further two years and agreed a deal to sign Eintracht Frankfurt striker Omar Marmoush, who is worth £67m, and two new defenders for a total fee of £130m in January. And now they have blown away any idea that Haaland – who publicly flirted with Real Madrid last year – would give City a few years and leave.
The benefits of this deal are clear and immediate. The chance to see up close the further evolution of a striker whose immediate impact is greater than that of any other player to have entered British football: 111 goals in 126 City games. For many continental players, the lure of a warmer, more cosmopolitan location means stars eventually leave Manchester. Not this one.
Convincing Haaland to potentially stay at one club for the rest of his career will come with huge financial temptations. The contract is likely to spread his pay rises over the years, but the idea of him earning more than £700,000 a week does not seem far-fetched if he meets the Premier League and Champions League performance clauses that City will have in place. . Few, if any, football agents would agree to a long-term player contract without increases.
Although this is the longest deal the Premier League has ever seen, the payments will have to be amortized on City's books over five years, rather than the whole nine. The Premier League brought their rules in line with UEFA's in that regard after Chelsea started spreading contract payments over eight years.
And how will the municipality finance this? Through complex sponsorship deals with state-controlled companies such as Etihad Airlines, which the Premier League believes they will quickly rein in, but City insist they will not.
Those without pockets as deep as City's are left with a renewed sense of what to do against the reigning champions and their wealth in the Gulf. “We know how good we have to be every day to compete in this competition,” Arne Slot reflected in light of the Haaland news.
Liverpool's owners are currently faced with the risk of paying Mohamed Salah a fortune to extend his contract, while the assumption must be that, at the age of 32, he will not be performing at the same level in two years' time.
Salah has been in exceptional form for Liverpool, having scored consistently in the Premier League for much longer than Haaland, but is at an age that makes his lifetime value very difficult to predict.
City's decision to pay Haaland so lucratively for potentially ten seasons, and until the age of 34, strengthens Salah's bargaining position at a time of huge clamor among Liverpool fans for their Egyptian player to stay.
Ahead of a challenging week, with games against Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea looming, the deal is a good time to get the deal. More life-affirming for this working club than all the new players they can sign this month.
He will be the first pillar of a post-Guardiola era, with the idea that the team could be built around him. With 79 Premier League goals to his name, Haaland can imagine eclipsing Alan Shearer's Premier League record of 260 goals and leaving him as one of the greatest players the league has ever seen.
Such an optimistic view of the future would be harder to sustain if City were to lose the '115' Premier League case and – without the same legal recourse through the Court of Arbitration in Sport which they successfully fought – a two-year Champions League League bans would be imposed by UEFA – being forced to live with a 'guilty' verdict.
Buying City was a means to build Abu Dhabi's global reputation and influence. The public shame of being subjected to censorship and accused of cheating would disintegrate that, causing the kind of reputational damage that would be almost impossible for them to endure. It could potentially lead to the Gulf state distancing itself from British football.
A Haaland deal of such mind-boggling proportions is testament to the fact that they have even the slightest expectation of it. Al Mubarak's words to Haaland at the end of City's contract signing video felt like a statement to the rest of the world.
“Erling,” he says. “We'll be together for a long time.”
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