“City has been the standard-bearer for two of the most controversial developments in the sport in recent times: multiclub ownership and major investment in European soccer by state-related entities in the Gulf region. Both have changed the beautiful game, and neither will be the same again in the wake of what has been described as the biggest scandal ever in English and European soccer.”

The main takeaway, though, is that United are no longer the standalone richest Premier League club. They are one of the richest Premier League clubs. On top of that, they've come back to the super-club pack right when the rest of the Premier League -- the other 14 teams -- have ascended to a new level.

The players who don't sign with a top-10 team in the world are no longer joining AC Milan or Borussia Dortmund -- no, they're going to Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest. So, not only do United no longer have a built-in revenue advantage over their closest competitors, the rest of the league has also seen its talent level rise.

What should United's expectations be, then? Per the site Transfermarkt, they have the fifth-most valuable squad in the Premier League. Per the estimates from the site FBref, they have the fourth-highest wage bill. And per the most recent accounting, they have the fourth-highest revenues.

Given all of that, their baseline expectation at the current moment should be around fourth or fifth place in the Premier League.

Per Gradient Sports, United lead the league in both the number and percentage of shots attempted with a better passing option available. They're crossing the ball more often than any team in the league. And despite dominating territory, they sit in the middle of the pack for just about every pressing metric. That suggests that their opponents are happy to let them have the ball.

United know what to do but not how to do it -- something you might expect from a team coached by someone with no top-level experience.

In football interviews, political interrogations or, indeed, just in life, a person’s innermost thoughts occasionally need to be prised out via a series of searching, probing questions, metaphorically tickling them until they can resist no more.

Sometimes, people are just ready to unleash. And on Tuesday, Lisandro Martinez fell into that camp.

Prime Video reporter Gabriel Clarke’s opening question — “How do you sum up the performance?” — after Manchester United’s 2-0 Champions League defeat at Atletico Madrid wasn’t exactly a Dan Rather or Barbara Walters-style journalistic left hook on Martinez, pushing him to the ropes with nowhere to go.

But the Argentine centre-back had clearly decided that the time to remain silent had long since passed. Clarke could have asked Martinez what he had for breakfast that morning, or whether he would prefer to fight 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck, and the answer would have been the same.

“Sometimes it’s a reflection of how our club is at the moment,” Martinez vented. “We expect more from the top: to bring more players, to compete, because many teams bring many players as well.”

Yet having been presented with this gift, Clarke — a veteran of UK television screens, with a reputation as a velvet-gloved inquisitor who, in another life, could have investigated murders wearing a beige trench coat — was not about to let his story slip away.

He proceeded to serve up a series of fairly basic but penetrating questions:

So this is not a Champions League-quality squad? You expected more investment in the squad in the summer? In which areas? Is the problem the manager wasn’t backed enough? Often in this situation it’s the manager who is removed, you can’t necessarily go upwards? It was pretty simple stuff but devastatingly effective, preparing the ground for Martinez to chuck his grenades — which he duly did at United’s director of football Jason Wilcox and the club’s executives more widely. The explosive interview has generated global headlines and will remain a huge talking point for days.

Credit to Martinez for being prepared to speak up, yes, but also credit to Clarke for asking the right questions to prise more of the defender’s thoughts and — just as importantly — knowing when not to interrupt. As any decent broadcaster will tell you, sometimes the most precious contribution is silence.

That point came to mind when watching Martinez’s other TV interview on Tuesday night, with CBS Sports Golazo and ex-Manchester United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel. While Clarke did the journalism, Schmeichel came across like a member of United’s in-house PR team.

The Dane’s opener was reasonable enough. “What do you put all this down to? What is the issue at the moment?” he asked. Martinez was initially a little less forthcoming with his opinions on the club hierarchy and there was a bit of back and forth between the pair about body language, before the Argentinian unleashed the gold.

“We don’t have the best squad at the moment, compared with other top teams,” he said.

That was Schmeichel’s moment to recognise the story, as Clarke had. A klaxon should have been blaring inside his mind. What would his follow-up question be? Maybe, “What’s the reason you don’t have the best squad? Is it due to a lack of investment?” Even just, “Could you expand on that, please, Lisandro?” would have done.

Instead, Schmeichel, who has previously undertaken ambassadorial work with United, asked what they were doing in the dressing room to lift spirits. It was the equivalent of David Frost opting to ignore the whole Watergate thing and asking Richard Nixon how many presidential ties he had been given in office.

Undeterred, Martinez was prepared to go in on the club regardless.

He said: “When you watch the games, you see the players and the managers, and you point the finger, which is right: we take the responsibility. But also as a club I expect more.”

Unfathomably, Schmeichel then attempted to interrupt Martinez just as he was about to talk about what more he expected from the club.

Again, undaunted, Martinez spoke over him: “I expect more, I’m not going to close my mouth, we need more ambition, we need to talk more about winning Champions Leagues and Premier Leagues in terms of other things.”

Surely, at this point, Schmeichel would stick to the important topic. But no. Instead, he wanted to be the glass-half-full guy.

“But the good news is we’re only in October, there’s a long way to go,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to…”

Martinez, sounding more and more irritable, interrupted: “But every season we’re talking the same thing…”

Yet again, utterly remarkably, Schmeichel shot his interviewee down: “You don’t win anything in October, you don’t lose anything, you have the chance.”

Martinez, perplexed, ended with: “If we don’t say the truth, nothing will change.”

It was curious to watch how roles had essentially reversed by the end of the interview: Martinez, the truth-speaking aggressor, and Schmeichel, the company man trying to calm things down.

CBS tried to style it out by posting the interview on its social media channels with the message, “Lisandro Martínez opens up to Peter Schmeichel about Manchester United’s struggles”, but internally, its team must have been embarrassed.

It’s not just questions that unlock the door: you need a ready and willing participant (Virgil van Dijk, for example, is often good for this when he’s got something to say). And, yes, journalists can ask seriously bad questions and ex-footballers (CBS pundit Jamie Carragher, for one) can ask excellent ones, but the comparison on Tuesday between an experienced hack, Clarke, and a former player, Schmeichel, was stark.

CBS had Carragher, plus Thierry Henry, Micah Richards and Kate Scott in the studio, all of whom would surely have done a significantly better job of handling Martinez.

This is by no means a take on journalists being primed to ask better questions than footballers. Far from it. But the ability to make the right enquiries at the right time matters — and this was a perfect case in point.

Gap between 1971-1986 due to Arab teams not wanting to play Isreali teams

(If you saw this post again, I deleted the old one and re-uploaded this one due to a error.)

At Hapoel Be’er Sheva, AZ’s Israeli opponents in the Europa League, the war in their home country in Gaza is having an impact on the team’s sporting performance, says manager Ran Kozuch.

“Of course it’s affecting our game.”

At the pre-match press conference ahead of the game in Alkmaar, he and former Feyenoord goalkeeper Ofir Marciano were asked several times about the Alkmaar council’s decision not to allow away fans into the stadium.

There were almost more questions about that than about the match itself. And this is not the first time. Hapoel Be’er Sheva has been feeling the consequences of the war in Gaza for some time now.

In September, Alkmaar decided not to allow Israeli supporters on Thursday evening, 15 October. Although UEFA has assigned the supporters of the Israeli club a ‘medium risk profile’, the Alkmaar council has classified the match as ‘(very) high risk’ “due to the geopolitical context”. The council cites the riots surrounding the Ajax v Maccabi Tel Aviv match in 2024 as grounds for this decision.

The decision appears to be a major talking point, even amongst AZ’s Israeli opponents. The only journalist from that country to attend AZ’s press conference was very keen to hear AZ manager Leeroy Echteld’s views on the matter.

“It’s disappointing that they can’t be there to watch the matches,” said Echteld. “I think it’s normal for something like that to be allowed when you’re playing away. European football should be a celebration for both teams. But this isn’t a decision we’ve made; it’s been made by the police and the government.”

Once Echteld’s press conference had finished and everyone was waiting for the press conference given by Echteld’s colleague Kozuch, more Israeli journalists began streaming into the press room. They, too, were keen to hear what the Dutch coach thought of the decision. The journalists then remarked that the fans’ refusal would also be a major topic during the upcoming Q&A session.

That much is clear. “It’s a sad decision. The supporters are part of the team,” Kozuch states straight away. The head coach says that neither he nor the team have felt unsafe for a single second in the Netherlands. Were security measures necessary? “Not as far as I know. But I’ve got enough other things on my mind ahead of the match.”

For example, how he can ensure his team performs well without the support of the Be’er Sheva fans. “That’s why, within the team, we only talk about football and as little as possible about other matters.”

However, that isn’t always possible. Be’er Sheva’s home matches in the Europa League are not permitted to take place in Israel, which is why the team has to travel to Bucharest in Romania each time. In addition, the club is also facing difficulties with its away matches.

Whilst in Alkmaar it is only the fans who are not welcome, the fourth-placed team in the Israeli league will not be welcome at all at Union Saint-Gilles and Beşiktaş in the coming weeks. Instead of being played in Belgium and Turkey, those matches will now take place in Germany and Georgia.

“Of course, that affects our game. We have twice as many flights to book and everything has to be arranged outside our own country, which is physically very demanding. But we try to take that into account as much as possible.”

Goalkeeper Marciano, who was under contract in Rotterdam between 2021 and 2023, says it takes some of the enjoyment out of the game. “Of course it does. It would be fairer if we could actually play at home, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Incidentally, football was also discussed at the press conference. For AZ, the home match against Be’er Sheva is a must-win, says Echteld. “Not just because of the fixture list; I think we really have to win at home against this opponent.”

Even if the Netherlands’ third-placed side doesn’t field its strongest starting eleven, the manager believes. “We are indeed going to make a few changes to the starting line-up. We want to have players who are consistently fit on the pitch. That way, the other players can now prepare for the away match against Cambuur. But I’m convinced that the lads who take to the pitch on Thursday are also good enough to win.”