Tag
Manchester City
A term used by rival fans to describe Manchester City in the wake of the guilty verdict of financial doping in 114 of 115 charges between 2009-2018. The term ‘sham contract’ was used in the verdict, a legal description from the 1960s. In this case, Manchester City are deemed to have used sham contracts to pump money into the club disguised as sponsorship deals, hugely inflating revenue to circumvent FFP rules. It meant they could throw money at the best players and the best manager of his generation (Pep Guardiola), winning countless titles, as a result. The punishment is yet to be dished out, but could be anything from titles stripped to expulsion from the Premier League.
The day the verdict was confirmed by the Premier League, reporter Rob Harris approached Manchester City CEO Ferran Soriano at the European Football Clubs board meeting. Amongst other things he asked Soriano if he would apologise to fans, and if this meant that City were not a sham club Sham FC was born as a nickname.
Top bins is football slang for goals that are scored where the ball hits the very top corner of the net - near the stanchion or the ‘postage stamp’ where the crossbar meets the posts. It takes high precision and power to place the ball in such a hard-to-reach area of the goal. It’s the peak of shooting, often a worldie.
In the penultimate match of the 2018/19 season, Vincent Kompany scored a thunderbastard of a goal, right in the top bins. Manchester City beat Leicester 1-0 that night and won the league with 98 points to Liverpool’s 97. Top bins, big grins.