We Love to Slag Them Off, But there is No Denying That Arsenal Are the Biggest Victims From Man City’s Scandals

Everyone Loves to Hate Arsenal, but There is No Denying That They Were Stiffed by Man City

Though the time frame of Manchester City’s 114 guilty charges sits between 2009, two years after the club was taken over by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, and 2018, the consequences of their misgivings have far outlasted the period in which they were committed.

Roy Keane on the current situation at Man City 🏅 pic.twitter.com/JIsdSeFHXX

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) September 30, 2026

Every trophy, every win, every goal must now have an asterisk next to it: not legally procured, or player should not have been eligible, etc.

Countless sides felt the sting of City’s actions since the day they first started to forge their accounts – Stoke City lost an FA Cup final, Man United were on the wrong end of an “Aguerooo” moment that never should have been, and all of Watford, Chelsea, Tottenham and Aston Villa have been denied in a cup final against the Cityzens, both inside and out of the given time frame.

But Arsenal are the side that without a doubt will feel the most hard done by, despite the fact that within the City’s reign of accountancy terror, they lost out on just one trophy.

Show Us Your Guns

We love chatting shit about Arsenal - their fanbase riles us up on a daily basis, Mikel Arteta’s style of football, while effective, is an eyesore to watch, and the bravado of the entire club feels so forced after one PL title in 20 years. With that being said, though, few have suffered more from City’s crimes than the Gunners.

During City’s nine-year reign of terror, Arsenals only losing-the-final run-in with the blue side of Manchester came in the 2018 League Cup final, the very same year that the club stopped committing their crimes thanks to the leaking of their financial records by a hacker named Rui Pinto.

On that occasion, it was goals from Sergio Aguero, Vincent Kompany and David Silva that pummelled Arsenal into submission. Now though, even that, such a comprehensive victory, will now forever be marked as illegitimate, and to Gunners fans, it is a moment unceremoniously and illegally stolen from them.

It should have been their first League Cup since 1993, and while they have no way of knowing who they would have faced in the final if Man City had actually been playing fair over the last nine years, it no doubt would have been a less intimidating game than Pep Guardiola’s blue-shaded juggernauts.

Man United, Arsenal and Liverpool shamelessly turning up to claim the trophies after finishing 2nd to Man City during the 115-charges era pic.twitter.com/ru2IvNVg9n

— Footy Humour (@FootyHumour) September 25, 2026

Though Man City’s sham contracts and false investments, adding up to more than £900 million in fake value, stopped in 2018 after Pinto released some of their finals, the fallout was felt well into the 2020s.

The majority of the players in the squad from 2018 until their last Premier League win in 2025, including the likes of Bernardo Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Ederson and Kyle Walker, were all brought to the club during Man City’s period of deception, and so even given that these players stayed until long after the club stopped their shady dealings, any contribution they made at the Etihad should be struck from the record.

This also means that any trophies won while illegally acquired players were still representing the club should be labelled null and void, and it is on this point that Arsenal bring the strongest evidence for being labelled as the most affected victim of City’s deceit.

So Close Yet So Far

So, let’s go over the maths again - between 2009 and 2018, Arsenal missed out on one piece of silverware as a direct consequence of City’s actions. Between 2018 and the present day, however, Mikel Arteta’s side lost out on six different trophies as a direct result of Man City, either finishing as runners-up to Guardiola’s men or losing to them in any given round of a domestic cup competition.

No club was deprived of potential silverware more often, and London rivals Chelsea are the only other side to have been denied by City more than five times since 2018, and none of these games were as league runners-up – simply from the misfortune of meeting Man City in cup competitions and only twice in finals.

Thrice Arsenal finished Premier League runners-up as City recorded their now meaningless quadruple, suffered a pair of defeats to their Northern rivals in the League Cup, and also tasted defeat in the 2022/23 FA Cup.

Though they never came particularly close to any silverware during the years in which City committed financial fraud, each time they were deprived of silverware in subsequent years marked an occasion where the Gunners saw a legitimate chance of a trophy evaporate in front of their eyes, and for what - for a false trophy win? For a title parade that eight years later would be treated as if it never happened?

Of course, it hasn’t been an entirely dry spell for Arsenal – Arteta has guided the to a pair of Community Shields, an FA Cup and, of course, a Premier League in recent years, meaning their defeats to City made those moments that much sweeter.

However, had City played by the rules like every other team in England appears to be doing, Arsenal’s recent legacy could have been much different, laden with silverware, and perhaps City’s annual even stopped a period of genuine Arsenal dominance, earned fair and square, and maintained with painstaking work behind the scenes rather than simply inflating the bank account.

There are some more than valid arguments that clubs such as Watford, Sunderland and Stoke have all been shafted more harshly than Arsenal, as by reaching the latter stages of domestic competitions, they had given themselves a golden opportunity to secure an exceptionally rare piece of silverware, one that would echo throughout club history and one that would live vivid in the memory for decades.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Tony Pulis feels CHEATED because his Stoke side lost 1-0 in the FA Cup final to Manchester City in 2011, and they have been found guilty:

🗣️ "When do we get our FA Cup?

That is what all Stoke City fans have been asking me since the news broke on Friday that Manchester City… pic.twitter.com/HOnXpw1xh7

— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Footballtweet) September 27, 2026

Coming up against a cheating Manchester City deprived them of the opportunity to make history, and now fans are arguing that they should retrospectively be given the trophies that they came so close to lifting.

However, had Man City lost prior to meeting these sides, who is to say that they would have beaten different opponents in the final? Similarly, had some of the sides knocked out by City along the way picked up the victory instead, who is to say who could have won if they had made it there in City’s place?

Arsenal’s league trophies, however, would be much easier to award. The gap back to third place was never a small margin, and the consistency with which Arsenal pushed Manchester City close in those three consecutive second-place finishes perhaps earns them some honorary Premier League titles.

However, Manchester City still has a way to make the Gunners a victim of the scandalous behaviour if these league titles are awarded – they will have taken the moment of jubilation, of vindication, of elation that comes with the winning moment of a league campaign and instead replaced it with an "oh cool, that’s ours now.”

🏆 Man United - 13 ➡️ 16
🏆 Arsenal - 4 ➡️ 6
🏆 Liverpool - 2 ➡️ 5

If Man City are to be stripped of their eight Premier League titles - here are the sides who they would be awarded to. 👇 pic.twitter.com/xqvchqJh7a

— Football Insider (@footyinsider247) September 25, 2026

City flew too close to the sun and torpedoed themselves as a result. However, the fallout from their financial misdeeds affects far more than the disgraced Manchester side.

Across the EFL and Premier League, moments have been stolen, players have been unfairly pinched from under the noses of others, and trophies have been stolen in the most impossibly illegal way – it is remarkable that, for the most part, the last two decades of domestic English football now need to be taken with a pinch of salt.

The list of clubs affected by Man City’s behaviour is almost endless, but thanks to the clear fact that the Cityzens' over-investment manifested itself most strongly as title-winning success across the early 2020s, it is Arsenal who can lay claim to the title of the most victimised club as a result of their success.

Seven trophies missed out on, and many more league and cup campaigns ended prior to their natural end, the Gunners will now be out to amend things.

With City’s punishment now the only topic of discussion in the football world, Arteta has placed him and the North London club perfectly. The team to beat in England right now, and just a couple of ingredients away from Maiden European success, Man City’s removal from the scene could be the only thing Arsenal requires to become the next Premier League juggernaut.