**After a long, long wait, Manchester City’s Premier League ruling is in, and the Cityzens have been found guilty on 114 financial charges.**
These charges relate to the years between 2009 and 2018, and, as you can imagine, there are a number of Premier League clubs who are aggrieved by this situation.
As it transpires, for a long time, the Premier League wasn’t the level playing field we thought it was, and Arsenal were one of the teams most heavily affected by this.
When he's been given the chance, he has certainly impressed…
Yes, [Arsenal didn’t finish second to City in that period between 2009 and 2018](https://www.arsenalinsider.com/news/why-arsenal-are-unlikely-to-be-awarded-extra-premier-league-titles-after-man-city-found-guilty/), but they were heavily affected by City’s ability to seemingly do whatever they wanted in the transfer market.
Indeed, City pinched a number of key players from Arsenal during this time.
Player
From
To
Year
Fee
Emmanuel Adebayor
Arsenal
Manchester City
2009
£25m
Kolo Touré
Arsenal
Manchester City
2009
£16m
Gaël Clichy
Arsenal
Manchester City
2011
£7m
Samir Nasri
Arsenal
Manchester City
2011
£24m
Bacary Sagna
Arsenal
Manchester City
2014
Free
These players weren’t just fringe Arsenal stars, these were core members of a team that were supposed to grow together to become something special.
Of course, that isn’t to say that any of the dealings involving any of the listed players weren’t above board, but they joined a team that were experiencing exponential growth in an unfair manner.
Would the likes of Samir Nasri have left Arsenal for Man City if they weren’t clearly headed for the top table of world football? Who knows? But we’d argue it would be unlikely.
Arsene Wenger could’ve potentially challenged further if he was able to keep these players in the early 2010s, but, sadly, he was stripped of his assets and forced to rebuild time and time again.
There’s going to be a lot of emotion around this situation in the coming weeks, but one person who should be particularly angry about this is Wenger.