No Question About That - a Manchester United podcast

Studio 1878
  • 4.7 (364)
  • Soccer
  • Updated Weekly

No Question About That is the original independent fan-published podcast covering Manchester United. Hosted by Ed, with contributions from Dan, Tom, Wayne, Dharnish, Adam, Jamie, Dominic and Isabel. NQAT covers the latest games, news, business, politics and fan culture at the world’s greatest football club. There are two main shows each week, a tactics show, and a football finance pod. If you are interested in supporting the show and accessing the weekly exclusive bonus episode, check out NQAT Extra on our Patreon page or subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Supporter funded episodes are ad-free. NQAT is also available in video on YouTube. Hit that subscribe button, leave a rating and write a review on Apple or Spotify.

NQAT EXTRA

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  1. 1d ago • Subscribers Only

    NQAT Daily: Yoro's Brilliant France Debut

    Leny Yoro has played 22 minutes of Premier League football this season, across two substitute appearances. He played 90 for France on his debut against Belgium. The numbers were great: 93% passing, six clearances, every duel won against Romelu Lukaku and a seven from L'Équipe, a mark the paper hands out to almost nobody. He was only called up after withdrawals and was fourth-choice as late as this week. What does Yoro's breakout performance mean for Michael Carrick, who wants a high line and a functioning press, but consistently picks Maguire and Martinez, the two slowest centre backs at the club. Yoro had a poor night alongside Heaven against Brighton, but there is a case for pairing a young defender with an experienced one. Plus, there's Maguire's and Martinez's contract situations and de Ligt's return to fitness. It gives United five centre backs for two places. With links to PSG, Arsenal and Newcastle and a £50 million-plus price tag, it's now or never for Leny Yoro. Should he start against Spurs on Sunday? 0:00 Yoro's France debut by the numbers 1:27 How the debut happened 3:01 The ratings 4:20 Yoro's season at United 5:28 Brighton 6:52 Maguire, Martinez, high line 9:23 Contracts 10:25 Five centre backs, two places 11:48 What should Carrick do on Sunday? 12:58 Final thoughts

    NQAT Daily: Yoro's Brilliant France Debut

  2. 2d ago • Subscribers Only

    NQAT Daily: How Abu Dhabi's Sportswashing Actually Worked

    Ten days after City were found guilty on 114 of 115 charges, hardly any City supporter appears to have engaged with the judgement itself. This video video asks why? The answer starts with psychology: City fans feel threatened, the group they belong to is under attack. Football is the perfect host for this. City's owners have fuelled the messaging. Denials came from the club first. The "irrefutable evidence" line has been City's script since 2014, repeated word for word by thousands of accounts. We've never seen it. The same reflex produced the abuse aimed at journalist Nick Harris, who first questioned City's accounts in 2011. And City fans have been cheering reports of UAE threats to pull billions of investment from the UK. Then there's a weird coalition of fans emerging, who blame the "red cartel" for holding them back. The video closes on a broader definition of sportswashing: a state acquiring a constituency of fans who defend it as instinctively as they defend their club. 0:00 114 charges, 10 days on 2:14 Cognitive dissonance 4:14 Club's script and the denial machine 6:28 Nick Harris 8:32 Abu Dhabi leverage on the UK 12:58 Bad faith arguments 14:45 'Ambitious clubs' coalition 17:29 Every fanbase does this 18:56 Redefining sports washing 20:30 Signing off

    NQAT Daily: How Abu Dhabi's Sportswashing Actually Worked

  3. 2d ago • Subscribers Only

    NQAT Extra: Carrick's Tough Fixture List

    Ed and Dominic turn back to United after 10 days of City. The upcoming fixture list is brutal: roughly 10 games to the end of November that take in Spurs, Atlético Madrid, Chelsea, Liverpool, Villa and Sporting. Carrick has to decide whether to double down on the possession-heavy system, where the underlying numbers are strong but the finishing isn't. Or go pragmatic and play on the break in the biggest away games. That decision runs through everything else: whether Sesko is fit enough to give United a presence in the box, whether Cunha's spell as a false 9 ends and how Baleba, Mainoo, Tielemans and Bruno can be combined in midfield. The conversation also covers pressure at Old Trafford, concerns about fitness and physicality across the squad, a defence that needs de Ligt back and whether Yoro or Heaven to step up . Up first: Saturday's game against Spurs and a cautiously optimistic verdict. 0:00 Back to the football 1:15 Carrick's crucial period 3:57 Stick or twist on the system 6:15 Injuries, Sesko and the front line 11:07 Midfield options and flexibility 12:51 Pressure, booing and fan culture 18:23 Fitness, physicality and the defence 25:27 Contracts and the summer budget 32:37 Spurs, Atletico and the run ahead 36:54 Wrap-up

    NQAT Extra: Carrick's Tough Fixture List

  4. 3d ago

    Never Really About Football

    #1054 | Ed and Paul pick through the fall out from City’s guilty verdict and conclude this is a geopolitical story more than football. The outcome might well owe more to diplomacy than to Premier League rules. Andy Burnham's situation and UK ties to Abu Dhabi suggest where the pressure is coming from. There’s a long look at the City fanbase: why will so few will engage with the evidence or a reasonable discussion about what’s happened? How did a club that was once the punchline become the vehicle of a state? There’s the damages bill that could run into billions and whether the other 19 clubs would really vote to expel. Could the only clean exit be a settlement fund and a forced change of ownership? 0:00 The guilty verdict 2:54 A geopolitical story 9:42 CAS 2020, six emails and the redactions 15:03 Financial doping 27:18 Why City fans won't engage 30:40 Who's who in Abu Dhabi 39:31 Was FFP ever a fair rule? 47:00 Lawsuits, damages and expulsion 55:36 Can titles be reassigned? 1:02:36 Settlement and getting the owners out 1:12:29 Wrap If you are interested in supporting the show and accessing a weekly exclusive bonus episode, check out our Patreon page or subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Supporter funded episodes are ad-free. NQAT is available on all podcast apps and in video on YouTube. Hit that subscribe button, leave a rating and write a review on Apple or Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    Never Really About Football

  5. 5d ago

    The Geopolitics of City's Corruption

    #1053 | Daniel joins Ed to make the case that this was never really a football story: Manchester City's ownership is Abu Dhabi's ruling family operating through the exact same statecraft logic they apply to war, espionage and geopolitics. And that family’s refusal to ever hear the word "no" from anyone. It’s the instinct that produced the fraud itself. Trace the money and the politics: Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth, the family network tying the state, the investment vehicle, the sponsors and the football club into one entity. Then there’s Andy Burnham's startlingly weak public response, read against his own history with City-linked land deals in East Manchester and the UK's broader security and investment ties to the UAE.  Pep Guardiola is linked in the same way. His public advocacy on Gaza and Catalan independence is impossible to square with total silence on his own owners' role in Sudan. His City trophies cannot be separated from dirty money and the questions of doping that have followed his career since Barcelona. This is potentially the biggest scandal in the history of sport, precisely because of the geopolitics layered underneath it. 0:00 Intro: City found guilty 2:30 From anti-competitive to human rights 4:39 Statecraft, sovereign wealth and sportswashing 6:58 Paper trail and the defence 14:55 Andy Burnham and Manchester politics 23:36 Punishment, lawsuits and a forced sale 37:48 Guardiola's hypocrisy and his legacy 47:52 Biggest scandal of all time? Wrap-up --- Ready to have an AI that can tackle real work? Try Claude Cowork today — Claude.ai/NQAT --- If you are interested in supporting the show and accessing a weekly exclusive bonus episode, check out our Patreon page or subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Supporter funded episodes are ad-free. NQAT is available on all podcast apps and in video on YouTube. Hit that subscribe button, leave a rating and write a review on Apple or Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    The Geopolitics of City's Corruption

  6. 6d ago • Subscribers Only

    NQAT Daily: It's All the Same People

    City's appeal rests on the argument that the money that inflated their sponsorship deals came from the government of Abu Dhabi, not from the owner Sheikh. The problem is it doesn't really survive contact with an actual org chart. Mansour chairs the sovereign funds behind two of City's four sponsors, his brother runs the government behind the other two. The same handful of people, Khaldoon Al Mubarak among them, sit on the boards of the club, the funds and the government. All at once. Each of the four sponsors traces back to the same family as well. Then there’s the ownership chain from Manchester City up through City Football Group to the Abu Dhabi United Group. Leaked emails showing City's own executives trying to work out how money actually moved between entities that were supposedly separate. The conclusion: there are no real firewalls anywhere in this structure. It’s exactly what the commission found when it called the sponsorship contracts a sham. 0:00 City's appeal
 0:50 City vs. the state
 1:59 Four sponsors
 4:05 Who owns the club
 5:37 Family tree
 7:21 One man, every board 
8:35 What the commission found
 9:50 Related party rules 
10:36 No firewalls
 11:26 Emails 
12:30 Why the defence fails 
13:25 Wrap-up

    NQAT Daily: It's All the Same People

  7. 6d ago

    United Inc: Financing Old Trafford, Path to Ending Glazer Debt

    #1052 | Jamie's latest Substack note gets the deep dive treatment: United's newly published loan documents show a real, dated path to finally clearing the $550 million Glazer-era LBO debt. The new notes are repayable at par with no further interest from 10 June 2029, but only if it's tied to a "stadium financing event," with a matching change-of-control clause built to let INEOS take a majority stake without triggering repayment. It’s complicated but clear. Jamie's model puts the realistic cost for a new stadium closer to £3.2 billion once a typical overrun is applied to the headline £2 billion figure, funded through some mix of club debt, owner equity, and external partners. Personal seat licences could plausibly raise several hundred million pounds on its own. The pod opens with City with Ed and Jamie still processing last week's guilty verdict and the Premier League timeline that could produce a sanction within months. Jamie's note mentioned in the pod: https://spgoals.substack.com/p/can-ineos-clear-manchester-uniteds And for my take on last week's finances: https://nqatpod.substack.com/p/uniteds-new-cash-machine 0:27 Intro 2:38 City verdict and timelines 6:15 What punishment fits the breach 12:14 Premier League credibility and expulsion 15:45 United's refinancing note explained 26:17 Ineos' path to majority ownership 29:26 Stadium cost and funding options 42:31 Squad budget and wrap-up --- Ready to have an AI that can tackle real work? Try Claude Cowork today — Claude.ai/NQAT --- If you are interested in supporting the show and accessing a weekly exclusive bonus episode, check out our Patreon page or subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Supporter funded episodes are ad-free. NQAT is available on all podcast apps and in video on YouTube. Hit that subscribe button, leave a rating and write a review on Apple or Spotify. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    United Inc: Financing Old Trafford, Path to Ending Glazer Debt

  8. Sep 29 • Subscribers Only

    NQAT Daily: Shamchester City

    The full 40-page verdict is in. The numbers are worse than Friday's headlines suggested: across nine seasons, City booked £949 million in sponsorship revenue from Abu Dhabi companies, but only £119 million of it was real. The rest fabricated. In several years, invoices sent to sponsors who were never even asked to agree the figures. How did the scheme actually work? Who were the figures behind the scenes? What did the commission say? Where’s the "irrefutable evidence" of innocence? Then, who was actually cheated? United's 2012 title loss on goal difference. Liverpool's 2013-14 defeat by two points. Every club that missed out on Champions League places or got relegated while competing against fabricated numbers? Finally, a direct challenge to City's own fanbase. Where is your shame and anger? 0:00 Scale of the fraud 
1:30 Real money vs fake money 
2:45 How the scheme began
 3:45 City's cover story rejected
 4:15 Witnesses caught lying
 5:45 Obstructing the investigation
 6:45 Where's the "irrefutable evidence"
 8:00 Unanswered years since 2018
 9:00 Who was cheated
 11:00 Follow the money to the state
 12:45 Fanbase's reaction 
14:15 What happens next

    NQAT Daily: Shamchester City
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4.7
out of 5
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About

No Question About That is the original independent fan-published podcast covering Manchester United. Hosted by Ed, with contributions from Dan, Tom, Wayne, Dharnish, Adam, Jamie, Dominic and Isabel. NQAT covers the latest games, news, business, politics and fan culture at the world’s greatest football club. There are two main shows each week, a tactics show, and a football finance pod. If you are interested in supporting the show and accessing the weekly exclusive bonus episode, check out NQAT Extra on our Patreon page or subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Supporter funded episodes are ad-free. NQAT is also available in video on YouTube. Hit that subscribe button, leave a rating and write a review on Apple or Spotify.

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