“I wish from deep in my heart to go to the trial, the independent panel and as soon as possible they release what happened, and we will accept like we always have done,” Pep Guardiola said in August 2024. Proof at least that he didn’t always get what he wanted as Manchester City manager.
In the tussle between the longest-serving Premier League manager and the 115 charges case, there could only be one survivor.
Listen, fair play, Guardiola held on until he was literally scratching himself in the face during matches, but you just can’t compete with the delays of the English justice system. Pep has gone, the case lives on.
Manchester City’s alleged breaches first became charges in February 2023, meaning this will be the fifth Premier League season with a massive elephant in the corner of everyone’s vision.
Pep has gone but the uncertainty lingers (Photo: PA)The independent commission hearing concluded in December 2024, so we’re now 20 months on from the closing arguments. This is all great fun, isn’t it?
If City are found guilty (genuine lol for assuming it’s going to be as simple as one guilty or not guilty, but bear with me), it alters history.
It changes how we view their league titles and it raises questions (and potential counterclaims) from peers who may have won trophies or qualified for the Champions League without their expedited rise to the Premier League’s summit.
But at least it would be a form of closure, even pending appeals. This current purgatory is excruciating. It is also deeply unpleasant for the Premier League’s continued competition. City have spent £600m on transfer fees since the commission concluded. You can’t blame them for that – why wouldn’t they? But it’s hardly ideal.
Football requires us all to suspend reality on a continued loop. We pretend that competitions and regulations aren’t weighted for or against certain groups of clubs. We pretend that players love our club even half as much as we do.
We shift at will on the matter of football’s own importance, brief windows of clarity when we downplay its significance amongst long periods of overstating it.
Manchester City’s requires extra helpings of cognitive dissonance, still we manage it. We discuss how Enzo Maresca will settle, whether Erling Haaland will get enough service and whether Elliot Anderson needs to be in a team with less of the ball for his all-action ball-winning to thrive.
“Oh yeah,” the thought flashes across our mind, “I also wonder whether all of this was built upon systematic rule-breaking on an industrial scale by a state nation owner.”
There are good reasons for this deliberate underthink: it’s all so messy and there is nothing to do but wait. Every discussion of this case becomes an under-the-line squabble.
Don’t believe me? Look at the replies to my social media plug for this piece. I bet you don’t get to the second one without someone boldly stating their own claim and I bet it involves sarcasm.
There are legitimate, unsurprising reasons for the lengthy delays. This is a ludicrously complex case with hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence across a high number of charges, each of which is an individual legal battleground.
The charges have long been hanging over Manchester City (Photo: Getty)It is arguably the highest-profile active legal case on the planet, given the Premier League’s global popularity, and as such the judges’ verdicts will be scrutinised like no other. Those judges will likely be working on other cases, given the timeframes involved. There may also be a degree of readying themselves for appeals.
But the impacts of the delay are drawing permanent grooves in stone. In most other scenarios, outrage fatigue would have taken over. But here’s the thing: outrage fatigue doesn’t really exist in football. Anger is self-sustaining and there is always enough to go around.
People aren’t getting less fed up as the months tick on, they’re getting more. That includes those on all sides of the affair: Manchester City supporters, rival supporters, a massive mass of the rest of us who just want it over so we can avoid watching a division caught in suspension.
Even worse, the principal fuel of this continued fire is anti-establishment sentiment and a loss of faith in the process. Vladimir and Estragon passed the time for their own impossible tomorrow with vaguely philosophical musings. Football supporters tend to be a little more acerbic.
On one Reddit post last week about when we might expect a verdict, the Football Association got some grief (not even involved), the Premier League were criticised for being too soft on City (they have literally pursued the case) and the game itself was accused of looking after “the cartel” here (even though Big Six supporters include the accused club).
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All speak with absolute certainty. Conspiracy theory noise has become the currency of the league.
And it’s exhausting. Everybody is angry because they have a firm opinion on something as yet unknowable. Everybody is conspiratorial because nobody trusts silence even when silence is appropriate.
Everybody is weary because it’s been dragging on for what feels like half a lifetime. Five months is too long to wait to learn if we have been watching a deliberately distorted version of competition. We’re heading into season five.
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