We expected the written reasons to be damning. The Premier League did not fight for this long, and at this cost, only to sell it short when it came to parading the devil in the detail. They allowed the noise of the verdict leak to settle from boil to simmer. Then they launched.
It started with the headline figure: more than £900m by which Manchester City artificially inflated revenues and reduced costs. The Commission described commercial arrangements as “sham” deals. It continued as an extraordinary account of the club’s finances, laying bare the findings on which its verdict was based.
The conclusion that counts most is that City breached the rules over nine seasons. Around that established judgment, the detail is equally damaging to City’s hopes that this can ever simply go away.
In some quarters – by which I mean a hardcore, online section of the fanbase – there has been an attempt to present City as railing against some nameless monster and fighting the good fight against the established elite and its pesky rules.
On BBC 5 Live, one caller compared it to the suffragette movement. I don’t remember that dishy Disney cartoon fox from Robin Hood owning a nation state, but you do sometimes miss the subtext when you are a kid. And maybe Pankhurst just really liked Aleksandar Kolarov.
The Sky Blues have been found ‘guilty of all charges related to serious breaches’ (Photo: Getty)Can we now park all that bad-faith garbage and call it what the Commission found?
The table of sponsorship revenue, detailing money paid through legitimate commercial arrangements and money supplied by the UAE, was central to the findings. The Commission concluded that owner-linked funding had been presented as sponsorship revenue, helping to inflate the club’s income.
Just as damning were the conclusions about the behaviour of certain individuals during the investigation by the independent Commission, given those individuals were associated with the club itself, while the majority were doing their best to provide honest evidence.
“Certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest,” one conclusion read.
That says City did not just get things wrong. That they did not just breach the rules deliberately. That they did not just deny the allegations when they were challenged.
The Commission found dishonesty from certain witnesses. It is breathtaking.
City’s official response stuck to their usual playbook, although they do get some credit for being “surprised and disappointed” about something that the whole world has been talking about for several days.
More pertinently, City mentioned “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence [that] exists in support of all of its positions”.
Now, I finished my law degree almost half my life ago, but if I were acting on behalf of City, I would simply have brought up that irrefutable evidence at some point over the last four years before this verdict.
If the plan is to keep shouting this into the void, it is not working.
At least the appeal should be efficient, given City will presumably want to clear their name as quickly as possible and get this evidence in front of the nation’s eyes. Quite what their explanation is for everything we have read in the verdict? I guess we will find that out too.
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Comment: Pep Guardiola’s legacy is tainted for ever Explained: Nine key findings as Premier League releases damning Man City verdictThe last word, for now, should go to the vast majority of City supporters who have been betrayed by a football club that asked them to believe in the project and kept asking for their trust when the validity of that project was called into question.
Those supporters have indirectly had their own names, and much of their last 15 years, dragged through the mud. If people associated with the club lied to the Commission, they road-tested those lies on the fanbase for years.
Should City lose their appeal, there will be endless talk of punishment for the club. The scale of any sanction will be a matter for the relevant process. If the behaviour lasted nine years, the consequences will inevitably be considered in the context of that period.
But there should also be personal consequences for those who led this dismal racket, and it would be fitting if they came from within the fanbase that has been so misled. How can City continue to operate under these owners and decision-makers without remaining badly stained?
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