The Man City verdict poisons an entire Premier League era ...Middle East

“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. We got there in the end, Pep, you just missed it. We got the result.

Well, almost. The good news for Manchester City is that they have an appeals process. That and the fact that, according to The Athletic, they have only been found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges. Small comfort? Not for anyone.

This is not a bombshell; it is the bombshell. This could be the Premier League’s Calciopoli scandal. A serial champion club has reportedly been found guilty of such serious charges that there should be no upper limit to the punishments under discussion should their appeal not succeed.

As Brian Clough famously said to Leeds United’s players: “You can throw your medals in the bin because they were won by cheating.”

But the greatest crime here does not lie in the hundreds of thousands of pieces of evidence that an independent panel has been sifting through for so long we have all grown a little longer in the tooth and greyer in the hair. It does not lie in what Manchester City have been found guilty of doing with their own accounts.

It’s not even the impact upon rival clubs themselves, although clearly that has never felt more painfully relevant and the prospect of further action by those outside parties who believe that they have been unduly impacted is a can of worms that I can’t quite bring myself to open just yet.

No, the greatest crime is the warping of history and our – every single person who watches the Premier League or supports one of its clubs – experience over the last 17 years. It is the ultimate Pandora’s Box moment for the biggest league in the sport that now faces serious questions. Remember that Chelsea have recently been punished for their own rule breaking.

We all know that we care too much about football. It is deeply embarrassing that how our team plays on a Saturday impacts the answer to the “How was your weekend?” question on a Monday morning. But we at least tell ourselves that, beneath all the hoopla and the hype, what we are watching is real. This isn’t soap opera, it’s sport. The result is the result.

Except now it isn’t. Friday’s news forces us to rewrite history in our minds. How could we not now? It doesn’t matter if the punishment strips City of titles, cups and records – it would surely be too messy to process officially.

Because every football supporter of every other club will be doing exactly the same. Everything we watched wasn’t real. It was built upon sand. “Aguerrrrr-no”.

That applies to the nine years over which the charges applied, but also everything that came since. If you win one title you get a trophy but also the wealth and power that makes winning the next one easier and the one after that easier still. Suddenly nothing at the Etihad Stadium is tangible at all. It is a chimera, delusion on an industrial scale.

Pull on any one strand and see how the house of cards falls down. Manchester City beat Sunderland in the 2014 EFL Cup final – did their rule-breaking forge the gap?

Sunderland missed out on Europe as a result, including its extra revenue and pulling power on players. Four years later, their fans were watching League One football. They have Europe now, but what if they never had?

The trophies Man City won from 2009-2018

With the teams who finished runners-up or City beat in the final in brackets.

Premier League

FA Cup

League Cup

There are more strands everywhere, knock-on impacts and “I wonder what ifs”. This is the butterfly effect, except the butterfly is a herd of elephants trampling over our previous concept of who won what and why.

That is the dreadful irony to all this: the only thing worse than the uncertainty of not having a verdict is having a verdict and realising that uncertainty is now all we have.

I don’t know where we go from here, other than an appeals process that is likely to be lengthy and complicated. I understand if some don’t have the stomach for it and simply check out of caring for a while. It has been five years; it’s just too long.

But this day will be etched on the history of the Premier League, despite its victory in the case. It will be etched on the history of Manchester City because of the comprehensive and damning nature of their defeat. It is the day we wanted, the end of the beginning of the closure. But it sure doesn’t feel worthy of celebration.

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