Manchester City are guilty. What happens next?

So the cat is indeed finally out of the bag. English Football’s biggest expose is out now that the full scale of the verdict has finally been released. Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 out of the 115 charges of financial misconduct over a 9-year span that punctuated their era of modern-day dominance, with the ruling using words like “sham” and “dishonesty” to showcase the severity of the matter.

The verdict has meant that all those years of glory, unprecedented dominance, the champagne football, and the iconic moments provided by Man City begin to look just that bit hollow and worthless. While City still maintains their innocence and promise to continue fighting the verdict, it looks like the battle is already lost and that there is no coming back for City from this.

But now the verdict is out, what will be the way ahead from here?

Social media is already rife with players from other clubs asking how many winners’ medals should we get (Rio Ferdinand and David De Gea), multiple former players talking about giving City the strictest sanctions possible, and clubs seeking legal counsel over the amounts of financial windfall they lost owing to City’s financial doping in the years that they were affected.

However, the Premier League currently find themselves between a rock and a hard place. With the world now watching with keen interest on the next steps that will be taken in terms of the sanctions, the powers that be will have a lot riding on the decision they make.

The verdict is definitely vindication on a massive scale for the Premier League and Richard Masters, whose quiet and determined leadership over this series of matters deserves fair praise and appreciation. However, on the other hand, this is the same Premier League whose rules and regulations were so easy to bypass that Man City kept doing it for years without any repercussions and getting unparalleled success in return.

So what do the League do? If the sanctions are just limited to hefty fines and transfer bans then the league loses credibility. It is worth noting that Everton and Nottingham Forest were handed 8 and 6-point deductions for their breaches, so anything less would significantly undermine the power of the Premier League and make them a laughing stock to the world. It might also set a precedent for the others that no matter how serious the offence the league will not mete out hefty punishments, thereby giving other teams further encouragement to be shrifty.

But if they mete out a severe punishment, there will be ramifications there as well. The punishments, while celebrated as a big victory for the League, will also put a huge blemish on the last 15 years of football and what the League became in general. Everything about the Premier League in this duration will be ticked off with a huge asterisk on it, thereby making it unrecognisable. Moments like the “Aguerooooooooo”, the Vincent Kompany thunderbolt, and many such moments will lose their shine because of the dirt attached to it.

Add to the fact that clubs will want to get their share of financial windfall, it all makes for pretty grisly viewing for Man City themselves, because as far as they are concerned, every sort of sporting sanction is on the table, which will also include a potential expulsion from the English football ladder too.

The verdict is only a part of the events that will unfold. There is still a long way to go in this fractious saga, and by the looks of it, the way in front is muddled and murky with no winners coming out of it.