Manchester City are guilty. What happens next?
The cat’s finally out of the bag. English football’s biggest exposé is out now, and the full scale of the verdict has been released: Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 out of the 115 charges of financial misconduct over a nine-year span in their era of modern-day dominance, with the Premier League’s official statement using the word “sham” several times to showcase the severity of the matter.
All those years of glory, unprecedented dominance, champagne football, and iconic moments provided by Man City begin to look just that bit hollow and worthless. While City maintain 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 they should be getting — former Man United stars Rio Ferdinand and David de Gea, for instance — multiple former players talking about City being given the strictest sanctions possible, and clubs seeking legal counsel over the revenue they lost owing to City’s financial doping.
The Premier League currently find themselves between a rock and a hard place. With the world now watching with keen interest, waiting for the next steps that will be taken, the powers that be have a lot riding on the decisions they make from hereon.
The verdict is definitely vindication on a massive scale for the Premier League and its chief executive, 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, celebrating unparalleled success in return.
So what does 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 eight- and six-point deductions, respectively, for their breaches, so anything less would significantly undermine the power of the Premier League and make it a laughing stock for 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 shifty.
But if they mete out a severe punishment, there will be ramifications all the same. 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 that time. Everything about the English top flight in this duration will be ticked off with a huge asterisk, thereby making it unrecognisable. Moments like “Aguerooooooooo”, the Vincent Kompany thunderbolt, and many more will lose their shine because of the dirt attached to them.
Add to the fact that clubs will want to get their share of financial restitution, and it all makes for pretty grisly viewing for Man City, because as far as they are concerned, every sort of sporting sanction is on the table, which could also include a potential expulsion from the top echelons of English football altogether.
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 clear winners coming out on top.
