Ever Feel You've Been Cheated? The Profound Fallout Looming After Manchester City's Guilty Verdict
A decade of glories thrown into question
In a ruling that threatens to redraw the history books of English football, Manchester City have been found guilty of breaking the majority of the 115 Premier League financial rules they were accused of breaching between 2009-10 and 2017-18. The verdict, delivered after a four-year investigation, has plunged the club's most celebrated achievements into doubt — and, as The Guardian's Jonathan Wilson writes, the consequences could be profound, whichever way the inevitable appeal falls.
"So it turns out none of that was real. Nothing that happened in English football between 2009-10 and 2017-18 that involved Manchester City actually happened," Wilson writes. "City beating Manchester United 6-1 at Old Trafford? Fake. Sergio Agüero's 94th-minute winner to clinch the title in 2012? A figment of the imagination."
That season City reached 100 points — a total Wilson memorably suggests "Bobby Ewing dreamed it in the shower." The knock-on effects are impossible to ignore: without those successes, City would not have been in the position they occupied for the past eight seasons, 35 of the charges relating to a failure to cooperate with Premier League investigations between 2018 and 2023. The 14 successive wins that took City to the league title in 2018-19 would not have happened without what went before. Neither would the Treble of 2023 or the record four league titles in a row.
"We're not really here"? Turns out none of us have been for quite some time.
There will be an appeal, and this is not yet the final truth, which could still be a long way off. But if the verdict stands, it may turn out that Jürgen Klopp was a lot more successful than anybody thought, and that Brendan Rodgers and Ole Gunnar Solskjær are title-winning managers. Probably not, Wilson notes — the authorities seem reluctant, even if titles are stripped from a club, to reallocate those titles, and understandably: if one team is streaking clear, priorities for others change.
A financial reckoning unlike anything seen before
If the guilty verdicts are upheld, there will be appeals for mitigation, and there are wheels within wheels. Bloomberg reported last month that the government had been warned of potential negative consequences for UK-United Arab Emirates relations should the verdict go against City; Andy Burnham was mayor during a period when the UAE made significant investments in Manchester and spoke to UAE president Sheikh Mohammed within a week of becoming prime minister in July. But it is hard to see how a systematic campaign of cheating over a period of nine years could bring anything except severe punishment.
The comparison with Everton is stark: one breach in 2022, overspending the profitability and sustainability threshold by £19.5m, earned the Toffees a six-point deduction and they had to pay Burnley, who were relegated, £26m in damages plus £9m in interest. City's offences are "almost incalculably worse," and they failed to cooperate with the investigation. It is not just that they could be forcibly relegated; there is the potential for financial claims against City from sides who missed out on titles during the ghost years, from sides denied European places, from sides who lost prize money — even relegated sides may argue City were a factor in them dropping out of the Premier League.
There are knock-on effects beyond the period in question. Leicester, for instance, narrowly missed out on Champions League qualification in 2020 and 2021. Would they have qualified had City, who finished above them, not been artificially juiced? Had they played in the Champions League then, would they be in the mess they are in now? Somewhere, somehow, somebody will have to calculate which claims are worth pursuing and what they might be worth. The financial cost to City — irrespective of the official sanction — could be crippling.
The cost no one can calculate
History offers warnings. When City were found guilty of illegal payments to players in 1906 and forced to sell off the bulk of their squad, it took them 30 years to recover; when Sunderland were similarly convicted in 1957, they were relegated for the first time the following season and have never retained their previous status.
But the biggest cost, perhaps, is emotional energy. The Agüero goal was arguably the most famous moment in Premier League history — what does it mean to say it didn't happen? Even if City are not stripped of the 2012 title, it is tainted. Marseille's 1993 Champions League success remains on the record but is inevitably undermined by being stripped of the Ligue 1 title that season for match-fixing. That emotion — the euphoria of City fans, the despair of United fans, the amazement of everybody else — cannot be dismissed. Little wonder several City fans online have been desperately trying to find a way to cope, pretending this is conspiracy or irrelevance, rather than the consequence of the actions of their club's owners.
A pivotal moment for the Premier League itself
Those actions are a consequence of the Premier League's laissez-faire attitude to club ownership, which itself sits in a world where anything can be sold off to foreign states or private equity. For everybody else there is a sense of being cheated, and not just by City. This great human drama wasn't real? What about now? Why should anyone care about this season when an independent panel might decide in 17 years it wasn't real either? Will interest wane, revenues drop?
That is a big issue for the Premier League — a potential problem whenever a competition becomes concerned with profit; revenue generation and sporting justice do not necessarily go hand in hand. But the alternative is not to act, which would legitimise rule-breaking and say the game is not about technical excellence or tactical coherence, but about who can afford the best lawyers. It is a painful route the Premier League has chosen. There could be lean years ahead and consequences as yet unimagined. But, Wilson concludes, it is also the right path: if a sport cannot govern itself, if its regulations can simply be ignored if you're wealthy enough, it is no longer a sport.