Manchester City are guilty of systemically breaking Premier League rules. They have appealed that verdict, naturally. After all, a significant number of the crimes a Premier League independent disciplinary commission found them guilty of, beyond financial doping in excess of £900M over the better part of a decade, involved their efforts to cover it all up.
And everyone with eyes and a couple of brain cells to rub together basically knew it was happening all along. Which does make it a little eyebrow-raising
when those who helped keep the focus off their very obvious financial doping efforts and on their high-quality football under ex-manager Pep Guardiola have suddenly found the spine to comment on it.
Still, better late then never, I guess?
“If people talk about 80 points or 100 points, that’s just over one season that gets you relegated and then you come back again,” said former Liverpool defender and Sky Sports punditry stalwart Jamie Carragher this week when asked about the guilty verdict and potential punishments. “I think the players, a few of them would leave, but I think some of them would put up with that for a year.
“But I think because this has gone on for so long, I do think the punishment should be over a number of years, three to five years, and then players would move on.”
He’s not wrong. But it’s hard to entirely get the sour taste out of your mouth as a Liverpool fan watching the pundits now line up to wring their hands as if City’s extreme financial doping wasn’t obvious all along. One can understand, perhaps, that legal concerns might have previously made it awkward to talk too openly about. But it still doesn’t sit right.
Particularly as the standard line in the world of punditry until now wasn’t just to turn a legally-mandated blind eye—it was to often heap disdain on anyone raising the issue. To minimize it. Wave it away. Suggest that to talk about it was fundamentally all a little silly. That it was beneath them as serious pundits and best left to the wild-eyed conspiracists.
Still, better late then never, I guess?
