03 Oct 2026 15:22:44
This whole City thing will drag on and on and on. The water is getting muddier by the day.
Systemic cheating designed to circumvent the rules to gain an unfair sporting advantage.
The punishment needs to fit the crime, and seeing as this is a historic case in it's magnitude and timescale then the punishment has to be equal to that.
For at least a decade Man City have been cheating, with more likely to come out as the current charges only account for things done up to 2018. And let's be honest, no one believes that in 2018 after nearly a decade of cheating and getting away with it they suddenly decided to stop of their own accord.
Which actually makes punishing them trickier now, as it will set a precedent. If (as expected) they are found to have continued breaking the same rules to the same extent between 2018-2026 then they will have to face the same level of punishment.
Of course they will continue to fight this, they are owners who are not used to losing, ever. To them the answer is always how much to make it go away. Yet the cleanest solution, is also an unsavoury one. A deal needs to be agreed with the Man City owners to accept their guilt, to stop fighting it, and to cooperate with further investigations fully. Yet they will not do that without getting something in return.
Of course the alternative is for the EPL to continue to go to war with them and drag this whole thing out longer and longer, to continue to drag footballs reputation through the mud, until someone runs out of money to keep fighting it.
There is no clean and clear way to end this without City's cooperation.
While personally I'd like to see them relegated back to non-league football and made to take the long way back. The reality is that there is no way City will accept that, they will keep fighting it and dragging it out. And ultimately who wins? I know who loses. The fans lose, the people employed by the club lose, football loses.
The non-negotiable should be that City get all of their titles during that period stripped. I don't think they should be redistributed, as it's too messy. Just no winners during those seasons. You cannot allow a club to cheat to win and then retain the spoils of their cheating.
Beyond that, relegation, point deductions, director bans, transfer bans, and the timeframe for any/all of these will probably need to be negotiated.
Some sort of a deal that includes City accepting responsibility, fronting up about any additional cheating beyond 2018 and a total punishment being agreed for all of it is what needs to happen.
Unfortunately, I doubt that will happen as it appears that there are too many egos involved who aren't prepared to give an inch to gain a mile.
03 Oct 2026 18:15:44
My head is just hurting thinking about it now. im actually angry, not because of the cheating but because I've paid £1000s over the years to see a fraud of a league. But its the cup games that's got me, semis of fa and league cup, lost to players that shouldn't have been on pitch. I think i'm more angry now after a week (after laughing i must admit) because the game i love watching has to me been ruined by it all.
If and its a huge if, city get off I feel that i'm done with it all. My heart sack when Burham came out with that, now its all political and its just feeling s@@t. In fact i'm not angry i'm sad at the state of affairs.
03 Oct 2026 19:54:30
Nick, I feel much the same way. It's the idea that the sporting merit has been taken away. For some young fans it's wiped out all their memories of the game, the first 10 years of their life watching football means nothing as pretty much none of the results count for anything.
This is the thing that the EPL have to understand, the decisions they make now will have lasting long term impacts on the game. Do they turn. A generation of football fans away from the game by being weak, or do they start to rebuild footballs reputation (which is in the gutter right now) by being strong.
At the same time, the only way we get to move past this is anytime soon is either by City accepting a form of punishment and choosing not to drag it on, or for the EPL (and wider football) to be so hard on City that they wipe them out of existence to bring this to an end (which isn't something I'd want to see, while they might be rivals, the fans shouldn't suffer due to the mismanagement of the owners).
If not then this will drag on and on and on and continue to drag football through the mud until it turns all fans away.
03 Oct 2026 21:48:40
As you can suspend a person from their job whilst under investigation, can't they do that whilst it drags on?
It's odd they're allowed to keep playing until a punishment or appeal is decided.
As without the initial cheating and success it brought, they'd not have the squad etc they have today.
Games they don't play, automatic 3 points to the other team. End up relegated by not getting any points.
03 Oct 2026 22:21:23
Owners removed
Point deduction now. -90
Relegated to League 2 or below
Titles stripped and reassigned
Transfer Ban
Huge Fine enough to distributed proportionally to compensate all affected.
Open top bus tour with Sir Alex and Jose.
03 Oct 2026 22:55:24
Key, the problem is that suspending them until the outcome of any appeal etc would be what happens if they are successful in that appeal?
It's not like a normal job where you get suspended and someone else picks up your slack until the outcome.
If City win the appeal and have missed half a season how does the league recompense that? What do you do about the clubs who have already played City this season? Do you take away any points they might have picked up against them? And even if you did they still had to play that game, how can it be fair to have some teams in the league play one more game than the rest.
Then you have to think about all the people employed by City, not just the players and the coaching staff, but grounds keepers, the cleaners, the catering staff, the stewards, the shop staff. Those that rely on their wages who'll effectively be made redundant in time for Christmas.
03 Oct 2026 23:04:43
Utd Road, that would be the dream, although I wouldn't want the titles and cups reassigned. They are tainted and carry little to no sporting merit. Whose to say how those seasons would have panned out without the cheating from City. It's far to reductive to just give them to the team that finished second or lost the cup final.
City probably need there to be a clean end to this as much as the rest of football. Maybe by agreeing to a deal where they accept a punishment a part of that would include an agreement from the other English clubs and players not to take up private damages claims against them.
Maybe something more like stripped of all titles won during that period, a massive fine that goes into a pot and is redistributed to the impacted clubs and players. Then a points reduction of say 40 points per season for 9 years (the period of time they cheated), effectively barring them from being able to challenge for major titles during that time, but not forcing the club into a position where they will surely go out of business and all those innocent people lose their livelihoods.