Premier League’s most iconic moments wiped out if Man City get points ban including Gerrard slip title and no ‘Aguerooo’
THAT epic ‘Sergio Agueroooooo!’ moment against QPR and Mario Balotelli’s ‘Why Always Me?’ T-shirt in a 6-1 Manchester derby romp at Old Trafford.
Steven Gerrard falling on his jacksie, letting in Demba Ba and allowing the title to slip.
Pep Guardiola’s centurions ripping up the record books, while racking up 100 points and 106 goals.
These are some of the Premier League’s most iconic moments.
And after the charges laid against Manchester City yesterday, they could all effectively be expunged from the history books.
It seems unlikely that City will be stripped of their titles won in 2012, 2014 and 2018 — but the threat is there.
And if City are found guilty, those triumphs would be tainted, condemned as the products of cheating, with asterisks alongside them in the record books.
Forget everything you thought you knew.
City face relegation from the top flight, massive fines and reputational Armageddon. Yesterday’s bombshell charge-sheet has vast potential repercussions for the future, the present and even the past of the Premier League.
A commission independent of the league will now consider the allegations.
BETTING SPECIAL – BEST FOOTBALL BETTING SITES IN THE UK
City, who deny wrongdoing, will defend the charges robustly and owner Sheikh Mansour has very expensive lawyers.
Just like Roman Abramovich’s learned friends in the days when we weren’t allowed to call the former Chelsea owner a crony of Vladimir Putin.
In 2020, City’s legal team successfully overturned a two-year Uefa ban from European club competition for Financial Fair Play breaches — many of these were deemed unproven or were timed out.
But this Premier League probe, sparked by the work of a Portuguese hacker and a German publication, has gone on for approximately the same length of time as the First World War.
And its upshot has stunned football’s financial wonks with the scale of its accusations.
When Uefa charged City, the club’s board and their fans were always able to claim they were the victims of a long-standing vendetta from European football’s governing body.
But nobody, least of all City, believed the Premier League had the teeth or the balls for something on this scale.
This is what is known in the game as a proper ‘F*** me, Doris’ moment.
The league’s executive has waved through so many billionaire owners of differing repute, seemingly under a mantra of ‘Greed is Good’.
Now to allege widespread rule-breaking from the competition’s dominant force and to invite talk of demotion and title-stripping, well, doesn’t it all sound a bit Italian, a bit Glaswegian?
In a list as long as Ederson’s arms, consisting of more than 100 alleged breaches of league rules, City are accused of shady sponsorship revenues, shadowy contracts and failing to comply with investigators.
If they stick, City will surely be punished with crushing severity.
Guardiola claimed he would quit if he had been lied to on these issues by club chiefs, including his close Barcelona mates Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain, when similar allegations were made by Uefa.
A man of principle, surely he could not stand the stench if the charges are upheld?
And what for City’s domestic rivals? With Liverpool in meltdown and City under threat of expulsion, Newcastle’s Geordie Arabia regime — who are being careful with FFP — will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of a potential title charge as soon as next season.
Chelsea, who are flying close to a hurricane with FFP, might be more wary about balancing the books but will also sense renewed opportunity.
The English old firm of United and Arsenal will be emboldened, too, if the Premier League’s dominant club is brought to its knees.
Is this what we want, though? City have produced so many extraordinary moments.
Guardiola’s teams, in particular, have played some of the most gorgeous football ever seen by an English club side.
Would we rather it hadn’t happened?
There is a fascinating debate to be had over whether Financial Fair Play rules are good for the sport.
These were undoubtedly introduced because of pressure from the established elite clubs to lessen the threat of state-owned nouveau-riche outfits like City, Newcastle and Paris Saint-Germain and to maintain the old status quo.
Does FFP compromise sporting integrity or safeguard it? It probably depends which team you support.
Do we prefer the old predictability or a wild west for Middle Eastern money men?
And do we want those history books to be rewritten or asterisked?
Was Martin Tyler’s great goalgasm, when Aguero scored his famous last-gasp winner to secure City’s first Premier League crown in 2012, actually a case of faking it?
Will Brendan Rodgers become a title-winning Liverpool manager, nine years after the apparent narrow failure of that thrilling Anfield Spring because of Gerrard’s slip?
And will Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United legacy be reframed after the addition of the 2018 title, which history-making City had initially won by 19 clear points.
You can bet the old rascal will be claiming it soon.
This is a fascinating development which begs a million questions.
And for most Premier League supporters — for whom the game is a form of escapism from dull talk of finance and legalities — the most pertinent question is “What can we even believe any more?”