On a wet and windy Sunday afternoon a week from now, supporters of Liverpool and Manchester City will make their way across Stanley Park towards Anfield. Home fans will pose for selfies under the Shankly Gates before heading towards the turnstiles, wrapped up tight against the elements, pints and chips in hand, and cast an adoring eye at the bronze statues of legends that forever live in their hearts.John Houlding, just outside the Main Stand. Bill Shankly, by the Kop. The one of Bob Paisley in Paisley Square and then, of course, that beautiful little one of Brendan Rodgers clutching the Premier League trophy just outside the club shop. The man who finally, after 24 long years, ended Liverpool’s wait for the title.In this world, in this life, Manchester City never cooked the books. They never inflated their revenue with sham sponsorship agreements over the course of nearly a decade to the tune of £900million. They never paid a manager with a secret second contract. They just, quite simply, played by the rules.Had they done so, English football would look a whole lot different. Ever since the damning guilty verdict landed this week – one they are appealing – we have all gone through those silverware seasons, scratched out the trophies and titles, and worked out who might have triumphed instead. Congratulations, Tony Pulis on your FA Cup, thoroughly deserved.But what we will never, really, know is how the entire landscape of would have shifted. What futures did all that money prevent? What legends did it stop from being forged?In the aftermath of the verdict, a lot of the focus has been on heralding the even greater genius of Jurgen Klopp. How far he pushed that City side, finishing second twice on 90+ points, and how, in a clean world, the German is the one heralded as the most influential manager in recent Premier League history. Is it his style of play, not Pep Guardiola’s, that shapes a generation of our game? Brendan Rodgers would have won the Premier League title with Liverpool has Manchester City not cheated – though they deny doing soKlopp joked recently that if Liverpool ended up with their open-top bus parade after all, then he’d be there.Only, that’s the thing. Would he have been there at all? If City aren’t the artificially inflated force they were, if Steven Gerrard’s slip doesn’t cost Liverpool the title, if Rodgers sees them over the line in 2013-14 then does Klopp ever end up at Liverpool?Rodgers is the hero now. He’s the man who builds his Liverpool dynasty instead of being sacked within 18 months. He shapes the club in his image. He gets the murals. He gets the statue.Klopp once said he had no interest in having one until after he was dead. Rodgers, you imagine, may have taken a different approach.But this is the issue with City’s cheating. As soon as you start to follow one new branch of reality, trying to undo tainted history, it entangles all the infinite others that could just as easily have arisen.What of Arsenal? The Gunners welcome Leeds to the Emirates Stadium next Saturday. Mikel Arteta is in the dugout, of course, four games into his ninth full season in charge. He replaced Arsene Wenger, after all, following the Frenchman’s retirement in 2018. Before that, the former Arsenal skipper led the club’s academy side for two years following his own retirement after Wenger offered him the role as part of the club’s succession plan.Arteta never learns his coaching craft from Guardiola. If City could only spend what they were allowed, they don’t build the foundations (or the fortune) to entice him. They had two Premier League titles by the time he arrived in our world, in this one they don’t have any. Neither, probably, do Arsenal, since 2004.Meanwhile, Vincent Kompany stands in the away dugout at Anfield. A City hero, signed before the takeover as a 22-year-old who developed into a superstar, won them a couple of League Cups, before making his mega money move to a European giant when he felt he’d taken the club as far as he could. But his heart was blue and he always promised he’d come back one day. Tony Pulis would have won the FA Cup with Stoke City after they lost to City in the 2011 finalIt’s certainly not Enzo Maresca, who never got to work with Guardiola at City either.What is unclear, though, is which Manchester United hosts Tottenham next weekend. It might be the one that Klopp inherited in 2016 instead of Jose Mourinho. Alex Ferguson always considered him as potential successor but, back then, Klopp stayed loyal to Borussia Dortmund. They got their man eventually and, even if they did have to endure Louis Van Gaal, Klopp brought his heavy metal football to Old Trafford and the music hasn’t stopped since.Only, it’s not that United actually. Because City weren’t cheating, Martin Tyler never got his Sergio Aguerrrooo moment and Sir Alex Ferguson bagged his 20th title a year early. Without the fire fuelled inside him to win it back from the Noisy Neighbours, he calls it a day. David Moyes gets a better crack at the job he was chosen for.Oh, sorry, Moyes didn’t get the job at all, did he? Guardiola got it. Silly me.Ferguson and Guardiola met for dinner in New York in 2012 where the former United boss says he urged Guardiola, on sabbatical after leaving Barcelona, to call him before taking another job. By the time Fergie left United, Guardiola had already agreed to join Bayern Munich.Not now. With Ferguson now retired a year earlier, Guardiola builds his dynasty at Old Trafford. The Guardiolafication of English football happens even earlier. United remain the dominant force and while we can no longer congratulate Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer for their titles in 2018 and 2021, it doesn’t matter. They won it all under Guardiola anyway.You see, it doesn’t matter at which thread of history you start to unpick, it all soon begins to unravel.Take Leicester, for example. For two successive seasons between 2019 and 2021 they finished fifth and missed out on the Champions League on the final day. Now, they’re in League One. So much of their subsequent decline, and complete mismanagement, stems from that as they began to act – and spend – like a Champions League club despite not being one, nor having the funds to do so, and breaking rules themselves in the process.So, in this new life, surely, they make it. They bank the millions and, perhaps, establish themselves among the elite. They host Everton next weekend but Eddie Howe will have to mix up his selection with Champions League duty a few days later. Jurgen Klopp (right) may never have gone to Liverpool at all, and may have ended up at Man United – or maybe it would have been Pep Guardiola (centre)Only, they don’t make it. Because Rodgers never goes there and Leicester don’t make the leap. He’s no longer a manager trying to get his foot back on to the Premier League ladder. He’s a man with a statue that’s probably either England manager by now or coaching Barcelona and doing all his team talks in Spanish.All of these new alternate realities are before you even consider how the star names behind City’s now asterisked triumphs become scattered in a different life.Chelsea finally got John Stones as their long-term John Terry successor after multiple failed bids. David Silva joined them, too, years earlier at a club the midfielder once described as ‘where I could fulfil my ambition’. He sure does.Kevin De Bruyne flourishes under Guardiola at United. Raheem Sterling is already a title winner at Liverpool and enjoys a very different career under Rodgers at Liverpool.Tottenham met Aguero’s release clause at Atletico Madrid six months before he moved to City only for the bid to be rejected but, in this life, they get him in the end. Oh, wait, what does that do to Harry Kane’s career?And so another domino falls. Another rabbit hole to go down. In many ways, it is these endless ripples and repercussions that lie at the heart of why City’s systemic cheating leaves such a stain on the game. Not only did they strip others of glory and opportunity but, in doing so, altered the course of history beyond anything, however hard we try, any of us will truly ever be able to conceive.