Nothing will ever be quite the same again in English football. On the last Friday in September 2026, something broke irretrievably in our game. Something was ruined. Something was lost. Please don’t laugh too bitterly at this, but this was the day when the last of our innocence slunk away into the corner and stood against the wall, its head bowed. When the news emerged that Manchester City had been found guilty of the vast majority of the 115 charges relating to breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations, it plunged the game into a pit of fire and a world of recriminations and repercussions that may redraw much of the recent history of the top flight. This is our Calciopoli Scandal that rocked Italian football in 2006 and relegated the mighty Juventus to Serie B, this is our equivalent of the bribery and match fixing scandal that defrocked Marseille in 1993, this is our Black Sox Scandal that surrounded the fixing of the 1919 World Series. It is a bleak, bleak day for the English game. Say it Ain’t So, Pep. Say that none of this is true. Because, one of the greatest sadnesses of all in these guilty verdicts is that they tarnish the achievements in this country of Pep Guardiola, one of the greatest coaches that has ever lived. They tarnish everything that City have achieved since they were taken over by Abu Dhabi. They have brought the whole edifice crumbling down. But it is not the greatest sadness. The greatest sadness is in the cost to fans of so many other rival clubs who were cheated of what they should have won. City’s dishonesty robbed them of moments that would have lasted a lifetime. It robbed them of celebrations with friends that they would never have forgotten. It robbed them of days out that would have been forever bathed in sunshine. Sir Alex Ferguson would have won 14 league titles, not 13, if City had not evaded the rules. Steven Gerrard’s domestic career with Liverpool would not have been defined by that slip against Chelsea in 2013-14 because Liverpool would have won the title. Manchester United would not still be wandering in a post-Ferguson wasteland because they would have won the title in 2017-18 under Jose Mourinho. Pep Guardiola and Man City club chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak celebrate their 2024 title Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool were among those beaten by City in the wake of their dishonestyAnd Liverpool, not City, would have won one of the greatest title races of all time in 2018-19. And Jurgen Klopp and not Guardiola would have emerged victorious in that battle and history may have come to regard him as the greatest manager of the era that followed Ferguson instead. Klopp’s Liverpool came second to City in both the 18-19 and 21-22 title races by a solitary point. When he was asked after his departure in 2024 about the possibility of City being stripped of those titles, Klopp said: ‘If you organise a bus parade, I am in. How long it takes I don’t care.’ That day may be coming sooner than he thought. So the heartbreak lies in what others have lost as much as in the iniquity of what City gained. It lies in the defrauding of history and the way we were manipulated. City were a magnificent team to watch under Guardiola. Perhaps the best our league has ever seen. But that doesn’t count for much anymore. Our eyes might as well have been scratched out. Our memories mean nothing now. Some will say it is a great victory for the Premier League and, yes, it has established its authority over its member clubs and, yes, the alternative to winning this legal battle was unthinkable for it. But the ‘triumph’ should make it question its direction of travel. This is a win for the Premier League in one way but in another, it is a catastrophic loss. City, and Guardiola, were its standard-bearers. They were its best team. They set new standards for beauty and quality. Now, it turns out, that was all built on sand. It may be that the league has won a battle but lost a wider war. City are part of the Premier League, too. The league is eating its own. Everything that City have won since the Abu Dhabi takeover is discredited. Everything feels sullied. All the titles and trophies that were won between 2009 and 2018 are most at risk. The ‘Aguerooo’ moment from 2012 when City won their first top flight title for 44 years with a last-gasp winner from Sergio Aguero at the Etihad? That is tainted. That is spoiled. That is undermined. The ‘Aguerooo’ moment from 2012 when City won their first top flight title is tainted Jose Mourinho and Manchester United missed out on titles at the hands of Man CityMartin Tyler’s greatest moment of commentary has been muted. The greatest moment in Premier League history? Not any more, it isn’t. It may, in fact, come to be seen as a symbol of one of the most cursed eras in our national sport. The guilty verdicts mean that City were playing by different rules to everybody else. And whatever you think of the rules, others respected them and so City should have done. The verdicts say they ignored the rules, that they manipulated the funds available to them unfairly. The verdicts say they had an unfair advantage. The verdicts say they cheated. And so everything they achieved in those years is invalidated. And because those years provided the foundation upon which everything else was built, then everything that followed in the unparalleled success of the Pep Guardiola years is besmirched, too. No one is saying Guardiola knew what had passed before, of course, but he was an unwitting beneficiary of it. And so what do we say now of the four top flight titles in a row that Guardiola’s side won between 2020-21 and 2023-24? No other had done that in the long history of English football. That should have been Guardiola’s greatest legacy but it turns out it was built on the shifting sands of the dishonesty of those that came before him. In a way, he too has been betrayed. What now? Asterisks are not enough. The very least that should happen is that City be stripped of the titles they won in 2012, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. That scenario is said to be ‘unlikely’. It should not be. The very least that should happen is that they be relegated from the Premier League and made to start next season in the Championship. They will appeal, of course, and so that will protect their participation in the Premier League for the rest of this season and perhaps beyond. But if that appeal is unsuccessful, they should be cast out of the top flight. The entire credibility of English football is at stake here. If they escape with a lesser punishment, credibility will be lost. The unparalleled success of the Pep Guardiola years at Man City is besmirched, tooThe guilty verdicts should also make English football pause and take a long, hard look at itself. The Premier League can celebrate its victory but it has become a place where owners have declared war on clubs’ long-standing fans in their desire to maximise revenue and destroy tradition. It should make the league look again at its willingness to allow nation-states to own its football clubs, as is currently the case with City and Newcastle United. The power that they wield and the fabulous riches they command and the arrogance that seeps from them led directly to the entire 115 charges farrago. This may be just the beginning for City, too. It is a bleak day for them but it may get worse. The verdict could be a gateway for City’s rivals each to claim more than £100million in compensation. I spoke to one high-ranking official at a rival Premier League club recently and he predicted an avalanche of law-suits against City if they were found guilty of the most serious charges. Anyone who missed out on a Champions League spot because City occupied one of the places, for instance, would be keen to seek redress, he said. A team that finished eighth, say, would want their prize money adjusted to the total it would have been if they had finished seventh. City may be entering a world of pain. Guardiola was a human shield for the club while he was there because all recognised his talent and the beauty of the teams he produced. Now, when the storm breaks, Guardiola is gone and City are even more defenceless. Some, too, will seek to settle old scores. Away from the pitch, City have ruled with a mixture of intimidation, obfuscation, charm and public relations expertise. They have sought to bully some sports journalists for reporting the truth. It is not a modus operandi peculiar to them but they have pursued it with vigour and relish. The verdict could be a gateway for City’s rivals each to claim more than £100million in compensation. Liverpool missed out on the title to City in 2014 when Steven Gerrard slippedTheir public relations tactics have been extremely effective. I have spoken to several high-ranking executives at other Premier League clubs who have been bitterly amused by the idea, which City have managed to promulgate, that they are disadvantaged outsiders fighting against a football establishment. City, we were told, had been targeted by a supposed ‘Red Cartel’ of Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, so that they could be kept with their noses pressed against the glass. We were told that Financial Fair Play and, later, Squad Cost Ratio rules baked in the superiority of United, Arsenal and Liverpool. Well, if City are victims, they have been prosperous victims indeed. They have won eight league titles since 2011-12 and one Champions League. They are the fifth most valuable football club in the world. Their majority owner, Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the UAE Vice President and Deputy Prime Minister. Outsiders? All these years? Please. Pull the other one. Outsiders now? It is hard to see how it could be otherwise, for some time at least. City will be regarded as pariahs in the Premier League and beyond. They were, we thought, the best of our game. But now we know that was just an illusion.