So what is the rationale for opening up the investigation over the 2009-18 period then?
If it’s to enforce the rules? To ensure league integrity? Or both? How could the PL argue they are ensuring the integrity of the league if they let those recent City league titles slide, especially knowing they are built from the gains of 2009-2018?
Surely, they will likely investigate for those later years, once they have this mess sorted first and that sets the book-cooking precedent. I imagine charges for those latter years will be resolved much more speedily.
IMO the PL have shown with Leicester*, Forest, and Everton that they are serious enough about following through.
There is no punishment you can do that is going to punish them enough for the cheating and distortion of the competitions that has occurred.
In the 9 years under investigation they won 3 PLs,1 FA cup and 3 EFL cups.
A result of those 9 years of cheating they’ve been allowed over the next 6 years to win a further 5 PLs,2 FA cups,3 EFLs,1 Champions league,1 Super cup and 1 FIFA World club cup.
That success as well as a huge amount of prize money should have gone to other properly run clubs.
All of it is not going to be taken away from them yet all of that,from 2009 until now,
is as a result of cheating
Even if by some miracle everything they have cheated their way to was to be taken away,they and their fans will always have the moments that were created during those years,which for the majority of us is the reason we support our clubs,win or lose.
Just taking away what they have won and exposing them for cheating is not gonna stop them from generating a new generation of supporter.This will only happen if they lose their stars and stop competing at the top end of competitions.
There seems to have been a real vibe shift away from “this case is a big deal” to something approaching a recognition that what is about to happen is monumental. The number of pieces I’ve read recently that openly speak about punishments equivalent to the death penalty is really striking.
You can imagine the league feeling a bit apprehensive about the reaction to something that big, a concern that even people who want city punished will view it as them overplaying their hand. If that were the case, you can imagine a campaign being pursued of stories being floated that muse over these sorts of punishments to give the public time to start getting their heads around it. If that was happening it wouldnt look too different than what we’ve been seeing the last 3-4 weeks.
Not liking the fact that everything is behind closed doors. First we don’t hear or get updates of what’s going on but maybe there are pros and cons to this…
Rodri is the obvious one both in terms of quality and what we need. Maybe some of the kids less tainted by it like Lewis and/or Bobb. The rest can get fucked.
