STOCKPORT, England — On the brisk approach to Edgeley Park on Saturday afternoon, the topic of conversation among the soccer fans streaming toward the stadium was not Stockport County or their visitors, Peterborough United. It wasn’t the state of the League One table, or how England would get on against Spain later the same day either.
All anyone was talking about was Manchester City.
At one point during the second half of Stockport’s 1-0 win, the loudest group of home supporters at the top of the Cheadle End behind one of the goals began singing “City’s going down with a billion in the bank.” It’s a song City fans have often used about themselves in jest, but it’s taken on new meaning in the aftermath of news Friday that the club have been found guilty of more than 100 breaches of financial rules.
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News then broke Tuesday with the full scope of the Premier League’s guilty verdict against City, with sources also telling ESPN that the club was made aware of the findings over the summer, prior to their aggressive spending in the transfer window.
There was a time when Stockport and City — clubs separated by just 10 miles — were genuine rivals. They played each other six times in the league between 1997 and 2002. Stockport lost only once in those head-to-head encounters, but in 2009, they entered administration and were hit with a points deduction. It was the starting gun for a drop through the English soccer pyramid, a journey that bottomed out in the sixth tier.
It’s a fate that could now await City. In the absence of anything official from the independent commission tasked with sorting through the Premier League’s case, the void of information is being filled with guesswork and Manchester is at the center of the storm.
On Sunday in east Manchester, hundreds of children turned up at Wright Robinson College to play junior matches. The walk from the carpark to the pitches is a long one and discussions filling the time — between 8-year-olds and 18-year-olds alike — were all about what might happen to one of the city’s biggest clubs.
Amid the mild teasing of City fans, there were debates about whether Manchester United should be awarded the 2012 Premier League title and if Erling Haaland could end up playing in League Two. One City-supporting parent joked that the amount of memes and WhatsApp messages he’d received over the weekend had forced him to draft his own media statement as a catch-all response to each ping of his phone.
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There have been two official statements from City — one from the club on Friday afternoon, and another from chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak 24 hours later — but little in the way of tangible information. Haaland was pulled out of a Norway news conference Saturday for that reason. The charges and their impact would have dominated and no one — let alone Haaland — has any real answers.
The questions are endless. What does it all mean, and what will English soccer look like when it’s over? What punishment is appropriate? Should City get to stay in the Premier League, or even the English soccer pyramid at all?
And then there’s the question of compensation. Clubs have missed out on titles and Champions League places, all of which come with increased prize money and revenue. Should Everton have qualified for Europe in 2012 and 2013? What about Swansea in 2015? Tony Pulis, manager of Stoke City when they lost to City in the 2011 FA Cup final, has said he feels “cheated.”
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City stand accused of financial mismanagement between 2009 and 2018, but what about the years after that? Would they have had the players to win the treble in 2023 without their rapid progress a decade earlier? Without the foundation of serial success — all of it now called into question — would they have been able to splash nearly £250m on Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernández this summer?
There’s no way to tell.
Most City fans are torn. Some are steadfast in their belief that Man City — which maintain their innocence — have done nothing wrong and will eventually be cleared. Others are beginning to worry that City might never emerge from the damage. Every City fan has enjoyed the titles, the trophies and the memories under Abu Dhabi ownership, in place since 2008. But some supporters have become disillusioned with what the club has become.
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It was always a joke aimed at United that Old Trafford was full of tourists chasing reflected glory. An era of success has gradually seen similar things happen at the Etihad Stadium. There are a group of City fans who remember trips to Wycombe and York in the third tier during a spell bouncing up and down the leagues between 1996 and 2002. Those days are worn as a badge of honor and so for some, the threat of dropping down the divisions is something to be embraced rather than feared; younger fans who have only known silverware and trips to Wembley and Real Madrid might feel differently.
With City insisting they will appeal any guilty verdict, the uncertainty is set to rumble on a while longer. Until then, Manchester and its fans are caught up in one of the biggest stories in sports history.
