Manchester City made an announcement on Friday morning. It wasn’t the one we’re all waiting on, but they do have a new energy drink partner in Vietnam, which I’m sure is a lovely bit of business. Look after the partners and the titles look after themselves.
If there’s anything apt about such an arrangement in City’s season of sleep, it is that the product is called Wake Up 247.
I’m not minded to do a deep trawl of affairs in the caffeine game, but I did spare a few minutes to Google. It showed that Wake Up exist under the vast corporate umbrella of Masan Group, a massive Vietnamese conglomerate, and in 2021 the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, of which City’s owner Sheikh Mansour is a board member, ploughed a serious investment into one of Masan’s consumer arms.
It was faintly interesting, in a snoozy sort of way, and yet those were empty calories – there’s nothing wrong or uncommon about tiny connections between commercial powerhouses. But because it’s City, because of various accusations in recent years, we don’t just look at the tree or branches anymore; we are curious about the leaves, too, and whether they tell us something or nothing.
So welcome to football in 2025, where we are conditioned to believe face value isn’t quite what it used to be.
Or to phrase it more meaningfully: how about those league tables? How about all those trophies? How about that era of dominance, where City played some of the most breathtaking and effective football this country has ever known?
The verdict on whether Manchester City built their breathtaking era of dominance on cheating is imminent but the ruling on the 130 alleged breaches won’t be the end of the matter
If it goes as most in football believe it will, both City and the Premier League will claim victories
If their actions went to the most egregious limits of the charges, how does the Premier League even begin to right the wrong? That’s a greater headache than thousands of pages of legalese
On face value, magnificent, especially the Pep Guardiola sides. But the verdict to tell us if that was built on cheating is imminent, apparently.
I’d heard whispers it would be last week, and then this week. And now there are rumours it might be next, or even after Easter.
Of one thing we can be sure – the ruling on those 130 alleged breaches of financial rules won’t be the end of the matter. With opposing squadrons of lawyers, it will rumble on.
If it goes as most in football believe it will, both City and the Premier League will claim victories in the sifting of individual charges and there will be appeals.
But let’s talk about the more complicated business of punishment and what might fit the offence, if the Premier League have their way.
By that, I mean the meaty stuff. Not so much the allegation of 35 failures to co-operate with investigators, but the charges that ask if City fiddled the books outside of the rules.
Did they use their astronomical wealth to sign players within the permissible margins between 2009 and 2018, when they won three titles? Did they fight fair?
If they didn’t, if their actions went to the most egregious limits of the charges, how does the Premier League even begin to right the wrong? That’s a greater headache than thousands of pages of legalese and the downing of 130 tins of Wake Up.
The stripping of titles must be the bare minimum. Lance Armstrong doped and lost his medals
You can draw direct lines to those who were torn limb from limb by Yaya Toure (right)
Given spending power is the clearest determinant of on-field success, the stripping of titles must be the bare minimum – Ben Johnson, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong doped and lost the medals and jerseys.
If City juiced up their accounts to buy the biggest and best talent, they warrant nothing less. Which might seem extreme, except doping and financial doping are no different when the aim is to get a competitive edge.
But let’s pivot to the butterfly effect. To the ripples in the pond. Because how would the Premier League propose satisfying the rest of the division, and some of its former constituents, if City are found to have cheated for the better part of a decade?
If we go back to the trigger point of this unholy mess, to the email leaks in 2018 and 2022 from the convicted hacker Rui Pinto, then it puts a few faces on the situation. Those belong to Roberto Mancini and Yaya Toure and the questions around how their acquisitions were logged in City’s accounts.
It is hard to quantify exactly how much a manager contributes to success, but with a player it is far easier. From there, you can draw direct lines to those who were torn limb from limb by Toure. Long list, that one, so we’ll keep to a few highlights.
Because if City are found guilty, and rules are found to have been skirted in how Toure was paid, how do you compensate Stoke City for the 2011 FA Cup final? Toure scored the only goal. In the semi-final against Manchester United, a 1-0 City win, he also scored.
The penultimate game of the 2011-12 season, City were goalless after 70 minutes against Newcastle and Toure scored twice. Again, 2-0. Next game, the 38th of 38, he got the assist for Pablo Zabaleta against QPR, and they won 3-2, taking the title on goal difference. Aguerooo doesn’t happen without Toure; an extra Premier League crown for Manchester United probably does.
We won’t stretch this out much further. But in the 2013-14 campaign, Toure’s best, City contested the League Cup final against Sunderland, the latter’s first domestic final since 1992. Trailing from the 10th minute, Toure equalised in the 55th. 3-1 win.
How would the Premier League propose satisfying the rest of the division, and some of its former constituents, if City are found to have cheated for the better part of a decade?
A City victory would be a landscape without asterisks, without insufficient punishments
In the league, he scored 20 goals that season and the ones which took drawn scorelines to wins were worth 15 points. Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool finished second by two to City in the table.
In the previous season Tottenham missed out on the Champions League by one point after being unpicked by a Toure assist in a 2-1 defeat by City in the November.
All of that bunch would be entitled to know if City’s deal to bring Toure from Barcelona was above board. And only some of them would benefit from a reallocation of league titles, which says nothing for the bedlam that could follow in individual compensation claims.
Making it right with the collective is impossible – there are only so many strands that could be pulled from the jumper before the whole business becomes a chaotic nonsense.
In that regard, can a punishment fit the crime if it is proven to have been a major, sustained enterprise? If it is shown that they failed to provide accurate financial information, and failed to provide accurate details around manager and player details, and breached profit and sustainability rules across three seasons? No.
Such thinking can provoke a thought that a City victory on all charges is the best outcome, if that is indeed the eventuality. That would preserve the memories of Guardiola’s football in a purer form. That would be a landscape without asterisks. Without insufficient punishments. Without the instinct to glance at the corporate structures behind energy drinks and partnerships.
To go the other way would be to reassess all the sporting brilliance we have seen. To strip incalculable value from the essential notion of face value.
Of course, that might be entirely necessary, if we ever wake up from this interminable saga and find that a conclusion has been reached.
Let’s be Frank, Thomas deserves a chance
Andoni Iraola is evidently the preferred option of Daniel Levy if Tottenham sack Ange Postecoglou. Fair play – he has been superb with Bournemouth this season.
But what is keeping the bigger clubs from Thomas Frank?
Why wouldn’t a manager who has taken Brentford to absurd places on the Premier League’s second lowest wage bill, and demonstrated tactical versatility in an era of one-gear merchants, be top of a few lists?
What is keeping the biggest clubs from Thomas Frank? He should be top of a few lists
Rendering past obsolete not step into the future
I read an interesting report this week about a new brand of athletics track and the prediction of its designers that one day a 100m sprinter could use its bouncy surface to go beneath nine seconds.
As with the dawn of ‘super shoes’ and the way they made a mockery of previous records, it feels like a horribly questionable vision of progress.
Athletics has always benefited from having a reference point via its historic timings – Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile and Usain Bolt’s 9.58sec, among others, resonated because we could measure them with some accuracy against what went before.
Rendering the past obsolete is less of a step into the future and more of a face-plant.
