This Manchester City situation is getting bigger by the day.
And now Graeme Souness has weighed in with something that is going to get Liverpool supporters talking.
Speaking about the reported verdict in Manchester City’s long-running Premier League financial case, Souness said he believes City’s legacy could be destroyed if the findings ultimately stand.
His words were pretty brutal.
> “The legacy is gone. If it goes the wrong way for them, they’ll be consigned to history as cheats, and whatever they did, whatever they won in that period, should not count.”
Souness also suggested there could be an argument for Liverpool being awarded Premier League titles if City are stripped of trophies from the relevant period.
That is obviously a huge statement.
And it’s important to remember where we actually are with this case.
Reports say an independent commission found Manchester City guilty of all but one of the 115 charges, although City have maintained that the Premier League process remains ongoing and are expected to appeal. The Premier League itself has not publicly confirmed the verdict because the process is confidential.
So we are nowhere near the end of this yet.
But the implications are enormous.
The charges cover a period stretching from 2009-10 through to 2022-23, during which City won multiple Premier League titles and established themselves as one of the dominant forces in English football.
And that is where Liverpool fans naturally start looking at the history.
Liverpool finished runners-up to Manchester City by a single point in both 2018/19 and 2021/22.
Those two title races still hurt.
97 points and finishing second.
92 points and finishing second.
Two extraordinary Liverpool teams that would have won the Premier League in most seasons.
But Souness isn’t simply talking about those two campaigns.
He’s talking about the wider question of what happens to trophies if City are ultimately punished for rule breaches covering the relevant period.
That’s where things become incredibly complicated.
The Premier League has a range of possible sanctions available, including points deductions, fines, suspension and even expulsion. Stripping titles is also technically possible under the rules, although there is currently no indication that Liverpool will simply be handed trophies retrospectively. (Sky Sports)
And I think that’s an important distinction.
As a Liverpool supporter, obviously part of me looks at those two one-point defeats to City and thinks about what might have been.
But I wouldn’t want Liverpool’s history rewritten simply because we finished second.
If City were ultimately found to have gained a competitive advantage through serious financial rule breaches, that’s a different conversation.
Then the question becomes much bigger than Liverpool.
It becomes about whether the Premier League can simply leave the historical sporting consequences untouched if the competition itself was distorted.
That’s the can of worms Souness is talking about.
And he went even further, suggesting that financial penalties alone wouldn’t be enough because City’s resources mean that even a huge fine could potentially be absorbed.
He also mentioned relegation, while admitting he wasn’t sure what the appropriate punishment should be.
That part is going to divide football supporters.
Some will argue that the punishment has to be severe enough to matter.
Others will point out that the case is still subject to an appeal process and that Manchester City have consistently denied wrongdoing.
Both things matter.
What happens next is therefore just as important as the reported verdict itself.
City are expected to appeal, and any sanction would have to wait for the legal and disciplinary process to progress.
For Liverpool supporters, though, it’s impossible not to look back at those years and wonder.
What if?
What if Liverpool had been awarded the 2019 title?
What if the 2022 season had ended differently?
Would those incredible Liverpool teams now be remembered as multiple-time Premier League champions rather than the team that kept finishing agonisingly close behind City?
I don’t know where this ends.
And nobody else does either.
But Souness is right about one thing: this has gone far beyond a normal financial punishment.
The case is now touching the history of the Premier League itself.
If the reported findings survive the appeal process and serious sanctions follow, football will have to decide what those years actually mean.
And that could change how one of the most dominant periods in English football history is remembered.
For Liverpool fans, that’s a pretty extraordinary thought.
Jamie (The Kopite View)
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