I don’t think Liverpool supporters will be shedding many tears for Manchester City right now.
The independent commission has found City guilty of serious Premier League financial breaches covering nine seasons between 2009/10 and 2017/18, including findings that the club used sham commercial agreements to artificially inflate revenue and reduce costs. The commission said the figure involved was more than £900m.
Manchester City deny wrongdoing and have appealed the verdict.
But whatever eventually happens with that appeal, I can’t help looking back at those years and thinking about Liverpool.
Because City’s rise wasn’t happening in isolation.
Liverpool were there.
And quite often, the two clubs were fighting over the same players, the same ambitions and eventually the same trophies.
Long before Jürgen Klopp arrived.
Long before Pep Guardiola arrived.
This goes all the way back to 2009.
Liverpool had already been there first
One of the first names that immediately comes to mind is Gareth Barry.
Liverpool had spent a long time trying to sign him from Aston Villa. Rafael Benítez wanted him and the whole saga became one of the defining transfer stories of that period.
Then City came along.
In June 2009, they signed Barry for £12m. Even City’s own announcement described him as a player who had been the subject of a high-profile chase by Liverpool.
Barry later admitted that the Champions League was a major ambition when he joined City, having previously been heavily linked with Liverpool.
At the time, it felt like a warning.
City weren’t just another club trying to improve.
They were suddenly able to walk into transfer battles involving established Premier League clubs and change the entire equation.
If Liverpool wanted a player, City could want him too.
And City could offer something Liverpool couldn’t.
That was only the beginning.
Then came David Silva
This one is particularly interesting.
David Silva was exactly the sort of player Liverpool wanted during Benítez’s time at Anfield.
The Spaniard was emerging at Valencia and Liverpool had reportedly been working on a deal for him.
Instead, City eventually signed Silva from Valencia in 2010 for a reported £24m plus bonuses.
And look at what Silva became.
One of the defining players of the Premier League era.
Liverpool never got him.
City did.
Then, just a month later, City signed James Milner from Aston Villa for around £26m.
Again, Liverpool had been interested.
Milner eventually joined Liverpool as a free agent in 2015 and became an enormous part of Klopp’s team.
That’s the strange thing when you look back.
Some of these stories eventually came full circle.
Milner went from being a player Liverpool wanted, to becoming a Manchester City player, before eventually becoming a key part of Liverpool’s most successful modern era.
Then City came for Liverpool’s own player
This is where it gets personal.
Raheem Sterling.
Liverpool had discovered a brilliant young talent and watched him develop into one of the most exciting young players in English football.
Then City came calling.
Sterling eventually moved to Manchester in 2015 for an initial £44m, potentially rising to £49m, making him one of the most expensive English players at the time.
And City got their man.
Liverpool supporters were furious.
There was the agent controversy, the contract situation and the feeling that City had simply been able to turn Sterling’s head.
But there was something else happening at Liverpool that summer.
Jürgen Klopp was about to arrive.
And that’s where the story becomes fascinating.
What if Liverpool had won the league in 2014?
I’ve thought about this one before.
Liverpool came agonisingly close to winning the Premier League under Brendan Rodgers in 2013/14.
They finished runners-up to City by two points.
That season produced Luis Suárez at his absolute best, the emergence of Sterling and one of the most memorable title races Liverpool had experienced for years.
But imagine a different outcome.
Liverpool win the title.
Steven Gerrard gets his Premier League medal.
Sterling stays.
And perhaps Liverpool don’t feel the same need for a change of manager.
Maybe Klopp doesn’t arrive when he does.
Obviously, that’s impossible to prove.
Football doesn’t work like that.
But it shows how interconnected everything was.
City weren’t simply winning trophies while Liverpool did their own thing.
They were affecting the decisions Liverpool had to make, the players Liverpool could attract and retain, and eventually the standard Liverpool had to reach.
Then Klopp arrived
And suddenly the whole thing changed.
Liverpool and City became the two teams capable of producing ridiculous numbers of points.
The 2018/19 title race.
The 2021/22 title race.
Liverpool finishing with 97 points and still not winning the league.
Then 92 points and still finishing second.
These weren’t ordinary title races.
Liverpool were pushing themselves to levels that would have been enough to win most Premier League seasons.
But City were there.
Again.
And again.
That’s why the independent commission’s findings are going to be uncomfortable for Liverpool supporters.
The period under investigation ends in 2017/18, just before Liverpool’s greatest battles with Guardiola’s City really took shape.
But it covers the years in which the foundations of City’s dominance were being built.
The Premier League says the commission found that City had breached financial rules throughout the nine-season period and that the alleged financial manipulation helped the club appear compliant with spending limits.
City will fight those findings.
They have every right to appeal.
But Liverpool supporters are still entitled to look at the history and ask questions.
Because the damage, if the findings ultimately stand, isn’t simply about one balance sheet.
It’s about what those advantages helped create.
Liverpool kept coming back for more
This is probably what impresses me most when I look back at it.
Liverpool didn’t disappear.
They kept building.
They found Salah.
They found Mané.
They found Robertson.
They found Alexander-Arnold.
They signed Van Dijk and Alisson.
They brought in Klopp.
And eventually they pushed City harder than almost anybody else could.
Liverpool finally won the Premier League in 2020, but by then City had already established themselves as the benchmark.
And even when Liverpool reached extraordinary levels, City kept finding another level.
That’s why this story matters to Liverpool fans.
It’s not about pretending Liverpool would have won every title City won.
We simply don’t know that.
It’s about recognising just how difficult Liverpool’s job became during that period.
And now an independent commission has found that City breached the Premier League’s financial rules across the very years in which that transformation was taking place.
That is a fact supporters are going to have to sit with while City’s appeal plays out.
The history can’t simply be erased
Nobody knows what the final outcome will be.
The appeal could change the picture.
Sanctions have yet to be determined.
So I’m not going to pretend the story is finished.
But I do think Liverpool supporters are entitled to look back at the last 15 years differently.
Gareth Barry.
David Silva.
James Milner.
Raheem Sterling.
Then the relentless battle for Premier League titles.
City were already changing the landscape before Klopp and Guardiola turned it into one of the greatest managerial rivalries English football has seen.
Liverpool kept trying to catch them.
Kept rebuilding.
Kept coming back.
And eventually became the club capable of going toe-to-toe with them year after year.
That’s why this isn’t just a Manchester City story.
For Liverpool supporters, it’s part of our story too.
And if the commission’s findings ultimately survive City’s appeal, football will have to have a very uncomfortable conversation about what those years really meant.
Because you can’t change history.
But you can certainly start asking different questions about it.
By Jamie (The Kopite View)
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