Did Man City mislead summer signings? Anderson, Fernandez and co deserve answers | OneFootball

Many parties have many, many questions for Manchester City. Their fans, more than anyone outside the Etihad, deserve honest answers about the cheating that threatens to banish them back to York or even Macclesfield for the first time this century.

Should it come to that, City supporters, many of them, will be there when the surroundings are suddenly less salubrious than the San Siro or Bernabeu.

The players, though, didn’t sign up for that. Right now, spread across the world on international duty, they must be wondering what exactly they did they sign for.

When they all reassemble back in Manchester next week, City will need to have some answers ready. Better ones than those that, we presume, were previously given to new recruits or contract signatories.

Questions must have been raised already. Surely none of the 30-plus players to sign for City since February 2023, or any who agreed contract extensions, did not put pen to paper before asking: ‘About those 115 charges, lads…’

Most likely, City fed those players and their agents the same line they are sticking to with the rest of us:

It must be hoped that the players signed during this summer’s trolley dash – and the agents, assuming they really were acting in their client’s best interests – didn’t just take City’s word for it. Because by then, City knew they had been found guilty and that their evidence wasn’t as ‘irrefutable’ as they claimed.

City are reported to have been informed of the independent commission’s verdict ‘in July’.

They agreed a deal to sign Elliot Anderson on July 2 before the midfielder’s signature made it official upon his return from the World Cup.

City announced Anderson’s signing on July 23 during a very busy week for the club secretary. Between July 22 and 28, City also announced contract extensions for Phil Foden, Abdukodir Khusanov and Josko Gvardiol.

That quartet may now wonder what City knew when those four deals were inked.

City were certainly aware of the looming strife when they signed Ayyoub Bouaddi, Enzo Fernandez, Iliman Ndiaye, Allan and Geronimo Rulli through August into September, during which time Jeremy Doku also extended his contract.

If those stars – certainly six, maybe ten, depending on when exactly the judgement was delivered to City – signed without being given the full picture they presumably asked for, then City have even more to answer for.

If City were honest – arf! – with those players, then more fool them for swallowing the club’s insistence of innocence. Because that, like so many other facets of City’s bullish behaviour seems to be built on bullsh*t and bravado.

Throughout this long, painful process, City’s bullishness, in all aspects of their business, was designed to prompt doubt in the mind of anyone not privy to the evidence exhibited for the commission. Almost certainly, it was intended to intimidate them too.

They have exuded an air of confidence, an arrogance, that now appears woefully misplaced. Their “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” has already been refuted by the commission. Their appeal, as far as we know, is not based on case-cracking new evidence, rather just shouting louder the argument they have already lost.

That it was not only dismissed but completely eviscerated by the commission highlights just how badly City have handled this entire episode. Some at the club clearly seemed to believe they were beyond reproach. In Khaldoon Al Mubarak’s case, that’s sadly true.

But diplomatic immunity and all the money and power in UAE won’t wash with City’s squad, especially the recent additions, when they gather back in Manchester next week, wondering what this all means for their futures.

It will be much harder for the players than City’s officials to maintain business as usual, as Ferran Soriano urged this week without so much as a blink. The executives will go to ground, leaving Enzo Maresca and his men as the unwitting public faces of a now-disgraced mob.

Inevitably in football, it won’t be long before self-interest prevails in the City dressing room – if it hasn’t already. Soriano and co may encourage a siege mentality but the players are almost certainly victims of their club’s nefariousness like everyone else.

If the players, especially the summer signings, have been blindsided as much as everyone else by the scale of their paymasters’ cheating, then it is reasonable to expect star names to seek some distance before they can wash the stench off their hands completely.

That, and plenty more besides, makes a mockery of the Premier League as a competition while it carries on regardless around the enormous, cheating elephant taking a dump in the middle of the room and smearing it on the walls.

For the players as much as the fans, in whatever form it takes, justice and consequences cannot come soon enough.