What Does Man City Guilty Ruling Mean For Liverpool? | OneFootball

The news has broken that Manchester City have been found guilty on the majority of the 115 charges that they faced for breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules, which the top-flight organisation charged them over back in the February of 2023. In the days that followed, Pep Guardiola offered a fierce defence of his team, declaring that they had ‘already been condemned’. On that front, the Spaniard was spot on, given that the vast majority of people considered them guilty of being up to no good long before the charges were brought.

Will There Be Any Ramifications That Affect the Reds?

Obviously, the key question to ask is whether or not the club being found guilty in virtually all charges will make any difference to Liverpool. The answer is an extremely complicated one, if for no other reason than this is an ever-evolving story. The likelihood is that City will be stripped of the titles that they won in the period of time when the Premier League considered them to be breaking the rules, but whether they will be awarded to the teams that finished in second place remains to be seen.

If they are, then both Liverpool and Manchester United would be beneficiaries of that, with the Reds having missed out in such heart-breaking fashion at the end of the 2013-2014 season. The period in question stretches from 2009 to 2018, so the Reds can expect one title from that. That being said, that was more than decade ago, so it’s not as if they players concerned will be joining Brendan Rodgers on an open top bus parade of the city if they are awarded a title.

The Future

SonoGrazy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

What perhaps matters more is what will happen in the future. The punishment for their misdeeds should be huge, including relegation out of the Football League, but whether that will actually happen or not isn’t clear at this stage. If it does, it means that there will be one less team for Liverpool to fight with for the title, at least until City climb their way back into the top-flight in the same sort of manner that Rangers managed to do in Scotland.

Certainly, the players are unlikely to be greeted with much enthusiasm as they line up to represent their sports-washing owners in the coming weeks, with Anfield being their first destination after the international break. Scousers have a brilliant sense of humour, so I can very much imagine a world in which some scamp is coming up with a banner to be held up on the Kop that will make clear what we all think about it.

Everyone felt for years as though they were cheating. Now it looks like we know it for sure.