Let there be blanks instead of Manchester City’s name on trophies, argues Jonathan Wilson
At half-time of the 2014 League Cup final Sunderland led Manchester City 1-0; ten minutes after the break Yaya Touré equalised and City went on to win 3-1, a match now seen in the light of an independent commission’s finding that City engaged in a prolonged and calculated act of cheating.
The commission’s report, and earlier leaks in Der Spiegel suggesting dual contracts for players such as Yaya Touré, allege payments “not recorded in an employment contract … but instead recorded in a consultancy agreement”. Those findings have prompted calls that trophies won by Manchester City between 2009 and 2018 should not stand unchallenged and have left many clubs and supporters feeling cheated.
Sunderland’s 2014 League Cup final defeat is used as a concrete example: had they won they would have ended a 41-year wait for a major trophy and qualified for the following season’s Europa League. The article notes the counterfactual that extra fixtures might have strained the squad and contributed to relegation in 2015, or alternately produced momentum and stability through European exposure; managerial changes that season included the sacking of Gus Poyet and the appointment of Dick Advocaat.
On the question of reallocating honours, the author says he does not want trophies awarded retroactively to his club because the experience of victory — the goals, the final whistle, the crowd — must feel authentic. He cites the 1973 FA Cup final moments that define Sunderland’s memory of triumph: Ian Porterfield’s goal, Jim Montgomery’s save and Bob Stokoe’s pitch-side celebration.
Awarding a rival a title after the fact is also portrayed as problematic in league cases. The 2017-18 season is highlighted: City were 15 points clear by the end of January and went on to amass 100 points, while the four sides behind them — Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham — were separated by five points and redirected priorities; United, Chelsea and Spurs reached FA Cup semi-finals and Liverpool reached the Champions League final. In that context the author argues handing the title to the second-placed team would be arbitrary.
The piece acknowledges City’s players worked hard but argues that successes achieved with a deep, expensive squad attracted by funds the commission says were concealed were obtained unfairly and in contravention of Premier League regulations. The author questions how City can occupy a place as the fourth-most successful side in league history when, he contends, so much of that success was secured through cheating.
Wilson lists the competitions he believes should be vacant: the Premier League titles of 2012, 2014 and 2018; the FA Cup in 2011; and the League Cups of 2014, 2016 and 2018, adding that “it does not seem unreasonable to wonder, when all this is done, whether there might be more to be investigated after 2018.” He also allows that supporters can continue to cherish moments such as Sergio Agüero’s 94th-minute winner from 2012, while reminding readers that the commission has questioned the basis on which those moments were achieved.
If the findings lead to vacated honours, the author argues the empty spaces on the roll of honour should remain: blanks as both rebuke and testimony to the years when a foreign entity attempted to subvert English football and to a Premier League process that eventually pursued what it termed fairness. Let the years without a champion stand for ever vacant, both as a rebuke and as a tribute. Sometimes, emptiness can be the most eloquent statement of all.