Rushden interviews Tony Hadley as Manchester City saga continues to dominate talkSport on Wednesday afternoon

On Wednesday afternoon (UK time) I interviewed Tony Hadley on TalkSport and raised a question about Manchester City’s potential punishment amid the ongoing saga; Hadley declined to engage with the issue directly, saying: “You just never know what’s going to happen – the world is a crazy place. I’ve got to add to all the big band songs we’re doing … at the end we do a Christmas catalogue which is great fun as well.”

The conversation started with music — Spandau Ballet and Hadley’s big band plans — and moved to football, with Hadley identifying as an Arsenal fan and mentioning Arteta, Leeds and the late Billy Bremner, whom he suggested my co-host and I were too young to remember. I was in my shed in Melbourne at quarter to midnight and, after Hadley’s sidestep, found myself imagining other celebrity interviewees and pondering how managers might similarly pivot under questioning about the City case.

I floated the idea that Enzo Maresca might adopt the same evasive approach in press conferences, and noted the familiar line managers often give when deflecting off-field issues: “I’m a football man and all I’m interested in is football – I’ve got enough things to worry about at Coventry/Leeds/Bournemouth, etc.” The scale of the City story, however, has made even routine press rituals compelling again, including the spectacle of players leaving the team bus in headphones — a sight I said I’m now especially interested to see on Sunday afternoon.

That Sunday fixture is Liverpool away, the opponent City have narrowly pipped to the title on more than one occasion since the alleged wrongdoing began; I added: "I know two of the titles came after the cheating officially finished but don't think I need to mention that." I also posed a narrow hypothetical about personnel: John Stones (height: 1.88m) versus Victor Lindelöf (1.87m) and whether that extra centimetre mattered when Stones cleared a ball off the line against Liverpool at the Etihad in January 2019.

Nicky Bandini explained on Thursday’s Football Weekly that Serie A has two histories depending on where you stand on Juventus and Calciopoli: “I think that’s the truth that English football isn’t ready for yet. Whatever happens with these decisions, whether they successfully end up appealing things or they don’t, you’re going to have one group of supporters who are absolutely certain they didn’t win these trophies legitimately, and therefore they don’t count, and you’re going to have one group of supporters who don’t care and are going to claim those trophies whether or not they get taken away from them. “I think that’s the grim future that lies ahead for the Premier League. You’re going to have two alternate histories, the same that happens in Italy, where the number of titles that Juventus has won is constantly repeated differently by different sources because one side or another is not going to accept the judgment even after the final appeals are exhausted.”

I said I was inclined to favour stripping City of titles without reallocating them, and outlined why hypotheticals proliferate once titles are removed: different transfer choices, different managers, different results and altered lives. I asked a pointed question about individuals when I wrote: "It’s one thing telling Sergio Agüero that the goal isn’t real, but what about his whole life after 2011? Does he have to redo it all?"

I raised the geopolitical tangle the case has invited, asking rhetorically whether the UAE would withdraw investment in a tech hub between Cambridge and Oxford if City were relegated to League Two, and noted the widespread expectation that the sanctions decision could arrive quietly on a Friday, perhaps during the next international break. I also recorded the predictable media soundbites that will follow any ruling — pundits saying “galvanise” and talk of an “us against the world mentality” — and mentioned players whose focus may be split, including Enzo Fernández and Elliot Anderson, with Anderson facing Dominik Szoboszlai and Florian Wirtz in the immediate fixtures.

City travel to Liverpool on Sunday, a match that will be watched not just for its sporting consequences but for what it reveals about the club’s state while the wider disciplinary process remains unresolved.