It is a shame that Manchester City coach Enzo Maresca and his players do not possess a single, solitary, scintilla of self-awareness between them.
If they did, they would not have celebrated their hollow triumph over Liverpool at Anfield on Sunday with the unabashed glee of a gang of fools who appeared to believe they had just embarked on a redemption tour.
Somebody really ought to have told them that, no matter their dominance on the football field, now was really not the time for preening triumphalism or the peacock walk of men who carried the bearing of players righting a wrong. A wrong may well be righted in the next few months but not by them.
What has happened at City, the crisis that has enveloped the club, is not on the players. We know that. Nor is it on the fans. It is on owners who thought they could do what they want and are now appalled that they are being held to account.
But when your club has been found guilty of something as serious and far-reaching as City, Sunday’s scenes were not a good look.
‘If I was a player,’ former Manchester United captain Roy Keane said on Sunday, ‘I would be disgusted if there were any dodgy dealings going on or someone cooking the books.
‘I wouldn’t feel I had earned a league title if I had felt there was something dodgy going on in the background. We play football because we are passionate about it but you also have to have a bit of honesty.’
The truth is that there was no redemption at Anfield. The result was not a victory for City. It was another defeat for football.
Because the truth is that this is a group of City players who stand on the shoulders of cheats: this is a team built from the ill-gotten gains of a club whose owners systematically cooked the books at the Etihad for a decade to create a dynasty. It is as bleak as that.
Erling Haaland leads the Manchester City celebrations after the final whistle of their win over Liverpool at Anfield. But the victory stuck in the throat
The scenes of City’s jubilation in front of the Anfield Road End at the final whistle felt as if they were the actions of players who either had no shame or no short-term memory
The scale of City’s victory and the brilliance of their second-half performance was, in the context of what we know now, merely a reminder of how they got here: by spending £830million more than they were allowed to in order to gain an advantage on the rest of the Premier League.
Sunday’s triumph was just the latest repayment on that outlay. It was football’s equivalent of the wages of sin. And the paradox that City face is that the longer they extend their dominance in this season’s Premier League, the more it will concentrate minds on the longevity of the illicit advantage they gained between 2008 and 2018.
So, yes, their victory, in their first game since they were found guilty of the vast majority of financial wrong-doing charges brought against them by the Premier League, stuck in the throat and, yes, the scenes of City’s jubilation in front of the Anfield Road End at the final whistle felt as if they were the actions of players who either had no shame or no short-term memory.
Some, inevitably, have wasted no time beginning to frame City’s victory over Liverpool as a heroic triumph against all odds. Pass the sick bucket, please. Some talked about City’s triumph over ‘adversity’ at Anfield as if cheating the rest of the league out of trophies for 10 years and more counted as adversity.
That kind of narrative is designed to try to help broadcasters like Sky convince themselves that the product they paid billions of pounds to televise has not been discredited by City’s continued presence in it.
That narrative is a lame attempt to obscure the fact that this season has turned into a campaign where nobody knows what is real and what is not.
Did City win three points on Sunday to re-establish their three-point lead at the top? Or was that an illusion? Was that just a temporary triumph? Was it a win that will remain in the history books until City are punished and all their results, perhaps, are declared null and void?
What is happening here is that we are being asked to try to forget what we know. We are being asked to forget that City have been found guilty of cheating on an industrial scale. We are being asked to wipe our minds clean until such a time as it is decided what City’s punishment is and then we can activate our thoughts again. Until then, we are left with sport reimagined as farce.
You want an idea of what it was like to be at Anfield on Sunday: it was as if Lance Armstrong had been exposed as the biggest cheat in cycling history and then we were forced to watch him riding up the Champs Elysees in the yellow jersey at the head of the peloton, winning another Tour de France.
It was like knowing that Ben Johnson, doped up to the eyeballs, had been busted after winning the men’s 100m at the Olympic Games in Seoul and then being asked to watch him being presented with a gold medal anyway. City’s victory over Liverpool was the kind of affront to sport that makes you feel sick.
We are being asked to try to forget what we know. We are being asked to forget that City have been found guilty of cheating on an industrial scale
Some, inevitably, have wasted no time beginning to frame City’s victory – in which Rayan Cherki scored their third goal – as a heroic triumph against all odds. Pass the sick bucket
City just want to blame everybody else. You want to play a game of City bingo? Eyes down. ‘Red Cartel’. ‘Gary Neville’. ‘Premier League’. ‘Sky Television’. And on and on and on and on. Have you ever thought it might be you? Because the blame for what has happened to City and the criticism they are facing lies squarely with their owners. No one else.
The Red Cartel? That is the most amusing of the conspiracy theories for City’s demise. Financial Fair Play and Profit and Sustainability Rules are imperfect systems but the idea that they would bake in the superiority of Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal is funny.
Arsenal have won the title once in the last 22 years. United have not won the league for 13 years and currently lie 13th in the table. Liverpool have won the title twice in the last 36 years and currently lie 9th. Spurs, who are also supposed to be in on the act, have finished 17th in the last two seasons and currently lie 18th. So, yeah, red cartel. Do me a favour.
If Brian Clough were still with us, he’d be telling these City players that they should chuck their medals in the bin. And maybe he’d be pointing out to them that when they won at Anfield on Sunday, no one else felt like celebrating.
