If a guilty verdict on multiple counts of financial misreporting is upheld against the club, its achievements in the modern era will be forever tainted
In surveys ranking the Premier League’s greatest moments, football supporters regularly give pride of place to Sergio Agüero’s championship-winning goal for Manchester City in 2012. Scored in injury time on the last day of the season, Agüero’s strike against Queens Park Rangers delivered the first league title for City since the 1960s. Knocking their historic rivals Manchester United into second place, it also signalled a new era in which the club replaced United as the dominant force in the English game.
“Aguerooooooo!” – the incredulous single-word response from the match commentator Martin Tyler – has entered football folklore. But an asterisk may now be needed at the end of all those Os. Reports that an independent panel has found Manchester City guilty of breaking Premier League rules between 2009 and 2023 cast a dark shadow over that day, and much else besides. During that period, the club won seven Premier League titles, six League Cups, three FA Cups and the Uefa Champions League, all while under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family. The inescapable implication of the apparent ruling is that those trophies were won unfairly.
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