Fines and relegation not enough for Man City punishment: they must instead be fined… and relegated

Manchester City have been very naughty boys and the media have plenty to say about it.

Most of it is basically all the same things over and over again, so we’ve handily cut it down into one manageable chunk.

Even today of all days, though, there remains room for talk of other big punishments that are not about Manchester City or indeed even real. They’re about Liverpool. It just means more, doesn’t it? Except also, they’re not really about Liverpool.

Wooaaaaaaaauuuuuhh
It’s hard today to truly process the sheer number of stories about Manchester City’s shame after that damning and brutal Premier League verdict. As a service to you, loyal reader, Mediawatch has taken the liberty of distilling the entire swirling discourse from His Majesty’s Football Press Corps into one easily digestible summary.

Chris: Football Media, this is huge history happening, isn’t it?
Football Media: It’s bigger than that, Chris, it’s large. I mean, if you’ve got a history book at home, take it out, throw it in the bin, it’s worthless. The history books, now, will have to be rewritten.
Chris: What will they say?
Football Media: They’ll quite simply say “Man City had sham contracts worth nearly a billion quid”. Everything else will be a footnote.
Chris: We’re pushed for time, can you sum it up in a word?
Football Media: No.
Chris: A sound?
Football Media: Wooaaaaaaaauuuuuhh.
Chris: Football Media, thank you.

They’re not even wrong. It is bigger than that. It is large.

Punishment beatings
Mediawatch finds itself in broad agreement with Martin Lipton on City in The Sun, right up until – in profoundly un-Sun fashion – he entirely loses his nerve.

Just a cursory reading of the findings in the Premier League Independent Commission’s report into City’s dealings over nine years from 2009/10 are beyond brutal.

Uh-huh.

This isn’t just a smackdown, this isn’t just a tale of footballing misdeeds. This is a denunciation of full-scale, disgraceful behaviour. The sort which almost beggars belief.

Preach, Martin.

No wonder other clubs are baying for blood, and rightly so. The clubs that missed out on trophies, the clubs that missed out on European positions, the clubs that suffered.

So what should the punishment be?

The minimum, surely, is something that would make any club think again.

Absolutely.

Fines alone are not the answer. This is a club that has the wealth of Croesus. Relegation, in some form, not enough.

For sure. But again, what should the punishment actually be to satisfy all that righteous fury at the scale of City’s shenanigans and misdeeds?

They should get a minimum of a £100m fine and a minimum of an 80-point penalty to mean automatic relegation.

Oh. Fines and relegation are not enough, we need to hit them really hard with, well, a fine. And a relegation.

Stance Armstrong
One oddity of the unsurprisingly wall-to-wall coverage of Man City today is that, even after the story just moved on really very significantly last night, there is still a rushed desperation to kick it forward again. More! We need more! Move the story on again! More!

The Manchester Evening News, for instance, come up with this.

Premier League clubs’ stance on Man City verdict as rivals decide what to do next

Several hundred words ensue, the sum actual value of which is ‘They haven’t really decided yet and won’t do until the process concludes’.

They may also unite in calling for the club to be kicked from the English top flight – though they are reportedly holding off until the sanctions process concludes before making any formal demands.

Which is pretty obvious when you think about it but also clearly entirely unacceptable. We must know everything NOW. Decide your stance, you cowards, what on earth are you waiting for?

Barc worse than his bite
Manchester City’s isn’t the only potential punishment that’s the talk of football town. Even today of all days, it still just Means More when Liverpool are involved. As the Daily Express remind us with this slice of errant nonsense.

Liverpool news: Bradley Barcola faces big punishment as star admits ‘I’m in trouble’

It’s bigger than that, Chris etc.

Except this time, it absolutely is not bigger than that. The history books will not have to be rewritten. Bradley Barcola is absolutely not facing a big punishment and even if he were it would not constitute ‘Liverpool news’. It would be ‘France news’. Because, as you might have surmised, this is some interlull dreck.

You’d like to think that Man City had selflessly ended the need for interlull dreck this week, but what we’re learning here is that there is quite simply no situation, no time, and no possible timeline in which it is not always necessary to have a story that begins with a ‘Liverpool news:’ kicker somewhere.

Anyway. What’s actually happened? Let’s allow the man himself to take up the story free of all the sensationalism from a press grown giddy by the existence of an actually sensational story elsewhere.

Here’s what he said after not being awarded a penalty during France’s win over Belgium.

“If I talk about it, I’m probably in trouble, but I have to say what I think,” Barcola said. “I felt the contact. I was inside the box and I was trying to continue the action.

“Maybe the referee saw it differently, but from where I was, it affected the play. What frustrates me most is that these decisions can change a game. You work for 90 minutes and sometimes one moment decides everything.

“I don’t want to complain about referees in the Nations League or Premier League, I just want consistency. If there is contact and it affects the attacker, at least take another look. I’ll probably get fined for saying this, but honestly, I thought it was a penalty.”

We like to think the clear nod to Jose Mourinho is at least a knowing one. And he absolutely will not face a ‘big punishment’ for what he’s said there. You’re allowed to disagree with a referee’s decision, you’re just not allowed to suggest improper motives for that decision.

This would be a hyperbolic over-reaction of a headline on any day, but on one where actual ‘big punishments’ on actual tables for actual things that have happened include ‘actual expulsion from the actual Premier League’ we really don’t think it’s quite the right phrase to use for ‘might get a small fine, we guess, but probably won’t tbh’.