Premier League would be all too relieved if Blues simply went away for a while

Manchester City will face Liverpool in the Premier League next weekend.

That is a statement of fact. The match will kick off Sunday, October 11 at 4:30 p.m. local time (10:30 a.m. CT, FuboTV) at Anfield, though the 90 minutes that follow will be more a spectacle than a game, if not a circus.

By now the football world — as well as the general news cycle and relevant authorities — has had more than a week to absorb the shock of the sport’s biggest tremor of recent times.

Man City, according to the findings of an independent commission, broke more than 100 of the Premier League’s financial rules between 2009 and 2018. Its breaches, per the ruling, were deliberate, premeditated and at industrial scale.

On Tuesday the Premier League weighed in, stating that City had used “sham contracts,” circular financing (think circular trading) and obstruction to mislead auditors and stall an eight-year investigation into its accounts.

Now, to be clear, the findings themselves were not the shock. Anyone who had followed City’s progress between the years in question had formed a clear enough picture of the club’s, shall we say, accounting practices. No, that dizzy feeling of the ground shifting underfoot was due to the verdict: guilty.

Guilty? In what world are the ultra-wealthy, the 0.01 per cent, obliged to play by the same rules as everyone else?

If Manchester City’s majority owner — an Abu Dhabi equity fund overseen by a member of the emirate’s royal family — seemed a bit stunned by the ruling, that would be why. These are people who have never encountered words and phrases like “no,” “stop,” and “His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.”

Of course, the club is lodging an appeal — which it triggered Friday — and it claims it has a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” it will use to clear its name.

What baffles the mind is why they did not present such evidence over the near decade-long investigative process?

It makes a bit more sense if, once again, they did not expect to be told “no,” “stop,” “guilty.”

Inevitably, speculation has turned to the sanctions — a breadth of scenarios, based on nothing, stretching from a hefty fine to the vacating of titles, relegation from the Premier League and expulsion from English football’s league system.

Punishment will be assigned at a later date. Perhaps much, much later. City’s lawyers will see to that, and they’re already preparing a case, according to the Daily Mail, in which they’ll argue it was Abu Dhabi’s government, and not an Abu Dhabi prince’s holding company, that injected the club with the more than 900 million pounds (C$1.7 billion) that was eventually flagged for a possible financial breach.

The figures are staggering, which is why this may well become a police matter before too long. In an interview with BBC Radio 5, former City chairman and Football Association chief David Bernstein hinted that his former employer might have committed criminal fraud.

Rivals will no doubt pursue compensation. City’s rapid and superstar-fuelled ascent, courtesy of those fudged financials, came at the expense of relegated clubs — clubs that missed out on the Champions League and clubs that would otherwise have won titles.

Which is why Anfield will be a furnace of fury next Sunday.

In 2013-14, Manchester City pipped Liverpool to the Premier League title by two points. The Reds would stand to claim that title if City were stripped of it. And, for good measure, they’d get the 2015-16 Carabao Cup as well.

To repeat, no one has the foggiest idea what the penalties will be, but that won’t stop fans at every away ground from visiting abuse on City’s players — players who might be products of their club’s misconduct, but who are themselves innocent; players who didn’t sign up for what they’re about to get.

No doubt many of them, particularly the recent signings, will have built out clauses into their contracts that allow them to leave if their club’s wrongdoing is upheld on appeal. Not that opposition supporters, rightly or wrongly, will have or show any sympathy.

And so, the Premier League is faced with the absolutely bonkers scenario of a high-profile match in which the team atop the table will surely be kicked out of the top flight by season’s end. Thus the spectacle, the circus.

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A cynic might suggest that the Premier League will revel in the attention, but world football’s most successful division is hardly lacking for eyes on screens, bums in seats and sponsors banging down its doors. It doesn’t need this. It’s embarrassed by this. And, as Bernstein has said, it brings the remainder of the schedule into disrepute.

In other words — the sort of words used in its vicious statement — the league will be all too relieved if Manchester City simply go away for a while, and maybe a long while.

That does seem the likeliest outcome.

Don’t forget, the Premier League and the 19 other clubs that compose it are obsessed with commercial success. And if the world at large has revealed anything the past few years, it’s that shocks, tremors and overall uncertainty are very bad for business.

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