The uncomfortable question facing every Man City fan after seismic verdict

A hypothetical for fans of Manchester City : would you say it was worth it? If City are expelled from the Premier League , if they are subject to future restrictions on signing players and points deductions that run into the next decade, would you do it all again? Because most of those you speak to would say, fairly unequivocally, yes. For the Aguero moment, for the Kompany header, for the Champions League win built on a foundation of now-questionable substance , the answer would clearly be yes. Man City fans may now face some soul-searching (Getty) That is because so much of football is about how it makes you feel . Not the finances or the squad cost restrictions or the asterisks on nearly a generation of achievements. Those hugs, the fireworks, the parades cannot be erased by an Independent Commission. What was lived cannot so easily die. Friday brought the news we had long awaited. Eventually, of course, the near-monthly WhatsApp rumours of an imminent verdict were going to be correct. Three and a half years after the charges, nearly eight after the investigation began, and 21 months after the hearing closed, the verdict has landed: Manchester City guilty on 114 of 115 charges, as reported by The Athletic ’s David Ornstein. City won the Premier League title in 2017/18 in Pep Guardiola's second season in charge (Getty) Yet this is just a starting point. Now it falls upon the Independent Commission, the same Commission that took its sweet time in finding Manchester City allegedly guilty, to decide on sanctions and set a precedent for a sporting crime unprecedented in its scale and severity. What the punishment will be for City’s apparent years of rule-breaking is now set to occupy most of football’s collective brainspace for the coming weeks or months, though given the speed with which the Commission has operated thus far, we may be deep into Max Dowman’s England career before we get one. And that’s before City’s inevitable appeal. It has to be said that most neutrals you speak to want blood when it comes to the punishment. Those actually involved with Premier League clubs are angrier still. The flagrant nature of the cheating, the cover-up that ensued and the refusal to cooperate not only made it appear that City were guilty but, ultimately, only served to aggravate the sanctions that will fall upon the ten-time league winners. The view that eight of those titles that arrived after Sergio Aguero provided what many (still?) consider the most dramatic moment in Premier League history are now tainted. Three of them are covered by the charges and become asterisked for now, possibly removed later. Man City have had plenty of success over the past 15 years (PA) In a situation so unprecedented, you can only really scratch around for broad parallels to begin seeing the scope of what sanctions may look like. Rangers, who were illegally paying players and ended up going bust because of the tax implications of that, forcing them to re-form as an entity, were made to re-enter the league at the bottom tier of Scottish football. Juventus were demoted after the Calciopoli scandal, where the corruption was more to do with officiating, and lost their league titles. A recent example from another sport would be the NBA, where the league’s richest owner, former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, found a novel (but still illegal) way to circumvent the salary cap and the league cracked down hard. The Los Angeles Clippers were fined, but also stripped of their next five first-round picks. Key figures also received fines and league bans. Sergio Aguero’s goal against QPR won Man City the Premier league title in dramatic fashion in 2012 (PA Archive) A more ongoing punishment as laid down by the NBA might be appropriate for City given the decade-plus over which their offences were spread. Instead of deducting, say, 150 points and effectively relegating them for a season (where they’d presumably bounce straight back up) it may be deemed more fitting for them to be deducted 50 points per season over three seasons. That said, if City could play their current level of football, they may be able to avoid relegation altogether with just 50 points being taken off. It isn’t impossible, and could leave a bitter taste in the mouth of some. Missing consecutive years of Champions League football would at least provide a downstream financial punishment of sorts, though financial punishments feel wholly inadequate given everything we know. Realistically, though, it will be impossible to conclude this whole debacle without leaving a bitter taste in the mouths of many. Should City have their titles taken off them, as many believe they should, it doesn’t take away the nights those players got to live out with teammates, soaked in champagne. Meanwhile, the players denied a title by cheating will have the hollow feeling of waking up one morning and finding they’ve received a medal through the post. You can right the wrongs in the record books but how this feels is going to be as important to many as the substance of the sanction. Only four teams – Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham – submitted the necessary paperwork before the statute of limitations expired preserving the right to pursue City for compensation in the event of this very verdict, but the financial damage to many players, coaches and the like will never be measured or seen. Again, it will only be felt. Brendan Rodgers, now managing in Saudi Arabia, could become a league-winning manager overnight. How different could his career have gone? A riyal for his thoughts. Enzo Maresca replaced Pep Guardiola as manager and signed Enzo Fernandez for £125m this summer (PA) While Rio Ferdinand has already publicly claimed his 2011/12 title win after the news broke of City’s guilt, there is equally no guarantee that the Premier League hands an empty, posthumous glory to the runners-up. Could it be left vacant, as with Juventus’s 2004-05 title after Calciopoli , or would those blank spaces in Premier League history be seen as scars for the competition? In deciding the punishments City must face, the Commission will not be consumed by the bloodlust of the football community and will instead focus on finding something defensible, given any sanctions will come under the strongest of attacks during the appeal process. But they face an almost impossible task in satisfying everybody with the penalties. When they arrive, the punishments will look severe but how they look is almost irrelevant. The key for English football’s ability to move past this black mark will be how they feel. Because football is about what it makes us feel. And right now it doesn’t feel so good.