Premier League: Hollow victory hollow integrity
Manchester City's Erling Haaland celebrates scoring their side's first goal of the game during the Premier League match at Anfield.
At the final whistle of Sunday's match between Liverpool and Manchester City at Anfield, many supporters experienced a feeling unlike any they had felt at the end of a football match before. It was not elation. It was not disappointment. The closest word for it was emptiness.
As City celebrated a 3-0 victory and Liverpool's players trudged off, there seemed little sense of either triumph or despair. Instead, there was a hollow feeling, a numbness towards both winner and loser. Conversations with supporters of different clubs afterwards suggested it was far from an isolated reaction.
The Premier League desperately needed Liverpool to beat Manchester City on Sunday. Yet that prospect became increasingly unlikely before a ball was kicked. Dominik Szoboszlai's injury in the warm-up added him to a casualty list that already included Alexander Isak and Cody Gakpo, removing three of Liverpool's top four goalscorers from contention.
Still, there remained hope that City's resolution might be punctured in their first game since being found guilty of financial misconduct charges relating to the period between 2009 and 2018.
That hope evaporated on the hour mark when Ryan Gravenberch was shown a controversial second yellow card. What followed was a one-sided demolition. City scored three excellent goals and cruised to victory much to the delight of the City fans who had endured a series of ‘You know who you are…’ chants from the Anfield faithful throughout the game.
Yet under that immediate delight, did any of those City fans that flashed wads of cash in reply to the Liverpool chants, genuinely feel they achieved anything?
Do they think these three great goals will ever be replayed again as golden moments for the club?
Did the City fans really relish leaning into the ‘they are all against us, but we don’t care’ role? Did they really think this win against a weakened Liverpool side, brought about by their rule-breaking behaviour, will mean anything by the end of the season? Do they think they will be champions come next May?
Or did they too feel the growing cavern of apathy and hollowness towards a game, and a league whereby a club found guilty of 114 charges of financial corruption is still playing on with a shameless arrogance, as if their guilt had not been established. And while a chance of redemption exists due to the appeal process, that the Premier League and independent commission did not include the punishment with their guilty verdict, may now seem like a miscalculation.
Justice delayed is justice denied, and while the appeal process continues, City as a club and its players continue to perform with an attitude that they are somehow the victims. This has spread to the analysis of the game with former Man City players framing their punditry in the shape of ‘ We will look at it again if the allegations are proven to be true…’ as if the club have not already been found guilty.
Sure, the process of appeal needs to be completed but perhaps it would have been better if City games were suspended during the process. As we are now in the situation whereby City face Ipswich tomorrow as hot favourites to win, while again playing under the shadow of an unpunished guilty verdict. And should City lose the appeal, do the sides that have lost points to City get them back fully? Will sides that will play City, still guilty after appeal, not be at an advantage to sides that played against a more defiant City side before the verdict and appeal? If the guilt is finally punished after appeal, would it not dishearten Man City, now playing for nothing and allowing a big advantage to the sides subsequently playing against them? Or do all sides just collect the full six points against City. And will that be deducted from any overall imposed points penalty.
And beyond these off-field permutations, we are again left asking as fans, do the events we see before us during a match stand for anything other than a further reminder of cheating?
The longer this period of nothingness continues the longer it hurts the integrity of the Premier League. Already damaged by the allegations, the delay to mete out justice will continue to hollow out the honour of the league further.
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