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ILLUSTRATION — FLAGSIDE
Man City aren't finished, and here's why
Manchester City are currently top of the Premier League. Whatever the public mood says about their reputation, the club is not collapsing, not being relegated, and not being stripped of its titles. The idea that they're 'finished' confuses moral anger with institutional reality.
The moral case and the football case are different arguments
There is a real grievance underneath this: City were charged with more than a hundred breaches of Premier League financial rules, the case has dragged on for years, and plenty of supporters of other clubs think the punishment, whatever it ends up being, will arrive too late to mean anything. That's a legitimate football argument. But it's a separate question from whether Manchester City the institution is finished, and the evidence for that is thin to nonexistent.
Nobody has the power to strip the titles and hand them out again
As Flagside has already explained, the demand to strip City of every Premier League title and relegate them is easy to shout and almost impossible to execute. The Premier League's own rulebook doesn't contain a mechanism for retroactively reallocating a title to a runner-up, because leagues are decided by matches played, not by financial conduct discovered years later. Even in cases where clubs have been docked points or fined, titles already awarded have stood. There is no precedent anywhere in English football for unwinding a season that's already been played and settled, and no governing body has signalled it intends to create one now.
The ownership isn't going anywhere
The idea that Abu Dhabi will be forced to sell ignores how City's ownership actually works. City Football Group is not a struggling businessman propping up a vanity project, it's a state-linked investment vehicle with stakes across multiple continents and clubs. There's no regulatory lever in English football that compels a Premier League owner to divest because the public disapproves of where their money comes from. The Premier League's owners' and directors' test is about criminal conduct and financial fitness, not geopolitics, and financial rule breaches, even serious ones, sit inside football's own disciplinary system rather than the ownership test.
On the pitch, the opposite of decline is happening
Whatever chaos City have shown in patches this season, they are currently top of the Premier League, level on points with the league's other leaders and still built around Erling Haaland, Rodri and a squad Pep Guardiola has reshaped rather than dismantled. Josko Gvardiol's return has settled a side that looked shaky at the back last season. None of that is the profile of a club in institutional freefall. Clubs that are actually finished, in the way Portsmouth or Bury were finished, stop being competitive, start missing payroll, and lose players to release clauses because nobody will lend them money. City are doing none of those things.
Reputation damage is real, but it isn't the same as ruin
What has genuinely changed is how City are talked about. A club that spent a decade being called the best team in the world by neutral pundits is now routinely described with words like 'cheat' attached, and that stings in a way trophies don't erase. Rodri, a Champions League winner and one of the most respected midfielders in Europe, still plays for them, and Haaland, still just entering his prime as a striker, hasn't shown any sign of wanting out. If City's off-field reputation were actually driving away their best players, that would be the tell. It isn't happening.
What actually happens next
The realistic outcome, if City are found to have committed serious breaches, is financial penalties, possible points deductions, and continued scrutiny, not relegation and not a stripped honours board. That's a harsh landing for people who want a clean moral resolution, but it's the system football actually has. A club can carry a permanent asterisk in public opinion and still be one of the two best teams in England. Those two things are happening to Manchester City at the same time, and only one of them is really in question.
Will City's off-field chaos eventually force out Haaland or Rodri?
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