Soundtrack

[M I K E ©️ @mike_muhima]

Funny how he purchased a defender for himself but not for the team.

[Politics Global @PolitlcsGlobal]

🚨🇬🇧 WATCH: Zohran Mamdani tells a Liverpool fan “you got beat by team that shouldn’t be in the league” following their loss to Man City on Sunday

[Melissa Reddy @MelissaReddy_]

How long is the stench of the “sham” going to corrode the meaning, worth, and very essence of the Premier League?

Listening to commentary about Manchester City’s players matching the defiance of their ownership and triumphing in adversity.

Listening to fans chorusing the names of the men running the club, wearing masks or displaying banners of their faces and jibing: “We’re Man City, we’ll cheat when we want.”

Victory being framed as “a lovely moment,” a show of togetherness as though some grave injustice has been imposed on City, rather than their hierarchy being found by an independent commission to have orchestrated financial doping on an industrial scale.

Their opponents and the rest of us wondering if any of this actually matters now and how much of it ever did?

There can be no business as usual pretence. We need a full stop to the absurdity.

[Callum @_callumstone]

You signed Trafford, then Donnuruma.

Savio, then Ndiaye and Semenyo.

Bravo, then Ederson.

Phillips and Reinjders, then Anderson.

All players who weren’t good enough, then replaced with money from inflated sponsorship.

You don’t spend it better, you just cheated.

[Oliver Holt @OllieHolt22]

The Premier League's descent into a farce of a season began in earnest this afternoon. What a mess. City top of a league they may be kicked out of in a few months. It felt like another bad day for English football today.

[Mark Goldbridge @markgoldbridge]

Sickening. Haaland asks for a red. Then he scores. The league has zero integrity at the moment. It's a farce

[Miguel Delaney @MiguelDelaney]

Anfield playing "Sweet Little Lies" by Fleetwood Mac at the final whistle.

[David Lynch @davidlynchlfc]

Again you have to ask: what does this mean? These players buying into a supposed siege mentality and yet they will be immediately out of the door the moment sanctions are handed down. Fans gloating about it all. Such a bad look for the Premier League.

[James Pearce @JamesPearceLFC]

'Little Lies' by Fleetwood Mac playing inside Anfield as the celebrating City players walk off.

[Mark Goldbridge @markgoldbridge]

Hard to watch this. It's a sham this league now

[James Pearce @JamesPearceLFC]

It's a victory that is likely to mean absolutely nothing in a couple of months when City get their punishment for nearly a decade of cheating. What a mess the Premier League is in.

[Adam Crafton @AdamCrafton_]

Nothing will keep this story and the pressure for sanctions stronger than Man City continually winning and being dominant. It’s going to be the season-long drumbeat. Even more so if they did know in summer about this and went even harder in transfer market as a result.

[Duncan Alexander @oilysailor]

Man City on course for 114 points as it stands

[Neil Atkinson @Knox_Harrington]

Made up there Greater Manchester's Kavanagh

[Sean Walsh @SeanDZWalsh]

PSG: Don’t worry guys have a week off it’s fine! I don’t wanna see any bags under those eyes!

Premier League clubs every single weekend for a whole season:

[Nick Harris @sportingintel]

The human cost of reporting on Man City’s cheating for 15 years. It’s on the Mail website today and will be in the MoS paper tomorrow (Sunday) but they backed my reporting 100%. That reporting continues on my Substack. Google it for details. https://t.co/R9XjGTDtb8

[Colin Millar @Millar_Colin]

Mad how the Premier League's financial rules are so anti-competitive that West Ham, Crystal Palace, Spurs and Aston Villa have all won Euro trophies, Palace and Newcastle have won domestic cups, 8 clubs in UCL over 2 seasons + Sunderland/Bournemouth/Brighton all in Europe now.

[Miguel Delaney @MiguelDelaney]

This view that City made the league more competitive is… the opposite of the truth. It’s the most dominant spell ever seen in England:

- 100 and 98 points
- two trebles
- four in a row

None of these things had ever been done before

[Henry Winter @henrywinter]

“I would be really concerned to lose them.” Prime Minister Andy Burnham on the possibility of Manchester City’s owners selling up. What?! These are owners found guilty of serial breaches of the Premier League rule-book by three judges on an independent commission after a lengthy investigation. Owners who outraged other clubs and countless fans by flouting the rules and inflating sponsorship income with the Disguised Funding Scheme.

Owners who misled auditors and regulators, who threaten to bring this Premier League season – and, potentially, future seasons - to a standstill by their appeal, deny, delay tactics. Owners who are patently not proper custodians of a famous, historic club. Owners who many hope will sell up and ship out after bringing such shame and sham contracts to the game.

So these are astonishing, alarming comments from the PM. “I do actually thank the City Football Group and the wider ownership for the money that they didn't just put into the Etihad and the campus around it but also into the city," Burnham told the BBC’s Chris Mason.

Come on, PM. Read the room. Read the commission’s report. Read the belligerent statements from the Abu Dhabi owners and their chief executive like Ferran Soriano. Rather than thank CFG, perhaps thank the diligence of the Premier League in seeking to enforce its rules and protect the national sport. Perhaps thank the three judges for their pain-staking work in sifting through reams of evidence and coming to their considered conclusion.

Burnham spoke as a politician seemingly with one eye on diplomatic and trade links. He spoke as a former mayor whose city benefited from investment in east Manchester by Abu Dhabi. “They've been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester and obviously the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.” And how was that building financed?

Burnham spoke as a politician and not the football fan that he truly is. The lifelong Evertonian is usually pretty sound on football matters. He misread the mood of many fans not wanting the possible return of drinking in Premier League stands but that was a rare misstep. This is far worse. This makes him look out of touch with the prevailing mood. He was speaking at Hill Dickinson Stadium. Maybe he should head to Anfield on Sunday week and witness the anger felt towards City.

Burnham did add that he wasn’t getting involved in the process and that City had a right to appeal if they felt harshly treated. But how does the PM’s sympathetic words for controversial owners help the independent football regulator charged by Government with leading the fight against those who risk the credibility of their club, who play fast and loose with the rules and who damage the integrity of the national sport?

How frustrating if Burnham’s words embolden City's owners and Soriano further. Bit of an own goal by No 10.

[Nick Harris @sportingintel]

Oasis should release: “Sham. Pain. Supernova”