Aston Villa boss Unai Emery has emerged as one of the few figures outside Manchester City willing to speak up for the club since its guilty verdict of breaching the Premier League's financial rules.
Elliot Anderson and others in the Manchester City dressing room will have questions for the board.
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It’s safe to say that sympathy for Manchester City has been in very short supply of late. Beyond the walls of the Etihad Stadium, the response to the club’s guilty verdict has been close to unanimous, with rivals, pundits and former players lining up to deliver their judgement.
A somewhat unexpected voice has now spoken up to offer City a measure of understanding, however - not a voice belonging to anyone of a blue persuasion, but to the manager of a direct Premier League rival.
Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has reacted to Manchester City’s guilty verdict by paying tribute to Pep Guardiola and his side, insisting he has no interest in retrospective titles.cityxtra.co.ukJurgen Klopp Breaks Silence on Man City Guilty Verdict on Premier League Financial Rule Breaches
Former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp has reacted to Manchester City’s guilty verdict by paying tribute to Pep Guardiola and his side, insisting he has no interest in retrospective titles.
Many Other Clubs Have Inflated Their Budgets: Emery
Speaking to Spanish outlet Mundo Deportivo, Emery suggested Manchester City are far from alone in how they have navigated football’s financial regulations - pointing, in effect, at the very sort of financial doping City’s critics have so often accused the club of.
“It is an issue that was already known," Emery said, as relayed by Sport Witness. "We all have our restrictions; we have to sell players to comply with Financial Fair Play, and we have to figure out how to structure contracts for new signings.
“[Financial] Fair Play seeks financial balance so that spending aligns with revenue and inflation is avoided. Yes, many other clubs have inflated their budgets - and now it’s coming to light, and naturally, there is a decline.”
It is an interesting observation from a coach who has spent much of his career grappling with those same constraints, and one likely to go down well with a City support long convinced their club has been singled out.
Emery Reluctant to Tarnish What City Achieved
Emery was also keen to draw a distinction between what Manchester City are alleged to have done off the pitch and what Pep Guardiola’s team delivered on it. The question of guilt, he emphasised, was not his to settle.
“That is something for the courts and the authorities to decide,” the Spaniard added. “I feel bad about it, given how that team played. Under Guardiola, there were times when they were unbeatable.”
For the manager of a rival to pay that kind of tribute suggests the football City produced throughout the Guardiola years still commands respect, whatever ultimately becomes of the club’s standing.
What Man City Are Up Against
The warmth of those words does little to change the scale of the case. Manchester City were convicted on every one of the 115 charges, the Premier League’s commission concluding that the club leaned on “sham” arrangements to inflate its revenues by more than £900million across the period under scrutiny.
City launched their appeal on Friday and maintain their innocence, insisting through chief executive Ferran Soriano that a body of irrefutable evidence stands in their favour.
The wider game, however, has already turned its attention to punishment, with the points deductions that hit Everton and Nottingham Forest widely cited as the yardstick for a sanction that could prove considerably steeper.
Quite where all this leaves Manchester City is anyone’s guess. Opinions like Emery’s are a rare opposing voice that only serve to add a small degree of nuance to an otherwise one-sided story.