Manchester City delighted in a delirious dance with their own notoriety at Anfield on Sunday evening. The team belonging to the club branded the biggest cheats in English sporting history embraced their shame and laughed in the face of the scorn of the rest of football.
On the occasion of their first public outing since they were found guilty by an independent commission of 114 charges of financial chicanery, City defied the revulsion that has been visited upon them and waltzed past Liverpool, the team which suffered most from their cheating, with a comprehensive 3-0 victory. It was another bad day for a game reeling from what City have done to it.
The win restored their three-point lead over Arsenal at the top of the table and extended their record at the start of this season to six successive triumphs but as the football world waits to see whether their appeal succeeds or what their punishment will be, no one knows whether that matters or whether it is utterly meaningless.
The City fans in the away end turned their backs to the pitch in the dying minutes and did the Poznan, the dance of celebration they have made their own. Their celebrations may be muted if, as many expect, they are relegated to League Two at the end of this season.
It is a sign of quite how dysfunctional the Premier League has become that a team with a perfect record, a team that played some wonderful football in the second half, was serenaded with chants of ‘going down, going down, going down’ by the Liverpool fans. They may indeed be going down but they are going to enjoy life while they do.
For them, all the noise was just sound and fury, signifying nothing. For the rest of football, it was a thoroughly dispiriting day. For now, it seems, cheats do prosper.
Erling Haaland celebrates breaking the deadlock at Anfield after Liverpool went a man down
The Reds were beaten 3-0 by City in the visitors’ first game since being found guilty
Jeremy Doku netted the second of the game with a brilliant curling effort in front of fans waving inflatable bananas
It will have struck a discordant note for the rest of the game to see them celebrating so wildly at the end when they have been found guilty of serial cheating but the modern City is not a club known for its humility and they are not about to change now. This is a league in limbo but for now, no one can touch them.
The match merely marked the end of an extraordinary day on Merseyside. A couple of hours before kick-off, crowds were already standing five and ten deep on the Anfield Road, as they had done back in the closing weeks of the 2013-14 season when they tried to will Brendan Rodgers and his Liverpool team to the Premier League title with a wall of sound. City won the title that year, of course. It was one of the triumphs that may soon have an asterisk attached to it.
This was a different kind of welcoming party. It was intended to greet the City coach. Some Liverpool fans held up flags bearing the legend: ‘Guilty – 114 Charges’. Beneath the words, there were likenesses of Erling Haaland, Bernardo Silva, Pep Guardiola, Enzo Fernandez and Rayan Cherki dressed as a gang of convicts, looking glum, heads in hands, surrounded by champagne bottles and piles of cash.
Other Liverpool supporters held up flags that simply said: ‘Cheats’, against a sky blue background and the figure ‘114’. Further along the road, red smoke from a flare wafted through the air. The police officers waiting near the Players’ Entrance looked edgy. The temperature began to rise. ‘You cheating bastards,’ the Liverpool supporters yelled in anticipation of the bus arrival, ‘you know what you are.’
It felt like football’s equivalent of waiting to pelt aristocrats with rotten eggs as they rode in tumbrils through the streets. But the City coach did not come this way. It took a back route instead and approached the ground all but unnoticed.
Two buses painted blue and bearing City’s name passed slowly beneath the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand and, followed by a jogging security contingent, trundled unmolested into an underground car park.
And so on this day, amid subterfuge and shame, City’s new life as the pariahs of the English game began. This is their reality now, after an independent commission decided they were guilty of 114 of the charges of financial chicanery that the Premier League had levelled against them. The rest of English football will treat them as condemned men.
They entered Anfield like fugitives and, as they try to escape the guilt for the financial chicanery that helped them win so many titles between 2009 and 2018 and beyond, fugitives is what they are. It will probably feel that way to the rest of the league until their appeal has been decided and they have faced their punishment. City gave notice on Sunday that, until then, they will laugh in their faces.
City are laughing in the face of football and were delirious in their celebrations
Ryan Gravenberch (right) was sent off by referee Chris Kavanagh in the second half
Anfield displayed banners mocking City after the guilty verdict, including one with 114 pound signs within the word ‘cheat’
‘A generation of supporters cheated’, summed up the sentiment from Liverpool fans
The Anfield crowd left them in no doubt about the extent of the anger that other clubs feel about the unfair advantage they gained for so long. ‘A generation of supporters cheated,’ one banner hanging in the Kop said, articulating the feeling that City stole away the joy of days of triumph from fans of other clubs, days they will never get back.
‘And after all, you robbed us all,’ another banner in the Kop said. At the end of their warm-up, it was that banner in front of which the Liverpool players chose to congregate and salute their supporters. Perhaps it was coincidence. Perhaps it was not. The supporters roared their approval.
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‘All of your stars are fading away,’ one more sign referencing the work of Manchester band Oasis, said. In the front row of the Kop, home fans unfurled a long, thin, banner that ran for half the length of the stand. It was a row of 114 £ signs, decorated with the word ‘Cheats’.
In many ways, it was sad to see City reduced to this. This is a fine old club brought low by the actions of its owners. Once the standard bearers of the Premier League, once a team that won an unprecedented four top flight titles in succession, City are now a team to be mocked and scorned by supporters of other clubs.
The television cameras picked out City’s embattled chief executive Ferran Soriano sitting in the stands. There was no sign of the chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak. That was a surprise on a day when most expected him to make a point of showing solidarity with the club’s players and staff.
It was left – as it is always left – to the most loyal of City’s fans to stand up for the club. What has happened to City is no fault of theirs, of course, and the hard-core travelling contingent – including Noel Gallagher – showed their own defiance in the best way, travelling here to hostile territory and waving an army of inflatable bananas in the air.
Better inflated bananas than inflated commercial income. The yellow fruit was a nod to the times before the Abu Dhabi takeover when City spent time in the lower leagues and their fans did not waver in their support. The bananas were a symbol of that time. For some legacy fans, the prospect of being relegated to League Two holds no fears.
Rayan Cherki scored the third after a great team move as City ran out comfortable winners
Enzo Maresca gestures to the fans after steering his side to victory away at Anfield
City supporters are seen doing the Poznan in a game that ultimately could be meaningless
City fans in the away end celebrated while the rest of football turned away in despair
City’s players, too, were unfazed by their infamy. It was three minutes after half-time when Liverpool conjured the first real chance of the game. The ball fell to Lewis Koumas on the edge of the area and his stinging left-foot shot was beaten away by Gianluigi Donnarumma. Suddenly Liverpool poured forward. Donnarumma saved again from the excellent Ryan Gravenberch. Alexis Mac Allister whistled a shot wide.
But then City took control. Haaland, whose father Alf Inge, was also standing with the City away fans, was played through by Antoine Semenyo but clipped his right-foot shot just wide of the far post.
Many had speculated that at least one of the teams would not finish the game with all ten outfielders on the pitch and they were proved correct three minutes later when Gravenberch was sent off for a second bookable offence, an innocuous push on Jeremy Doku. Fernandez brandished an imaginary card in the referee’s direction as soon as the foul occurred and Chris Kavanagh agreed with him.
Seconds after Gravenberch had trudged off the pitch, City were ahead. Doku cut inside and unleashed a fierce shot that cannoned off Mac Allister. Haaland reacted fastest and lashed an instant drive past Alisson. The goal was scored in front of the away end. The fans there celebrated wildly. The goal must have tasted particularly sweet.
Three minutes later, City were two ahead. Doku teased Victor Munoz on the edge of the Liverpool box, jinked to his right and curled a delicious shot over Alisson. Twelve minutes from time, Cherki completed the victory with the best goal of the lot, running on to an extravagant flick by Josko Gvardiol and slipping the ball beneath Alisson for the third.
The pariahs celebrated in front of their own supporters and punched the air. The rest of football turned away in despair at what the game has become and the uncertainty that stalks it.
