There can be no ideal outcome: Manchester City must be vindicated or condemned | Manchester City

ILet’s start by going back to December 2016, when the world’s media gathered in London to hear lurid details of how more than 1,000 Russian athletes cheated in 30 sports with the help of spies, a steroid cocktail mixed with whiskey and vermouth, and massive state interference.

First the law professor Richard McLaren tells us In his speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that London 2012 was “corrupt on an unprecedented scale”. He then goes on to remind us that at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, an agent of the FSB, the Russian security service, disguised himself as a plumber and used a mouse hole in the walls of an anti-doping laboratory to swap contaminated samples for clean ones.

“It is impossible to know how far and how deep this conspiracy goes,” McLaren tells us. “Coaches and athletes have been playing on an uneven playing field. Fans and spectators of the sport have been misled.”

We know what happened next. Unprecedented crimes led to unprecedented punishments. Dozens of Russians were stripped of their medals and their country's flag, anthem and officials were banned from the Olympics – the first time this had happened to a country.

Now imagine if McLaren had said, “You know what? We should drop the Russian athletes just 15 places in this year's world rankings, but they can keep their medals and compete next year.” He would have been laughed at in the room.

I mention this because the biggest sporting trial since Russia has been in the dock has just begun. Manchester City face 115 charges in Premier Leaguebut there is already a feeling of dulce de leche in the air.

The idea is this: there is so much at stake for both sides, as well as for Britain's relations with Abu Dhabi, that the only thing at stake is a fine or points deduction large enough to prevent City from entering Europe and avoiding relegation. Would anyone be surprised? As my colleague Barney Ronay wrote In the Saturday paper, if we got a result that allowed everyone involved to live with the outcome?

I respect your logic and your instincts, but I don't see how to get to that point. The allegations are so serious and egregious, and are so packaged in such a peculiar way, that it is difficult to imagine how such a compromise can be reached without raising eyebrows and asking questions.

Take, for example, the 35 charges related to the city's alleged lack of cooperation with Premier League investigations between 2018 and 2023. Logic dictates that City will be found guilty or acquitted of all charges.

Similarly, the Premier League alleges that between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons City committed 54 breaches of rules requiring accurate financial reporting “in the utmost good faith” and between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 seasons breached the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability (PSR) rules seven times. Could we get a sweep of not guilty or guilty verdicts in this case too? It’s probably more likely than not. And if there are dozens of guilty verdicts, a slap on the wrist won’t do any good.

Also remember that Everton were docked six points Last season, for a single PSR violation and for providing information that was “materially inaccurate” and “disingenuous.” That also sets a precedent.

City deny all the charges and say they have a “full body of irrefutable evidence” to back up their claim of innocence. If they prove it, the Premier League and its clubs will owe them a huge apology. However, if the most serious allegations – that City essentially cooked the books with hugely inflated sponsorship deals and made secret payments to the club – are proven, they will be left with no excuses. Roberto Mancini and Dimitri Seluk, Yaya Toure's agent, both deny the charges, then City face an unprecedented punishment.

And if that means stripping the club of its league titles, just as the Russians also lost their Olympic medals, then so be it.

We are still a long way from that point, especially as City have shown the tenacity of a Rottweiler in fighting off the various cases that have been brought before them.

However, the butterfly effect of being able to spend so much more than their rivals at the start of a 14-year period in which City won seven Premier League titles, six League Cups, three FA Cups and the Champions League is undeniable. Without such a huge investment, who knows whether stars like Yaya Toure And would David Silva have arrived at City in the same week in 2010 and then led them to the title two years later? And let's not forget, either, that the club also faces serious allegations in individual seasons: one of the campaigns in which City are accused of breaching PSR rules is 2017-18, when they won the title.

Whatever the final verdict, which is expected to be announced next year, a prominent lawyer I spoke to last week said it showed that the creation of an independent global body for football funding (a World Anti-Doping Agency, for example) would not be a bad idea. Remember that before WADA was formed, the International Association of Athletics Federations had to pay 100-meter star Katrin Krabbe for lost earnings, even after she failed a drug test for clenbuterol. Krabbe admitted to using the drug, but won because the German athletics federation's rules did not list the drug as banned. Since then, thankfully, the system has changed for the better.

That debate is for another day. In the meantime, let us resist the idea of ​​a Goldilocks punishment in the City case – deliberately applied at the right temperature for all parties – as a possible solution. The City must be vindicated or condemned.