£1.2bn on transfers with £830m inflated in accounts – Man City’s ‘asterisk era’

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Man City guilty of 'sham' contracts & misleading accounts

Outside Manchester City's Etihad Stadium is a lustrous silver statue of Sergio Aguero – mouth agape in ecstasy, kit swirling over his head – depicting his goal celebration after securing the club's first Premier League title.

It is the immortilisation of the most famous goal in English league football history, when City snatched the trophy away from Manchester United in the dying seconds of the 2011-12 season.

But what if the goal never happened? What if Aguero had never played for the club? What if City had opted to abide by football's financial rules instead of purposefully breaking them through a "disguised funding scheme"?

The revelation that the club has been found guilty of the charges brought against it by the Premier League three and a half years ago has left football fans around the world questioning the legitimacy of City's achievements between 2009 and 2018, when they were the most successful club in English football and cemented themselves among the global game's elite.

Some fans are referring to it as the asterisk era, and there is a possibility City could be retroactively stripped of the honours they earned during the period, with some clubs seeking legal advice over potential financial compensation.

So how exactly did City's "hugely overstated" income impact their actions in the transfer market, how key were the players who were brought in, and what does it all mean for both the past and the future?

Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Long-time captain Vincent Kompany joined Manchester City before the era in which they breached financial rules, but stars such as Kevin de Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, Fernandinho and David Silva were signed during it

Manchester City spent about £1.2bn on new players in the transfer windows between summer 2009 and January 2018.

In that time, the club won seven major trophies – three Premier Leagues, one FA Cup, and three EFL Cups – having previously gone without a significant honour since 1970.

The players they purchased during that time included some of the world's best, in all areas of the pitch. Multiple were signed for figures in the tens of millions every summer and made a huge contribution to the club's consistent success.

The graphic below demonstrates how much City spent in each summer and across the whole time period, and contrasts it with the amount of money that the commission which has found the club guilty determined had been falsely pumped into the club by its owners, under the guise of sponsorship income.

City did not only generate revenue from sponsorship funds in that time. And income is also spent on many things other than transfers, including player wages, utilities, insurance, infrastructure, marketing, foundations and more.

But the figures underline the fact that City would simply not have been able to purchase the quantity and quality of players they signed during their era of domination had they not been conducting what the commission described as a "concerted campaign to falsify" their financial accounts.

If City's financial power had been slashed by the extra £830m the commission says they falsely added to their books, their transfer spend would surely have been massively reduced.

Chop the amount in half, say, and maybe they would only have brought in half the amount of players. Or the same amount, but heavily reduced in quality.

Which potentially means no Aguero, no David Silva, no Yaya Toure, no Kevin de Bruyne, or at least a significant reduction in the number or ability of the less glamorous players who were key cogs in the trophy-winning machine.

Would those successes have been achieved had the rule breaking not been going on in tandem? And what would the impact have been on all the other clubs who have played in the Premier League during that time?

Nobody will ever know. The seasons cannot be replayed. And so the outcomes exist in a kind of mixed reality where the world watched them happen, but isn't sure if they're really 'real'.

The era provided the foundation for City's ongoing success, too, meaning more trophies and TV income, and the chaos of the situation has also unleashed doubt about the present and future.

A quick quiz question – what do The Wizard of Oz, Super Mario Bros 2 and the ninth season of Dallas all have in common?

Feel free to grab yourself a hot drink and mull it over for a moment.

If you figured out that the plots of all three never really happened – because in their endings it was revealed that they existed only in the dreams of one of the lead characters – then very well done indeed.

So do the guilty verdicts mean the Premier League seasons between 2009-10 and 2017-18 should now be considered a figment of our collective imaginations too?

City have until Friday to mount an appeal. If that appeal is unsuccessful, then, at some point, the club will be given some sort of punishment.

Whether sanctions will retcon the past in any way is unknown.

And about moving forwards? Right now football fans, both of City and other clubs across the country, do not know whether the football they are watching is 'real' or not.

Are City actually top of the league and in a title challenge, or will they be docked points later in the season?

If they are linked with another team's star player, could that transfer happen or will they be unable to make deals at some point?

Will they be in the Premier League next season or will they be expelled and will there need to be a quite significant rejigging of the pyramid to accommodate them somewhere else?

And then there are questions about what comes later down the line.

Is anybody else breaking rules right now, which fans will only find out about in the future?

Does the potential for years of results to be retroactively kiboshed undermine the Premier League's popularity with fans, players and sponsors?

And can the action fans are watching week in, week out ever fully be trusted again?

The answers to those questions will determine the future of the biggest league in the world's most popular game.

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