A verdict in Manchester City’s case has left the club’s supporters pulled between loyalty to their team, anger at the owners and unease about what comes next. Almost all of those who have given their reaction say they will keep backing the team; on little else is there agreement.
For Nicola Schofield, a City fan for more than 40 years who describes herself as angry with the owners, the biggest worry is a split inside the fanbase. She argues this is not the same as the relegations she lived through in the 1990s, when supporters shared the experience and stood by a club that went down as far as League One and then climbed back. The fallout from the verdict threatens to be messier, she says, setting those who may want the owners out — “which is its own minefield” — against those who will back them all the way. “I think ultimately all fans want to ensure our club still exists, but I do worry at divisions this could cause and that might be hard to heal,” she says.
Ben, a season-ticket holder, is still absorbing the news. He trusted the club completely and believed every word of its responses to the charges, which is why it has hit hard. He remains convinced that financial fair play rules are unfair and always have been, while accepting that argument will win him little sympathy from rival supporters who, as he puts it, have been waiting for this day for years. What he holds on to is the football: Agüero in 2012, the centurions, the treble, Istanbul. “Those memories are ours and no verdict changes that,” he says. He describes himself as confused, but certain of one thing: he will still support the team.
For James Blakey, also a fan of more than 40 years, the touchstones are Dickov and Agüero. He was 13 in 1999, in the first year of a season ticket at Maine Road, when Paul Dickov scored a 95th-minute equaliser at Wembley to take the Second Division playoff final to extra time and Nicky Weaver’s heroics in the shootout won promotion. Thirteen years later he watched Sergio Agüero’s 93rd-minute goal against QPR in a Manchester pub split 50-50 between City and United fans, the latter having believed seconds earlier that they had won the title. The two goals feel alike to him: “the elation, the sweetness, the togetherness and the pride in my club”.
What has changed is how he can now see the second of those moments. Blakey believes the Agüero goal, and so much of what followed, Istanbul included, would not have happened without the club cheating on what he calls a “systemic, industrial scale”. He cannot give those memories back, and does not know what to do with that. But he is clear that the richest people in the world deciding the rules do not apply to them — cheating and then chucking endless money at the situation — has nothing to do with what he loves about football, about Manchester, or about his club and the fans doing the conga in the aisles and the Poznan in the stands. “I’m really sad,” he says.
David Mayor, a season-ticket holder who was at York away in 1998, wonders how it will feel when, or if, the dust finally settles. Forty years of support have brought relegations, a stadium move and changes of ownership, and in his experience it ultimately reverts to the norm: the same faces, and his dad still moaning about a wayward pass regardless of how the team is playing. The past week has felt a serious danger to that. He has long thought the game at the highest level morally bankrupt, which is why the club’s actions have not particularly bothered him, and although the move to join a Super League made him think he could walk away, he cannot foresee doing so however it all ends.
Distance numbs some of it, says Jon Ashley, who is based in Washington. Part of him feels betrayed by and angry at City’s higher-ups, who he says have clearly misled the fans for a long time, particularly given the extent of what he calls the “sham”. Another part remembers the abject misery of being a City fan at school in the 1990s and 2000s, and the seemingly impossible dream of one day seeing them compete for trophies. He believes the severity and duration of the club’s offences warrant significant punishment, but he also reads the outcome as an indictment of the Premier League: that it took this much sustained rule-breaking and money to prevent United, Arsenal and Liverpool adding to their own trophy cabinets.
At the New York Sky Blues, whose membership runs close to 400, chair Chris Stalker says the verdict has caused a lot of discussion and debate. Speaking in a personal capacity, he sets out two strands. The first is FFP: the group’s consensus is that it needs challenging, not only by City but by clubs such as Newcastle, Aston Villa and Everton, because, he argues, the aim seems to be to maintain the status quo. Supporters accept that rules have been broken, he says, but there are legitimate concerns about why those rules exist.
The second strand is the ownership, which retains a lot of credit with travelling fans who see what has been done in east Manchester — not just the stadium but the whole area, changed by investment — and who have been given the best days of their lives. Stalker never expected to see a better player than Colin Bell, yet he has witnessed David Silva and Kevin De Bruyne. Even so, he detects a growing uneasiness. The fan group invested a lot of trust in the owners and that trust now looks unwarranted; a relationship with fans should be built on honesty and integrity, and it could be lost. He points to the group’s charity work in New York — $25,000 (£19,000) raised last year for New York Common Pantry, a food bank — as a reflection of the values City supporters carry with them, and closes with a call for unity. “As Manchester City we won’t be defined by the owners. Owners come and go but we’re City till we die.”