“Expel Them!” – Former Liverpool Striker On What Should Happen To Manchester City

Many clubs up and down the land have been reportedly considering their options in the wake of the Premier League v Manchester City case, and former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore spoke to Canada Sports Betting about the potential punishment.

Retrospective titles: “First of all, if any of the clubs I played for were found guilty of what Manchester City has been found guilty of – of course still waiting for the appeal, but for now – I would take all trophies of those clubs, including my own, both for that period and the period after as one leads to the other.”

“Pending appeal, they could be proved to have cheated from 2009 to 2018 and built a club that is then super successful afterwards, so you would need to take the trophies they won after 2018 away from them again.”

“You can’t win in the following years without what happened in the years they allegedly cheated. That’s just common sense. I would not give those titles to other clubs. I think you would have to give the years an asterisk, saying that no titles were won because of the Manchester City case, and then people would be able to look up the reason behind it in a history book one day.”

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On the punishment: “I would exclude them from the Premier League for a period. I would expel them from the EFL, which means they would have to start from the lowest national league. They would have to get promoted all the way back again.”

“I would say that they would have to expel them, because if you just put them in the Championship, they are back in a year or two they will be back and that’s not a punishment. If the EFL decides to keep them and just put them in the Championship, then I would want the Premier League to expel them from the Premier League in 5 years.”

“That obviously means that if they won the Championship five years in a row, they would still stay in the Championship. That would have a big financial consequence, and players like Haaland, Anderson, Enzo, and others would stay there for five years.”

Financial gain: “That would be a fitting football punishment. From a financial point of view, I am not sure, but I think it should be about giving back from the moment it started happening, and here I am talking about all sponsorship revenue, Premier League prize money, television money, etc.”

“I would come up with a figure that would be given to all the other teams that have lost points, that have got into the Championship, lost the titles and so on. Then you would send a massive message, saying: It doesn’t matter the name of the club, it matters what that club has done.”

“And I repeat. If it was the club I supported or a club I played for, I would be saying the exact same thing. I would be saying the same thing if it was Aston Villa. We have to remember how bad the alternative would be, which would just be a slap on the wrist.”

“Then other clubs will just do the same things moving forward. You know, if it is just about one relegation and then getting promoted again, it is worth doing the next ten years. If we get our supporters going to Wembley and winning Champions League titles, everything would be worth it, because we know that one day in ten years, if we get caught – because don’t forget this was only due to hacked emails – there will be no punishment, so let’s just do it, you know.”

“The punishment has to fit the crime, regardless of it being done by Manchester City, Aston Villa, Liverpool, Man United, Rochdale, Sheffield United, Bromley, or whatever. So be it. I don’t care about the name of the club.”

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Pep Guardiola: “Pep Guardiola is what I always thought he was. A very good coach but not a genius. If we go back to the Barcelona time, he was given Barcelona’s best ever team. Yes, he had to continue the work, but he was given all the ingredients.”

“He then goes to Germany’s biggest and most successful club. Then he goes to Manchester City – a club that had more money than every other club on the planet, so for me he is a very good coach, but do I think he is one of the best managers that ever lived? No. In that equation, a manager has to take over something that is not working, bring in people who can help him make it average, then good, and then great.”

“Just like Sir Alex Ferguson did, or Brian Clough, who took Nottingham Forest from the second tier to win the league and then to win back-to-back European Cups. Pep Guardiola has not done that, and we have to keep that in mind when debating the best managers of all time.”

“I do think he is a good manager, but do I think he is a genius? No, I don’t.”

Premier League competition: “I think all the rules were possibly brought in because people could see what was coming with the Manchester City situation or the spending getting out of control.”

“The Premier League is supposed to be a competition. When I was a kid growing up, Liverpool won the league most of the seasons, but the gap between Liverpool and the other clubs wasn’t that big. Other clubs could win it, just like Aston Villa did.”

“Every fan when I was a child felt that they could put up a fight against any team in the league.”

“It’s not like that anymore, and eventually you make all sorts of competition impossible. We need a competition. That’s what football needs. You don’t tune in to just watch the big clubs win everything without competition. Who cares about who won the Bundesliga or La Liga? That’s just my opinion.”