It can’t be an easy time to be a Manchester City ambassador, especially when you have to appear on live telly sandwiched between Jamie Carragher and Roy Keane. But fair play to Micah Richards, he gave it his all on Sky on Sunday.
Micah: “What if they was to win the appeal?”
Carra: “They’re guilty now.”
Micah: “But they’re appealing it.”
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Carra: “But they’re guilty NOW!”
Micah: “They’re saying they’re innocent.”
Carra: “BUT RIGHT NOW THEY’RE GUILTY!”
Granted, if you were in need, you wouldn’t be hiring Micah as your barrister any time soon, but he still put up a more cogent defence of City than the one Joe Cole presented on TNT Sports on Saturday morning ahead of Arsenal’s lucky win over Leeds.
“The only pure thing about football is what happens on the pitch,” he said. “For me, what they achieved is not tainted. It’s not right to class it in the same way as match fixing. That is the pits. I don’t think they should be punished retrospectively.”
Martin Keown was speechless, which is never a good thing for a pundit. If his mouth had worked at that moment, it might have pointed out that City weren’t actually being punished retrospectively because they actually broke rules that actually existed.
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Clinton Morrison kinda went down the “but City won on the pitch” route too on Soccer Saturday, which had Paul Merson hyperventilating. Due to financial shenanigans, he pointed out: “THEY HAD ALL THE BEST PLAYERS – THEY HAD THE TWO BEST PLAYERS IN EVERY POSITION!”
You know the way you can sometimes wonder about how the same body of evidence can be presented to a jury and six of them say guilty and six opt for not guilty? You can but hope that if you ever find yourself in the dock, having being caught on CCTV committing your crime, that Micah, Joe, Clinton and four-ish like-minds are among the 12 good and true. They’d be like, “not proven.”
“I feel devastated,” Micah had said when Sky opened its inquest in to the City business. “I put my neck on the line for this club ... came through the youth team ... I’ve literally got one knee from giving 100 per cent for Manchester City Football Club.”
Roy was moved. Kidding. “There’s all these lovely stories, ‘I came through the youth team’, lovely, it’s lovely,” he said, doing a bit of a rolly eyes thing while Carra chuckled. “But there are other clubs, other people out there doing their best – all you want is a bit of honesty.”
Micah was clinging to the hope, though, that City’s claim that they had “irrefutable evidence” that they were innocent would win out. Carra asked him why they didn’t present said evidence in their defence. “Em,” said Micah.
Daniel Sturridge was caught between a boulder and an unbreakable place. He had started his footballing life at City, and might have won a league title at Liverpool only for them. “What could have been,” he sighed. But he didn’t want to entirely hang City out to dry.
Roy, meanwhile, noted how English football was always quick to point the finger at supposedly dodgy leagues, like Italy’s at times, priding itself in its integrity. But here we are. City’s owners might not be English, but they were allowed join the party. “They are so powerful, so rich, they’ve never been told no before in their lives,” said Carra.
“Have we thought about how we analyse every City win from now on?” asked our host Mark Chapman. “Let’s hope they get beaten,” said Roy.
A couple of hours later and the City faithful were celebrating their 3-0 win at Anfield, waving their inflatable bananas triumphantly in the air. “And after all, you really robbed us all” and “All of your stars are fading away” read the banners around the ground, but the show goes on.
The mood in the Sky commentary box was funereal. Carra couldn’t decide which was more gutting, his team being so hopelessly blunt or City being City. Gary Neville, who’d had to endure watching United the day before – and Lord above, what an ordeal – was speaking in those hushed tones that always signify something really bad has happened. “A beautiful goal, not necessarily beautiful for the game,” he said of City’s second, scored by Jérémy Doku.
All week, the debate had been about what City’s punishment should be. Gary, you suspected, was feeling the ultimate sanction would be them having to swap their squad for United’s. Having to exchange, say, Doku and Erling Haaland for Youri Tielemans and Kobbie Mainoo would cure them.
