Justice Prevails: Liverpool Could Be Awarded Premier League Titles Stripped from Manchester City

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The 2018/19 season was a record-breaking one for Liverpool; albeit a record they never wanted to own.

The 97 points won by Jurgen Klopp’s men was the highest tally in top-flight history not to win the title.

That instead went to Manchester City, who defeated Brighton on the final day of the campaign to finish a solitary point clear of the Reds.

It’s a title race that now, with City finally being found guilty of more than 100 charges of financial impropriety, has taken on a different context.

Without cheating, Pep Guardiola’s side wouldn’t have won the championship. In doing so, they scammed Liverpool out of the title – which otherwise would have ended their long wait for the Premier League trophy.

Not only that, many Liverpool fans will remember that when their heroes did finally lift the Premier League trophy in 2020, they were unable to celebrate appropriately due to the health emergency.

Manchester City robbed Liverpool of silverware and of history. But more than that, they robbed the club’s fans of a day/night that they would have never forgotten.

Hopefully, common sense will prevail and now that City have been outed as the cheats they are, Liverpool will retrospectively be awarded the 2018/19 Premier League title as deserved.

Righting the Wronged

Even within days of the Reds lifting the Premier League trophy in July 2020, Manchester City were never far from the conversation.

“FFP [Financial Fair Play] is there for protecting teams and protecting competition, so that nobody overspends. Otherwise, the richest people or countries can do whatever they want,” Klopp remarked.

“I am really happy we won the championship this year because it will not be easier in the future.”

The sense that Liverpool were being wronged, with City continuing to cook their books and inflate their commercial income, was on the lips of everyone associated with the club – even when celebrating their finest achievement of the contemporary era.

By the 2021/22 season, it was déjà vu all over again. Once again, City led the Premier League table heading into the final day of the campaign. And their astonishing comeback – scoring three goals in six minutes to overturn a two-goal deficit against Aston Villa – ensured they won the title by a single point margin from the Reds.

All this time, City’s owners were in the background creating their ‘sham’ contracts and manipulating their profit & loss accounts so that the club conformed to FFP – or, at least, appeared to be doing so.

But the net was closing, and when the Premier League issued their 115 charges in 2023, it was the beginning of a process so lengthy it has become something of a running joke.

Now, on the verge of justice being served, there’s a sense of weary affirmation… rather than joyous celebration. Liverpool, and others, have been cheated by one of the longest-running and most egregious shows of sporting fraud we’re ever likely to see.

Will Manchester City Be Stripped of Their Titles?

There is, quite simply, no precedent for this case, so the Premier League are going to have to think long and hard about what punishments they can and can’t, legally speaking, hand to City.

Fines, transfer bans, point deductions… you would imagine they are all a formality. The Independent Football Regulator even has the power to force City’s owners to sell up – the context is different, but not unlike when Roman Abramovich was made to walk away from Chelsea.

As for stripping titles away, something somewhat similar happened to Juventus at the height of the Calciopoli scandal of 2006. They were found guilty of trying to fix games, before being administratively relegated and stripped of their championship.

Crucially, Inter Milan were crowned champions instead. Although it was a hollow victory, in some respects, the history books still confirm that there is legal precedence for titles being stripped away.

The Premier League’s investigation into Man City dates back all the way to 2009/10, when they were first found to have cheated. Therefore, another close call for Liverpool – the 2013/14 campaign, when the Reds finished two points behind the Cityzens – would also come under the microscope.

So that’s three Premier League titles that Liverpool lost to City; although, crucially, two of those fall outside of the investigation (2009/10 to 2017/18). If the Cityzens are stripped of the titles in those particular seasons, the Reds would only be awarded one of them.

Of course, the latter two campaigns mentioned in this article also saw City benefit from their lengthy campaign of ‘financial doping’ – let’s hope the book is thrown at them, whether Liverpool are awarded the titles they were cheated out of or not.