Opinion: Premier League would be all too relieved if Blues simply went away for a while

Manchester City will face Liverpool in the Premier League next weekend. That is a statement of fact.

The match will kick off Sunday, October 11 at 4:30 p. m., CT, FuboTV) at Anfield, though the 90 minutes that follow will be more a spectacle than a game, if not a circus.

By now the football world - as well as the general news cycle and relevant authorities - has had more than a week to absorb the shock of the sport's biggest tremor of recent times. JON SUPER / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES Manchester City's Antoine Semenyo (left) and Liverpool's Florian Wirtz fight for the ball the last time the two sides met back in April.

The Sky Blues are certain to get a rough welcome by Reds fans as the two clubs meet at Anfield next Sunday for the first time since Man City's guilty verdict of breaking more than 100 Premier League financial rules between 2009 and 2018 - a span that saw Manchester take the league title and Carabao Cup over Liverpool. Man City, according to the findings of an independent commission, broke more than 100 of the Premier League's financial rules between 2009 and 2018.

Its breaches, per the ruling, were deliberate, premeditated and at industrial scale. On Tuesday the Premier League weighed in, stating that City had used "sham contracts," circular financing (think circular trading) and obstruction to mislead auditors and stall an eight-year investigation into its accounts.

Now, to be clear, the findings themselves were not the shock. Anyone who had followed City's progress between the years in question had formed a clear enough picture of the club's, shall we say, accounting practices.

No, that dizzy feeling of the ground shifting underfoot was due to the verdict: guilty. In what world are the ultra-wealthy, the 0.01 per cent, obliged to play by the same rules as everyone else?

If Manchester City's majority owner - an Abu Dhabi equity fund overseen by a member of the emirate's royal family - seemed a bit stunned by the ruling, that would be why. These are people who have never encountered words and phrases like "no," "stop" and "His Majesty's Revenue and Customs.

Of course, the club is lodging an appeal - which it triggered Friday - and it claims it has a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence" it will use to clear its name. What baffles the mind is why they did not present such evidence over the near decade-long investigative process?