Carragher's defence of Man City's success unravels after 114-breach guilty verdict

Jamie Carragher has called for a multi-year punishment for Manchester City after the club were found guilty of 114 breaches of Premier League financial rules spanning a nine-year period from 2009 to 2018 — a verdict that throws his own previous defence of the club’s success into sharp relief.

During that period of artificially inflated revenue, City signed Sergio Agüero, David Silva, Kevin De Bruyne, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva and Ederson — players who became the foundation of their sustained dominance under Pep Guardiola. The club won three Premier League titles within the guilty period alone, the last of those being Guardiola’s first in charge, when City became the first team in English football history to reach 100 points in a single season.

Yet just weeks before City completed the treble in 2023, Carragher wrote in the Telegraph that money was not the overriding explanation for their success. “Rivals will say there is one, overriding reason for this dominance; City’s owner Sheikh Mansour,” he wrote. “That does not change the fact that what we are seeing on the field is Guardiola’s vision. He has constructed a side which is consistently producing quality we have never witnessed before.”

Carragher went further, arguing that Manchester United had spent more — albeit legally, as is now clear — and yet finished nowhere near City’s level. “Only the most blinkered and tribalistic will deny that,” he wrote of Guardiola’s achievements at the time.

The guilty verdict has reframed those arguments entirely. City’s artificially inflated revenues allowed them to fund transfer fees and wages that would otherwise have been beyond the club, even accounting for the wealth of their Abu Dhabi ownership. Without those breaches, the signings that underpinned Guardiola’s era may never have happened.

Carragher, whose Liverpool side missed out on multiple honours as City accumulated titles, now wants a punishment severe enough to leave a lasting mark on the club. City have lodged an appeal against the verdict, but for many — including, it appears, Carragher himself — the success of the past 15 years now carries a significant asterisk.