One fan suggested the City figures responsible should be walked naked through Manchester while a Game of Thrones shame nun rings a bell. That might be the most honest encapsulation of where American Premier League supporters stand right now.
Manchester City have been found guilty of almost all charges related to breaking Premier League financial rules across nearly a decade — a verdict first reported by The Athletic. City are appealing. Meanwhile, the rest of English football is asking what a proportionate punishment even looks like for something this far outside the rulebook.
At the Premier League Mornings Live fan fest in Denver — hundreds of supporters queuing before 5:30am, kids in their kits, 5:30am beers — the judgment wasn't background noise. It was the conversation. And for American fans specifically, it lands with a different kind of weight.
Why it hurts differently from this side of the Atlantic
Being a Premier League fan in the US takes actual commitment. Four a.m. alarms. Bars you had to search for. Road trips across state lines just to watch with people who get it. That effort compounds the betrayal for many supporters.
"The last 15 years haven't been real," one Liverpool fan in Denver said. "We put a lot of time and effort into supporting our club for a product and outcome that isn't real. No punishment would be harsh enough."
There's another layer too. A lot of Americans came to football precisely because it seemed immune to the machinery that governs US sport — the profit-first owners, the franchise relocations, the salary-cap gymnastics. A Brentford supporter in Denver put it simply: "Football was supposed to be different." That illusion, for many, is now gone.
And yet — and this is the part that doesn't translate easily — Liverpool and City fans traveled to Denver together, watched the 3-0 loss together, drank together. One Liverpool fan said, "Anything but expulsion from the league is too soft," then paused and added: "But I have Manchester City friendships that I value deeply." In the US, where you choose your football family rather than inherit it, club colors matter slightly less than simply finding someone who loves the game.
What punishment do fans actually want?
The most common answer, by a clear margin: force the owners to sell. Sheikh Mansour goes. The anger isn't directed at players or supporters — it's at the people who made the decisions.
Beyond that, fans suggested a range of measures:
- Points deductions — steep enough to effectively end their title ambitions, potentially for multiple seasons
- Relegation — a minority view, but held firmly by some, who argue the financial advantage will keep the money flowing even in a lower division
- Financial redistribution — fines paid out to clubs who finished behind City in the years they won, or a forced payroll reduction with the savings distributed across the league
- Title stripping — though even Liverpool fans aren't uniform on this one. "Strip the titles, but I think it's stupid to give them to the runner-up," one said. "The moment is gone."
A small minority went the other direction entirely. "The teams with the most money do not always win championships," one respondent argued. "Give Man City credit for using their money well, finding the right players and getting it done." City fans, for their part, were more pointed: "At least we bought the right players."
One City supporter tried a different framing — that the club's investment had grown the sport in England and beyond, suggesting others should be saying thank you. His Liverpool-supporting friend's response: "I think they should be in the first division of the Estonian league."
The US sports comparison that actually fits
Americans reached for comparisons instinctively. The LA Dodgers came up most often — though no confirmed financial scandal there, just a growing sense that unlimited spending without consequence is its own form of corruption. The Clippers were mentioned for setting up sham companies to hide a salary cap violation, though that involved one player. Fans suggested whatever the Clippers received, multiply it by 100.
The closest structural parallel may be the USC-Reggie Bush case from 2010: improper financial benefits, stripped titles, scholarships lost, postseason bans. Bush's Heisman was taken away, then reinstated a decade later. That's the kind of messy, unresolved precedent that the Premier League may now be staring down.
On the pitch, City didn't let the verdict slow them down. They beat Liverpool 3-0 at Anfield on Sunday — Haaland, Doku and Cherki on the scoresheet — leaving them three points clear of Arsenal at the top of the table. The team found guilty of gaming the system for a decade is currently winning the league on merit. That tension is going to define this entire season, and no appeal timeline is going to make it go away.
