The judgment about the 115 charges against Manchester City has been expected 'imminent' for some time. On February 8, city manager Pep Guardiola said it would come within a month. That was almost six weeks ago.
The entire Byzantine Farrago, dressed in absurd levels of confidentiality, scaffolding through threats and grand -like and mystery, sometimes seemed creepy similar to episodes of the process of Franz Kafka. Resolution is seductive and torturing out of reach.
The managers of the city and especially their legal team, like to portray the club as the Josef K of this labyrinthian maneuverrings, the victim of a shady higher power, but the truth is that the English football fans are Josef K, more and more stunned, more and more impotter, more and more disillusioned.
There are some things we already know, even before we know the judgments about the 115 charges. Or no matter how many costs there are. Estimates seem to differ, but we know that the lawyers have already won. Not only the lawyers of the city or the lawyers of the Premier League. The lawyers of both parties. All.
Based on the pure grandeur of his statements, the general counsel for the city, Simon Cliff, seems to believe that he now runs really English football. Maybe he actually runs English football. He certainly seems to have Richard Masters, the rather besieged chief executive of the Premier League, exactly where he wants him.
Cliff is a vague musk -like figure, who looks like shouting the opportunities and calling the shots. He tells the other 19 Premier League clubs which is legal and what is illegal and when he has to fall in line and when he should not obey. The impression he gives is very bad that City now runs English football.
Cliff also has a sweet sense of sense. When Jean-Luc Dehaene, a former Prime Minister of Belgium, who also served as one of the financial fair play officers of UEFA, died in 2014, Cliff sent an internal e-mail.
Leaked documents in the German newspaper Der Spiegel quoted Cliff's reaction to the news in that missive, as he referred to membership of the body. “1 Down,” Der Spiegel quoted Cliff as writing, “6 to go.”
We will hear much more from Cliff when the judgments are announced. Much, much more. But as soon as we passed Cliff and the rest of the legal profession while they party on the fat of the football country, who wins more? Take a wild gamble. It starts with a zero and ends with a zero and has many zeros in between.
“Who wins”, “a Premier League director told me Monday:” It's the ultimate worthless victory. There can be no winners. There are only both sides in losers.
'Clarity is what everyone craves. And stability. But there is a widespread recognition that if we are not careful, we will kill the Golden Goose. We are here on the edge of an abyss. '
The Premier League has long been on its way to that abyss. The hurry to the edge started under Richard Scudamore when the rich became richer and the fans became fleeced and the smaller clubs were pressed until the pips squeak.
And that trend has only gotten worse. I know more and more fans who can no longer tolerate it to go to home games, because the atmosphere they ever loved has been so diluted by the desire to prioritize tickets for tourists, who pay more to watch, and for business gamblers who miss half of the game while they are worth their money in an entertainment.
Their own decades of loyalty seem to count for nothing.
There are a number of fantastic, well -run, responsible clubs in the Premier League, but they are in a minority alongside those we call the Big Six, who tried to load to a European Super League not so long ago.
That movement is said to have killed English football as we know it, but the gap between rich and the poor has since continued to grow.
Steve Parish, co-owner of Crystal Palace, once summarized his football philosophy by asking why supermarkets should help corner stores.
Parish is the kind of man who thinks the over-soul is something you pay for £ 48 for at J Sheekey in Covent Garden after you have sucked your shellfish Bisque back.
And there is a lot like him. That is why fans are becoming more and more disillusioned.
That is why we see a Groundswell of fan protesting at clubs such as Manchester United and Tottenham and Liverpool, while ticket prices are rising and the importance of the importance of the rest of the football pyramid fall.
And if the attempt by the Premier League to stop an edition that fails free when the ruling on the 115 charges are announced, if the authority of the competition is fatal, then something has been lost of the competitive balance of the top flight, because Saudi-Arabia and Abu Dhabi Lavish are more money on more money.
“If, for example, a sponsorship of £ 25 million a year of an airline is £ 100 million a year, if that is not impeded,” said the Club Chief Executive, “then the competition in the Premier League has disappeared and we will lose 6-0 a week.”
And if the city 'losing'? Well, then we are in a world of asterisks and points deduction and joy of rival fans and the coloring of one of the largest club sides we have seen in the English game and punitive lawsuits that will last forever.
When 'threatening' changes now, both parties will claim the victory and neither can understand that they have lost.
Don't point your finger at Maresca
The Chelsea Stottert season, qualifies it uncertainly for the Champions League and Enzo Maresca feels the heat.
I happen to believe that Maresca has done a half decent work to try to understand the chaos he received on Stamford Bridge. Just as Mauricio Pochettino did for him.
The problem is that, despite the geniuses responsible for recruitment at Chelsea, more than a billion pound spends on new players, most of them are not very good.
Instead of the manager, we may have to look a little higher on the food chain for someone to take the fall.
How does not yet deserve a statue
From the beginning of his time the leadership in Newcastle all the way to Wembley on Sunday, Eddie Howe has performed a brilliant task in St James' Park.
Good luck for him that everything and I have taught him praise with all my colleagues who have taught him for the past 48 hours and in recent years.
But let's get one thing right: each talked about building a statue in Newcastle is emotional incontinence, pure and simple.
If he wins a Premier League title or the Champions League, or builds an oeuvre in our competition, such as Sir Bobby Robson, then perhaps. But not now.
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