theguardian.com
How drawn-out saga of Manchester City’s alleged cheating came to this
Club’s ruthless approach was always at odds with their public image and this inglorious story has further to run
There is no episode in English football’s history that even resembles a precedent for the epic Manchester City disciplinary drama, which encapsulates the modern game at breaking point. Here was a grand, stoic old club, taken over in 2008 by Abu Dhabi royalty and mega-funded to imperious success, then crowned serial champions by a league simultaneously pursuing charges of monstrous financial cheating.
On Friday sources confirmed that saga, in which Pep Guardiola’s expensively constructed City teams won five Premier League titles and the Champions League during the years since the investigation began in December 2018, culminated in guilty findings on almost all of more than 100 charges. Continue reading...
![[Opening scene is WESTMINSTER, LONDON. Over Downing Street a huge ALIEN SPACECRAFT hovers, silent, still, filling the whole sky a la Independence Day].
[Cut to INSIDE 10 DOWNING STREET. The (then) prime Minister DAVID CAMERON is looking out of his office window at the ship.]
VOICE FROM OFF-SCENE, BEHIND CAMERON:
Prime Minister…
CAMERON [addressing the person behind him, still keeping his eyes fixed ahead in dread at the spaceship]:
Yes?
[We see the speaker is MICHAEL GOVE, then Education Secretary]:
GOVE:
Let me do it.
CAMERON:
For God's sake, Michael, you're the Education Secretary! You've never flown a fighter plane in your life!
GOVE:
But I know I could do it, David. I could fly a fighter plane into the big space- ship...
...and shoot all the aliens.
CAMERON:
But you have no military training!
GOVE:
David
I haven't told you this, but...
I used to be a journalist. For The Times.
[Cameron reacts, turning to look at Gove with awe and respect, as if only now truly seeing him for the first time].
GOVE:
I wrote two articles about planes, David.
I've got strong opinions about aliens.
I know I can do this job.
[Cut to a title card panel]:
AND SO:
[Then cut again to Cameron on the roof of Number 10, watching a Michael Gove pilot a fighter jet up towards the spacecraft, and then completely miss it, careering towards Earth, as Cameron buries his face in his hands].
[Ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreictdw36myuavccr5oqqgsfb2jzkicnjrxhcexhned7ux7ws6oq5ny)
