The spaces can stand both as a rebuke to an era of greed but also a tribute to the Premier League’s hunt for justice At half-time in the 2014 League Cup final, Sunderland led Manchester City 1-0. Yaya Touré equalised with a casually brilliant 30-yard clip 10 minutes after the break, and City went on to win 3-1. City, we now know from the independent commission, were at the time involved in a prolonged and calculated act of cheating, while Touré, the leaks in Der Spiegel suggested, was being paid via a dual contract to disguise exactly how much City were spending. Although precise details were left to the appendices, the commission’s report refers to payments “not recorded in an employment contract … but instead recorded in a consultancy agreement”. Had Sunderland won, they would not merely have ended a 41-year wait for a trophy but would have qualified for the following season’s Europa League. It’s possible, of course, that the strain the extra games placed on the squad would have led to relegation in 2015, rather than the familiar trope of sacking a manager, in this case Gus Poyet, midway through the season, and surviving thanks to a bump under his successor, Dick Advocaat. Continue reading...

Kemi Badenochs talks to our Editor about Conference, her 'new generation, new team, new party' vibe, and tackling Burnham not Starmer. She takes on criticisms from our readers, both Conservative and R...

What Pep Guardiola knew at Manchester City relates to the true nature of the club and more basic things like spectacle and human nature

How can Manchester City be trusted under these owners after they were found to have devised £900m of ‘sham’ contracts? How bad could it be, really? How serious can a breach of arcane financial regulations be, really? Just how damning can accountancy be? Even after Friday’s revelation that Manchester City had been found guilty of all but one of the charges brought against them by the Premier League, it was perhaps difficult to grasp the scale of what that meant. After the publication of the independent commission’s findings, there can be no doubt: the commission found that Manchester City cheated, that they did so deliberately, and that they have sought to cover that up with a campaign of calculated misinformation. City continue to maintain their innocence and issued a statement insisting that “the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”. It referred, once again, to “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of all of its positions”, and, again, insisted that “the club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League Board and Executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence”. Continue reading...

The BBC has spoken to residents in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian town of Oleshky who say they are being "constantly shelled".

Ineos founder Sir Jim Ratcliffe tells the BBC he thinks the country is "on the slide" and calls for more investment in the North Sea.