Man City guilty: Liverpool, Man Utd, even Spurs among new winners of reallocated trophies on alternate timeline

· Football365

Manchester City have been found guilty of almost all the 115 charges. So now we must reallocate all those trophies on an alternate timeline.

The interlull demands content, and thus right now the entire football media landscape has come together as one in an attempt to manifest an outcome to Manchester City’s long-running 115-charge elephant in their bursting-at-the-seams trophy room into existence.

Maybe there will be an announcement soon and they will be relegated or docked one billion points or all their players forced to spend the next seven seasons with their shoes tied together! Or more likely maybe they won’t for ages yet if at all! But maybe they will! Who knows? Not us, that’s for damn sure! So let’s pretend!

How, then, to take advantage of this piping hot news line?

Well, we had great fun a couple of years back with a counterfactual that stripped away all Chelsea’s pots and pans of the Abramovich era when, in one of the biggest and most shocking of Barclays twists, it turned out he might not have been the altruistic good guy we all thought he was.

So let’s do that again, but with every City bauble since their takeover. You’ll be pleased to know our methods will be every bit as subjective this time around, as we set about reallocating all their post-2009 silverware with thorough and dispassionate academic rigour except for the (frequent) times we really want a different specific outcome for our own small and twatty reasons. Enjoy.

2010/11 FA Cup

City’s first ill-gotten gain of the Abu Dhabi era came with victory over Stoke City at Wembley in the 2011 FA Cup final. Let’s rewrite history. City’s run started with needing a replay to get past Championship Leicester, so it’s the Foxes who take their place in round four where they, like City, get past League One Notts County at the second attempt having been held to a draw at Meadow Lane.

But that’s where the fun ends for Leicester, sadly, as they go down to top-flight Aston Villa in the last 16. Villa then land City’s plum draw in the quarter-finals against the only non-Premier League side left in the competition, Reading. From there it’s a semi-final against Manchester United for the Villans, and the first opportunity to use real-world results to pretend this guff is in some way scientific or in any way valid. United took four points off Villa in 2010/11, so it is they who progress to face Stoke at Wembley. United beat Stoke home and away in the league and thus the first but not the last City bauble makes its way across the city to their hated local rivals.

New winners: Manchester United

2011/12 Premier League

> “Agueroooo! I swear you’ll never see anything like this ever again. So watch it, drink it in… wait a minute. What’s this? There’s a VAR check apparently and yes, it looks like City’s sponsorship deals are a toenail offside there. It’s cruel for City, but all we can ask for is correct decisions. The goal and indeed the entire season-long battle to create this scenario and with it perhaps the most memorable single moment in the entire history of the Premier League are now struck not just from the record but from existence itself. Manchester United are Premier League champions again.”

Not everything about this brave new City-less world is going to be better. We haven’t even got to Gerrard’s slip yet.

New winners: Manchester United

2012 Community Shield

Right, at this point we have a decision to make. Is our City-less Premier League Universe (PLU) the same one where we’ve already nabbed all Chelsea’s trophies? Or is it a whole other new PLU? Can Chelsea get new trophies here? That doesn’t seem right, but we’re also not entirely sure we can be bothered cross-referencing everything we do here against not one but two alternative versions of reality, only one of which is actual reality. We’ve got our limits. No, really, we have.

So what we’re probably going to do is just any time we find ourselves potentially awarding a trophy to Chelsea simply go with any other option available. Ergo, new 2012 Premier League champions Manchester United take the Community Shield. It’s up to you whether they beat actual 2012 FA Cup winners Chelsea or alternative PLU 1 FA Cup winners Liverpool in the Traditional Hypothetical Season Curtain-Raiser.

New winners: Manchester United

2013/14 Capital One Cup

Fun one, this. In the real world, Wigan got a 5-0 spanking in round three. In our world, Wigan get a bye to round four, but here they fall to Newcastle, who again get the better of second-tier opposition in the form of Leicester in the last eight. That sets up a lovely semi-final between Newcastle and West Ham. Their league games that season give us a perfect template for a two-legged semi-final, and a goalless draw at St James’ Park would appear to give the Hammers the edge, but in January of that season Newcastle went to Upton Park or the Boleyn Ground or whatever they were calling it then and won 3-1.

And that means we’ve got a Capital One final with narrative out the wazoo as Newcastle take on Manchester City’s real-world victims Sunderland. And Sunderland beat Newcastle home and away that season, ergo…

New winners: Sunderland

2013/14 Premier League

City’s malfeasance really does rob of us some iconic moments. We’ve already lost the most dramatic moment of Premier League title history with AGUERRRROOOOOO after-timed out of existence, and now we lose the funniest moment of Premier League title history with Gerrard’s Slip now just a footnote as Brendan Rodgers’ brilliant side buckle and swash their way to Premier League glory to end that long, long wait for another league title.

New winners: Liverpool

2015/16 Capital One Cup

There’s a lot of Capital Ones and Carabaos to go round in this City-free world, a world which is very similar to the world without lawyers that Lionel Hutz imagines in The Simpsons.

The 2014 winners Sunderland benefit again from City’s vanishing, with a 4-1 third-round thrashing now obliterated as they go through to face Palace in the last 16. With four points against Palace that season, Sunderland move on again to the last eight and further success against Championship side Hull. That puts the Black Cats into a semi-final against Everton and it’s a thriller to be fair.

Using as we must their league games for that season as the fairest possible guide, Everton appear to have the tie wrapped up after a 6-2 November win at Goodison but end up holding on grimly for a 6-5 aggregate win after Sunderland’s 3-0 win at the Stadium of Light.

A stone-cold classic and it again sets us up with an absolute doozy of a local derby final between Everton and Liverpool which, obviously, Liverpool win on the basis that the Goodison clash between the two that season ended in its traditional draw while Liverpool secured their equally traditional Anfield victory.

New winners: Liverpool

2017/18 Carabao Cup

West Brom benefit to the tune of a third-round walkover and fourth-round victory with City no longer around, but they come unstuck against Leicester in the last eight. The Foxes get the better of Championship side Bristol City over two legs to reach the final against Arsenal.

In real life, City gave Arsenal a 3-0 schooling at Wembley. In this reality it’s a tough one to call with Arsenal and Leicester both picking up victories over the other during the course of the season. Arsenal’s was by a single goal, however, and in August. Leicester’s 3-1 win in May is clearly the more relevant here, so two years after their fairytale league triumph Leicester also now have a Carabao on the mantlepiece. A great story.

New winners: Leicester

2017/18 Premier League

This is one we fully expect to see actually claimed nay demanded in real life by the new Premier League-winning manager if/when City get sent down. Because that new Premier League-winning manager is Jose Mourinho, who was already weirdly proud of his achievement in finishing 19 points behind Man City and will hardly be quiet about it now.

Mourinho’s side only just squeak home, though. In the actual table they finished four points clear of Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham, but Jose’s United were daft enough to collect three of those points against City. Spurs on the other hand, unlike more recent times, were not so silly as to constantly pick up meaningless points that don’t count against Manchester City. They got righteously spangled home and away which leaves them just a point behind the new champions. Spursy, that.

New winners: Manchester United

2018 Community Shield

Another crossing of the streams in the Chelsea-less and City-less PLUs. In real life, City won the 2018 title and Chelsea the 2018 FA Cup. In our different but only very, very debatably better world, United actually did the double. So that means their Community Shield clash is in fact against Spurs, who are now the 2018 Premier League runners-up. With us? Good.

Now this could be a tricky one to dish out but luckily the 2018 Community Shield took place in August 2018 and the ever-mischievous fixture computer was kind enough to give us a Manchester United v Tottenham fixture in that very month. Seems obvious that this must be the basis for our decision-making here; anything else would be mere pointless guesswork and we’ll have none of that here.

What’s fun about this is that Spurs won that league game at Old Trafford 3-0, so in our reality they’ve won the Community Shield without actually winning a trophy. We’re positively giddy about the imaginary Discourse we’ve just triggered here about what exactly constitutes a ‘major trophy’ but then remembered that actually none of that matters because in this universe Spurs have already won the 2016/17 Premier League title. Starting to think that maybe we should just keep City and Chelsea to be honest.

New winners: Tottenham

2018/19 Carabao Cup

So very many Carabaos. League One Oxford are our recipients of a third-round bye before Fulham sort them out in round four. Next up is Leicester, who took four points off Fulham in the league and thus ease through to the semi-finals here. League One Burton Albion suffer much the same fate against Leicester as they did against City, although probably without the 9-0 bit.

Leicester, who are proving to be unlikely beneficiaries of this new world, go on to face Chelsea in the final. Luckily (for us) we don’t even need to worry about whether Chelsea exist or not because it’s Leicester’s cup anyway. They took four points off a Chelsea team that no longer exists and we’re not going to tie ourselves up in metaphysical quandaries about the merits of that. We’re simply going to congratulate the Foxes on yet another piece of silverware.

New winners: Leicester

2018/19 Premier League

Once we accept the obviously correct position that stripping all City’s honours from 2008-2018 also requires by definition the loss of all subsequent ones until and unless a real world reset wipes the slate clean, then this becomes the easiest of all to reallocate.

It is, quite obviously, Liverpool. We shouldn’t really need to go into too much detail about why it’s Liverpool. They finished one point behind Manchester City and a genuinely ludicrous 27 points clear of anyone else. You can tinker round the edges all you want, you can even criticise our unimpeachably scientific process in some of these decisions if you absolutely must, but this is Liverpool’s title.

New winners: Liverpool

2018/19 FA Cup

Watford were the obliging Wembley victims as City completed the first and yet now non-existent domestic treble. It’s fitting really, because absolutely nobody really talked about it at the time because they didn’t do the Quadruple and that’s all anyone cares about now. Wiping the one and only domestic treble in English football history out of existence feels like it’s something that should cause more of a ripple in the fabric of the game than this. Ah well.

Given Watford wait in the final, it’s surely all eyes on City’s path to see who gets their hands on the grand old trophy now (SPOILER: No it isn’t) with Rotherham reprieved in round three after shipping seven at the Etihad. They go out in round four to Premier League side Burnley, themselves now able to wipe a 5-0 defeat from the record books, with League Two Newport also falling victim to Sean Dyche’s team in the last 16.

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