Few pundits have a more personal stake in the Manchester City case than Micah Richards, who played for the club during the period under scrutiny. Roy Keane has no such conflict, and has said City’s players should throw their medals in the bin. Put the two reactions next to each other and you get the most pointed disagreement of the week.
Richards: “I would die for that club”
Richards spoke on The Rest Is Football podcast after an independent panel found City in breach of the league’s financial rules. Football365 reported that the panel’s findings included the use of “sham” contracts. City say they will fight the verdict, starting with an appeal.
Richards said he “felt absolutely devastated” by the panel’s use of the phrase “sham contracts”. “I would die for that club,” he said. He described how a supporter who had lodged with him as a youth player was “in tears”, and called the uncertainty “heartbreaking”.
What makes his comments more than a fan’s lament is the balance. “I feel saddened, I feel angry, I feel a little bit confused because, on the other side, you have City’s side of the story,” he said. He is not claiming the panel is wrong. He is saying he has only heard one account.
In a separate Football365 round-up of reactions, Richards is quoted from a Sky panel discussion saying: “no one’s taking my Premier League title away.”
Keane: “100% sticking those medals in the bin”
Keane’s position is the opposite of conciliatory. According to the same round-up, he said: “If I was a player, I’d be 100% sticking those medals in the bin.” He added: “They won it on the pitch because cheating was going on.”
It is a typically uncompromising Keane line. It is also, notably, a hypothetical about what he would do in the players’ shoes, rather than a ruling on any individual. And because the case is under appeal, it is worth remembering that City deny wrongdoing and no sanction has been decided.
Why they cannot agree
The disagreement is partly about what a title is. For Richards, it is something earned by players on the pitch, and he regards it as his. For Keane, a title won in a period of alleged cheating carries a different meaning, whatever the results said at the time.
It is also about proximity. Richards knows the dressing room and the people around it, and his anger is as much about being tarred as about the verdict. Keane is speaking from outside, with the clarity and the bluntness that gives him.
Both are reacting to a case that is not finished. That is why Jamie Carragher’s call for speed, which we covered in the piece on Carragher on City and Arsenal, is so widely shared: everyone, whatever their view, wants an outcome.
Our verdict
Richards has the better of the tone. Admitting confusion and anger at once, while asking for City’s side to be heard, is harder than telling players to throw away their medals. But Keane’s instinct will resonate with supporters of other clubs who see the sanction debate as one about fairness of competition.
Joe Cole offered a third path, arguing that what happens on the pitch is the only thing that is truly pure. Read his argument in Joe Cole’s case for Man City against Keane and Carragher. The question of who is right will not be answered by any of them. It will be answered by the appeal.
Quotations are as reported by Football365. We have not heard the original podcast or broadcast audio.
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