Manchester City's guilty verdict has produced some of the strongest reactions English football has seen in years. Former players, managers and pundits are arguing not only about how severely City should be punished, but whether the trophies won during the period covered by the case can still be viewed in the same way.
Roy Keane wants City players to throw their medals away, Jamie Carragher believes titles should be removed from the club's record, and Jesse Marsch has called for relegation. Yet the reaction has not been completely one-sided: Wayne Rooney has defended the players who won those trophies, Micah Richards has spoken of his heartbreak, while Pep Guardiola has publicly stood behind the club he led through its most successful era.
Roy Keane: “Stick those medals in the bin”
Keane delivered perhaps the most brutal response of all. The former Manchester United captain argued that City's achievements during the period affected by the breaches had been fundamentally compromised and said he would not want to keep the medals if he had been one of the players involved.
“If I was a player, I'd be 100% sticking those medals in the bin.”
Keane rejected the argument that City's players simply won their trophies on the pitch and should therefore be separated entirely from what happened above them. “They won it on the pitch because cheating was going on,” he said, while acknowledging that the verdict was also damaging for the reputation of the Premier League itself.
Ian Wright was similarly uncompromising, describing City's offences as “cheating on an industrial scale” and arguing that an unprecedented case requires an “unprecedented punishment”. For Wright, the significance extends beyond City because the credibility of the Premier League's financial system is now also under scrutiny.
Carragher wants the titles removed — Rooney disagrees
Jamie Carragher has gone even further on the question of City's historical achievements. The former Liverpool defender believes titles won during the relevant period should be removed from City's official record and has also called for action against the club's ownership.
Carragher nevertheless expressed sympathy for the players themselves, arguing that many would have believed assurances that everything behind the scenes was legitimate. His point is that removing a trophy years later cannot recreate the experience denied to the teams who finished behind City, with Liverpool among those he believes suffered most.
Wayne Rooney has taken a noticeably different position. Manchester United lost the 2011/12 Premier League title to City on goal difference, but Rooney says he would not feel comfortable being handed another championship retrospectively because United did not do enough on the pitch to win it.
He also sympathised with City's players, arguing that footballers who had no knowledge of what was happening at executive level would be devastated to have their medals removed. That does not mean Rooney wants City treated leniently: he has advocated relegating them to the lowest possible division and imposing spending restrictions for several seasons.
Paul Scholes sees that particular argument rather differently. Responding to former United team-mates who said they would not want retrospective medals, Scholes joked on Instagram that he was a “greedy b------” and absolutely would take another one if City's titles were reassigned.
Jesse Marsch: “Everyone knew”
Jesse Marsch has now added one of the most provocative reactions to the debate. The former Leeds United manager said City should be punished severely and relegated, while claiming that suspicions about the club's finances were widespread inside football.
Marsch pointed specifically to the summer of 2022, when Leeds sold Raphinha and Kalvin Phillips and reported making money in the transfer market. He recalled being sceptical when City were also presenting themselves as profitable and singled out the announced £52 million transfer fee for Erling Haaland: “Yeah, OK, sure!”
Those comments are particularly striking because Marsch was actually managing in the Premier League at the time. Rather than looking back at City's finances purely as an outside observer, he is arguing that questions were already being asked within the game long before the commission delivered its verdict.
Micah Richards is “devastated” — Guardiola stands by City
For Micah Richards, the reaction has been much more personal. The former City defender said he felt “absolutely devastated” after reading the findings, explaining that he joined the club at 14 and remains deeply emotionally attached to it.
Richards also described speaking to a lifelong City supporter who was in tears after the verdict. He admitted feeling angry, saddened and confused, particularly because supporters and former players are now caught between the commission's damning findings and City's continued insistence that the decision is wrong.
Pep Guardiola, meanwhile, has offered City unequivocal public support. The former manager said he remains behind the club, its ownership, chairman, executives, players and supporters, telling fans that “we will get through this together”. Guardiola did not attempt to relitigate the commission's findings in his message, but there was no ambiguity about where his loyalty remains.
The divide is therefore becoming increasingly clear. Keane, Wright, Carragher and Marsch believe the scale of the case demands extraordinary consequences, while Rooney is uncomfortable with rewriting results achieved by players who may have known nothing about the breaches. Richards is wrestling with what the verdict means for the club he loves, and Guardiola is standing firmly alongside City as they prepare their legal fightback.
Manchester City have appealed and continue to deny wrongdoing, so the final sporting consequences remain unresolved. But whatever happens in the appeal, one consequence has already arrived: some of the most famous achievements of the Premier League era are now being debated in a completely different light.
Published by Patrick Jane
05.10.2026