Who Has Been Hurt Most by the Man City Era: Liverpool, Aston Villa, and the Bruises Nobody Counts

In the 76th minute, Aston Villa led 2-0 at the Etihad, and I closed my waterproof pencil. In a notebook with a broken spine, I had just written a line: another season will pass, and people will only remember the runner-up. At Anfield, Liverpool were 2-0 up against Wolverhampton. If both scorelines held, Jürgen Klopp's team would win England with 92 points, a total that would have been enough for the title in most seasons in Premier League history.

I had already prepared a piece about the sorrow of the nearly-winner, the kind of article I have written across five stages of my career. Then İlkay Gündoğan headed past Aston Villa in the 76th minute. Rodri struck from distance in the 78th. Gündoğan settled it in the 81st. Five minutes. Three goals. Thirty-eight matchdays overturned in less time than it takes to brew a coffee.

Manchester City finished the season on 93 points. Liverpool on 92. The gap between the title and second place was one point, exactly the gap of three years earlier, when City had 98 and Liverpool 97.

I reopened the notebook and struck out the line I had written. The reason was not that it was wrong, but that it was insufficient. From that night, I added a section at the back of the notebook and gave it three words: Who Took It Away. That section records what English clubs have lost since a team in pale blue on the eastern side of Manchester began taking everything.

My notebook still holds a few tears of Moscow, the smudged ink of a rainy night at Luzhniki in 2026. But that page is about Luka Modrić, about a man who ran on twenty years of exile. This new page is about something else: clubs worn down not by a single defeat, but by a decade.

A decade measured in distance

In September 2026, a group from Abu Dhabi bought Manchester City. Four years later, on May 13, 2026, Sergio Agüero scored at 93 minutes and 20 seconds and the club won England for the first time in 44 years. In 2026, Pep Guardiola arrived. From then on, English football entered a cycle in which the title was no longer the goal of a season but the habit of a decade. Between 2026 and 2026, Manchester City won the Premier League eight times.

This is not the story of the winner. It is the story of the price others paid, and of how that price was recorded, or quietly forgotten.

There is a commentary piece I read, a ranking of the clubs most harmed by Manchester City. It placed Liverpool first, Manchester United second, then Tottenham, Aston Villa, Everton, Newcastle, Leicester, Chelsea, and pushed Arsenal down to tenth. It is an engaging list, but on close reading it blends different kinds of harm onto a single scale: lost points, lost players, lost standing, and lost stories that were never told.

I have no intention of rewriting that list in its old order. I want to find the mechanism beneath it.

97 points and 92 points: the two most expensive near-misses in history

In 2026/19, Liverpool lost exactly one match all season, took 97 points, and finished second. Manchester City had 98. Chelsea were third on 72, twenty-five points behind Liverpool. In 2026/22, Liverpool took 92 points and finished second. City had 93. Chelsea were third on 74, eighteen points behind.

Those two gaps, 25 and 18, tell a story the table does not. They say that in those seasons England did not have a four-team or six-team title race. England had two teams at one level, and everyone else at another. The third-placed club finished further from the top than from mid-table.

Based on my experience of watching matches across many seasons, I have learned this: people measure a champion by its own points total. The true measure lies in the gap between second and third. When the runner-up has 97 points and still does not win, the problem is not the runner-up. The problem is the structure of the league.

In most Premier League seasons, 92 points wins the title. For seven near-consecutive seasons, 92 points was only second place. Liverpool did not lose because they were weak. They lost because another club existed at the same time. That is the most measurable, most verifiable, and most contested kind of harm, because it rests on a claim that cannot be proven: that without City, Liverpool would have won two or three more titles.

That claim cannot be tested. It does not need to be tested to matter. It only needs to be placed in the right spot.

The people who were taken, and the names never mentioned

If Liverpool lost points, Tottenham lost people. And this is the part I care about more.

In 2026, Tottenham sold Kyle Walker to Manchester City for around 50 million pounds, then a world record for a defender. Walker is precisely the profile Guardiola's system weaponises: recovery pace, overlapping and inverting. When Walker left White Hart Lane, Tottenham lost a tactical pillar and City gained a perfect piece. One player, two consequences, pulling in opposite directions.

Tottenham had just finished 2026/17 second on 86 points, the best season of their modern history. After Walker left, the club entered a slow, irreversible decline: third, then drifting from the top group, then seasons scrapping for European places. A club that had touched the highest threshold returned to where it began.

In Birmingham, the story is heavier. Aston Villa sold Gareth Barry to Manchester City in 2026, then James Milner in 2026. Two central midfielders, two consecutive seasons, one buyer. Villa were then a top-six side, finishing sixth in 2026/10. After losing those two pillars they slid: ninth, then lower, then relegation in 2026/16 with 17 points, one of the worst seasons the Premier League has seen.

Even the original commentary concedes that Villa's collapse cannot be attributed wholly to those two deals. I agree with that caution. But I would add what the piece does not say: when a club loses two central players in two consecutive years, what is lost is not a position on the pitch. What is lost is the collective memory of the dressing room. Young players learned the game from Barry and Milner. When they left, a generation of apprentices lost its teachers.

My notebook's Who Took It Away section has more lines.

Everton sold Joleon Lescott to City in 2026, Jack Rodwell in 2026, and John Stones in 2026. Three centre-backs, three moments, one destination. Arsenal sold Kolo Touré and Emmanuel Adebayor in 2026, then Gaël Clichy and Samir Nasri in 2026. Four players in three years. Leicester sold Riyad Mahrez to City in 2026 for around 60 million pounds, two years after a historic title, and Leicester themselves were relegated in 2026/23.

Chelsea belong on that list too, though rarely named. Kevin De Bruyne once belonged to Chelsea, was sold in 2026, and City bought him a year later and built a decade around him. Frank Lampard wore City's shirt in 2026/15. Chelsea lost few points to those deals, but they lost two names that had shaped their identity.

There is a pattern here, and it is clearer than any ranking: City did not merely beat direct rivals on the pitch. City bought players from direct rivals. Those purchases were lawful, paid in full, sometimes above market. But their consequence is structural, not match-based. A club that loses three points can win them back next week. A club that loses a key centre-back to a direct rival takes years to fill the gap, if ever.

My view of the transfer market, after fifty-three years of watching, is simple: deals like these do not enrich the seller. They turn the seller into a supplier of semi-finished goods. A club develops a player, teaches him to perform at the top, then sells him to a richer club so that club can win trophies. The revenue does not buy back the lost time needed to develop the next one.

The dreamer, and the ranking that cannot be measured

They called me a dreamer. The ball has never hidden anything from me.

The ball tells me the greatest harm is not Liverpool's. Liverpool lost two possible titles, but they still have 97 points, 92 points, a 2026 title with 99 points, a 2026 European crown. That club remains one of the best in its own history. Their harm is the harm of the nearly-winner: a large pain, but the pain of the one standing closest to the summit.

The greatest harm lies where no camera goes. It lies in a club relegated with 17 points that never returned to its old standing. It lies in academy players stuck behind an expensive signing. It lies in grounds staff, street vendors, ball boys at a stadium that will not host top-flight football next season. When a club is relegated, hundreds of people lose part of their livelihood, and nobody writes about them in a ranking of harm.

I still go to stadiums on days without matches. On an empty pitch at night, I hear the ball breathing, and that breathing does not care which club bought which player. But when I ask a groundskeeper about the years his club was in the top flight, his voice changes. That is a harm with no data.

The contrarian angle: Manchester City took nothing

Here I want to push back on both the original commentary and the usual public reaction.

Framing the question as who City harmed assumes that without City, everything would have turned out better. That assumption is convenient, but it hides a structural fact: City did not invent the mechanism of talent erosion. City simply used it most effectively.

English football had a financial hierarchy long before 2026. Big clubs always bought from smaller ones. What City changed was not the nature of the mechanism but its scale and speed. With near-unlimited resources, a club can compress a thirty-year erosion cycle into ten.

Remove City from the picture and Liverpool might have won two more titles. But Tottenham would still sell their best player to a richer club. Aston Villa would still lose their pillars. Everton would still slide. The structure does not vanish when you remove one link; it finds another.

And there is a large gap in the original commentary I must state plainly: it never mentions what resources built that dominance, or how those resources were permitted within the rules. In February 2026, the Premier League charged Manchester City with 115 alleged breaches of financial rules. That is a parallel story, without a final verdict, and I will not pre-empt the tribunal. But a piece asking who City harmed, while ignoring whether City was permitted to do so, has skipped half the story.

I am not saying City cheated. I am saying an analysis of harm cannot detach itself from the question of whether the resources causing that harm were legitimate. That is the principle I have kept across five stages of my career: if you measure only outcomes and never ask about conditions, you are merely decorating a table.

On Arsenal, and a scale that never balances

The original list placed Arsenal tenth, a choice designed to surprise. I understand the logic: Arsenal sent four players to City, but Arsenal received one man back, Mikel Arteta, who worked as a City assistant before becoming Arsenal manager in December 2026.

That is a subtle point, and I acknowledge it. But it also shows the problem with the whole list: it adds and subtracts things that do not share a unit. A good head coach and a key centre-back cannot be converted into the same value. Arsenal lost four players between 2026 and 2026, and Arsenal also went eighteen years without a Premier League title. The two events are connected, but they cannot be summed arithmetically.

The ranking mixes three kinds of harm onto one axis: harm in points, where Liverpool are clearest; harm in talent, where Tottenham, Aston Villa, Everton and Leicester are examples; and harm in symbolic standing, where Manchester United stand, having lost supremacy to a same-city neighbour. Three different units, one ordering, like ranking rain by wetness.

Manchester United are a special case. Their harm is more symbolic than technical. When Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2026, City had just won twice in three seasons. The famous line about noisy neighbours reversed direction. But United did not lose players to City on the scale of Tottenham or Aston Villa. They lost standing, and standing is hard to measure in points.

Newcastle and Leicester appear in the original list with almost no supporting data. Newcastle were pushed out of European contention in a period when places were compressed by the dominance of the top group. Leicester went from a 2026 title to selling Mahrez in 2026 and relegation in 2026. Both deserve a place, but they need a clearer reason than a list needing ten names.

On the return of the back three, I hold my own view. In recent seasons, more and more coaches have switched to a back three after being carved open by City. I do not see that as tactical progress. I see it as a coach protecting himself from criticism. With a back three you do not solve the basic problem that the opponent moves the ball faster than you; you add a cushion so nobody says your back four was breached. The harm City inflicted on the rest of England is not on the scoresheet. It is that City made a whole generation of coaches more cautious about their own ideas.

What the commentary forgot

There is one kind of harm neither the original piece nor online debate mentions: wage inflation.

When one club pays above the market for players, others must pay more to keep theirs. A good full-back at Tottenham suddenly demands a City full-back's wage. The parent club must choose: pay more for one man, or lose him and find a replacement in an inflated market. Both options cause harm. This kind never appears in a table or a ranking, yet it flows through every financial report of every Premier League club.

I have sat in many press rooms and heard coaches speak of a distorted market without ever naming who distorted it. I understand why they stay silent. Saying it is treated as blame. But that silence is itself a kind of harm: it makes public debate poorer than its own subject.

The scoresheet cannot capture the heart, and football writes its poetry exactly there.

If I had to re-rank, I would not follow the original order. I would split harm into two columns. The first records what can be measured: 97 points, 92 points, the 25-point and 18-point gaps, a 50-million-pound fee, 17 points and a relegation ticket. The second records what cannot: a generation of young players losing its teachers, a club losing its identity, a town losing its Saturday, a coach losing the courage to play the way he believes.

The first column belongs to Liverpool. The second belongs to the names the commentary placed at the bottom, or never mentioned.

Sixty-nine years on, I still believe a beautiful pass is a love letter. But I also believe a beautiful pass only means something in a match where both teams have an equal chance. When that chance is distorted before the referee blows his whistle, beauty becomes a luxury reserved for whoever pays.

What will remain once the era closes

If Manchester City are stripped of a title in future because of the pending charges, the story turns. The harms the original piece described as consequences of sporting dominance would be retold as consequences of a violation. Liverpool might be handed a title back. But Tottenham will not get their 2026 Kyle Walker back. Aston Villa will not return to the Premier League of 2026/16 with 17 points. John Stones will not go back to Everton at twenty-two. Those harms cannot be restored, whatever the verdict.

That is why I do not see this as a story about Manchester City. It is a story about a system that allowed one club to accumulate enough resources to reshape an entire league within a decade, and about how that system only began to question itself after everything had happened.

I do not know what the final verdict will be. I know what I will write in the notebook: that across those ten years, the best team in England was sometimes the richest team, and sometimes the two overlapped so completely that no one could tell them apart.

When the radio goes on air at midnight, the pitch sleeps quietly, and football knows how to wait. I will wait too. For a season where third place finishes three points behind the champion instead of twenty-five. For an afternoon when a Tottenham full-back turns down the offer, not for money, but because he believes his club can win. For a night when my notebook no longer needs to open the section called Who Took It Away.

Until then, I keep taking notes. And I still believe that whoever writes on behalf of unnamed fates should not rank other people's pain, only tell it, slowly enough that the reader can hear the ball breathing.