A hypothetical for fans of Manchester City : would you say it was worth it?

If City are expelled from the Premier League , if they are subject to future restrictions on signing players and points deductions that run into the next decade, would you do it all again?

Because most of those you speak to would say, fairly unequivocally, yes. For the Aguero moment, for the Kompany header, for the Champions League win built on a foundation of now-questionable substance , the answer would clearly be yes.

That is because so much of football is about how it makes you feel . Not the finances or the squad cost restrictions or the asterisks on nearly a generation of achievements. Those hugs, the fireworks, the parades cannot be erased by an Independent Commission. What was lived cannot so easily die.

Friday brought the news we had long awaited. Eventually, of course, the near-monthly WhatsApp rumours of an imminent verdict were going to be correct. Three and a half years after the charges, nearly eight after the investigation began, and 21 months after the hearing closed, the verdict has landed: Manchester City guilty on 114 of 115 charges, as reported by The Athletic ’s David Ornstein.

Yet this is just a starting point. Now it falls upon the Independent Commission, the same Commission that took its sweet time in finding Manchester City allegedly guilty, to decide on sanctions and set a precedent for a sporting crime unprecedented in its scale and severity.

What the punishment will be for City’s apparent years of rule-breaking is now set to occupy most of football’s collective brainspace for the coming weeks or months, though given the speed with which the Commission has operated thus far, we may be deep into Max Dowman’s England career before we get one. And that’s before City’s inevitable appeal.

It has to be said that most neutrals you speak to want blood when it comes to the punishment. Those actually involved with Premier League clubs are angrier still. The flagrant nature of the cheating, the cover-up that ensued and the refusal to cooperate not only made it appear that City were guilty but, ultimately, only served to aggravate the sanctions that will fall upon the ten-time league winners. The view that eight of those titles that arrived after Sergio Aguero provided what many (still?) consider the most dramatic moment in Premier League history are now tainted. Three of them are covered by the charges and become asterisked for now, possibly removed later.