Over the first hour of Sunday’s match, Liverpool had limited Manchester City to four shot attempts worth 0.15 expected goals. At that rate, it would have taken around 390 minutes for City to record a full expected goal worth of attempts.
Then, Manchester-born referee Chris Kavanagh sent Ryan Gravenberch off via a second yellow. Both yellows given to the Liverpool player were on the controversial side of soft.
Down a man, Liverpool and head coach Andoni Iraola’s man-to-man system that had held for more than an hour broke down quickly. Manchester City would go on to win what eventually felt a quite comfortable 3-0, except that it very much hadn’t been comfortable for them until the official made a call that at the very least was a long, long way from clear and obvious.
“I think the analysis is quite clear that I think we played two different games,” Iraola said following a defeat that saw recently found guilty of £900M of financial doping Manchester City get a series of soft and controversial calls in their favour before engaging in a teary post-match celebration with their fans.
“It was one game until the red card and one from the red card until the end, and I think we were the better team until the red card for the first 62 minutes. They were better than us, obviously, after the red card.
“But I think the players deserve credit today as well because I think they’ve given everything. I think also the supporters have been fantastic. I think the atmosphere and the feeling we had until that moment, we were having chances and were positive. Obviously when you lose 3-0 that’s not a lot, but I think it was important.”
Watching a sportswashing front for a human rights abusing petrostate that was found guilty—any while they may currently be appealing, from a legal standpoint City are very much guilty unless and until they win that appeal—of blatant, industrial-scale financial doping get all the calls and then celebrate like a group of plucky, put-upon underdogs who’d pulled off a miracle victory against all the odds, did not make for an enjoyable Sunday.
If anything, it made the Premier League feel less like authentic sport and more like wrestling, an entertainment product fully embracing kayfabe—the name for wrestling’s way of portraying pre-scripted matches, rivalries, and characters as though they are genuine, unscripted, and real.
City had been found guilty, legally. Yet here were City as victims, tears in their eyes as they celebrated with the fans after overcoming big, bad Liverpool, whose only crime has been to try to beat City playing by the rules—both on and, perhaps more importantly given the whole part where City was just found guilty of £900M of financial doping, off the pitch.
The whole time the cameras focused in on those celebrations and the commentators talked about the difficult moment these City players had overcome, having to perform in the shadow of the club they play for having been found guilty of £900M of financial doping as well as subsequent efforts to then cover it up.
So. Not sport, entertainment. Content. A Pro Wrestling kayfabe soap opera. And so we end the matchweek as we began, with City in first and favourites to win a Premier League that feels increasingly farcical and lacking in sporting integrity.