Man City fans should ignore senseless noise around Premier League charges

The Premier League served up an awkward reckoning of their own making on Sunday when their chief executive handed out winners' medals to the club they have accused of serious and serial cheating.

Manchester City were hit in February with over 100 charges of breaking competition rules that will surely result in an embarrassing and shameful end to the tenures of top executives at either the Premier League or its current champions. Either the Blues have conducted an unprecedented cheating operation over a decade and should have the book, the kitchen sink and everything else at them, or they have been wrongly accused without the evidence to back it up and there should be similarly grave consequences for the accusers.

One significant thing already caused by the announcement of the charges is that it casts a cloud over the achievements of City, both past and present. In the debate over the best-ever teams that Pep Guardiola's side are increasingly part of, nobody knows where to place the current Premier League champions because their foundations have been claimed to be rotten.

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As anyone with even a basic understanding of the law should know, that isn't likely to change any time soon. The extent of the charges against City are so numerous and unprecedented that nobody can say when the showdown will finally be resolved, but several experts in the field have forecast that it will be at least two years and possibly as many as four.

This poses an enormous challenge to saying or writing anything about City in that window while Guardiola and his players crack on with their day job. The charges have to be recognised in the bigger picture, but there has