The verdicts are in, and they are not holding back

Manchester City's guilty findings on 114 Premier League charges have dominated the conversation throughout the international break, and with Liverpool set to face them in what has become one of English football's most charged fixtures, the pundits have had plenty of time to make their feelings known. The verdicts range from points deductions to something far more dramatic, and the one thing they all share is a sense that this moment is too significant to be met with a light touch.

Perhaps the most striking take came from former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore, who went further than almost anyone in the debate. He is not calling for a points deduction or even a stint in the Championship. He wants City removed from the Football League entirely, arguing that anything short of that simply delays the inevitable. "I would exclude them from the Premier League for a period," Collymore said. "I would expel them from the EFL, which means they would have to start from the lowest National League. They would have to get promoted all the way back again. If you just put them in the Championship, they are back in a year or two and that's not a punishment." He also called for a financial reckoning, suggesting that money reclaimed from sponsorship, prize money and television revenue should be redistributed to the clubs who lost out during the period in question.

What the rest of football's voices are saying

Ian Wright, speaking as a pundit during England's UEFA Nations League trip to the Czech Republic, was similarly unsparing. "It's cheating on an industrial scale," he said, adding that "an unprecedented punishment is required." Gary Neville, speaking on Stick to Football, took a different angle, arguing that points deductions and title removals, while significant, may not be the punishment that matters most. "The only punishment that would be fair, would have huge consequences, the biggest consequence, would be removing the owners," Neville said. "That is the only consequence if I was Manchester City that I would be worried about."

Jamie Carragher, another former Red now in the punditry world, argued that the duration of the punishment is what will determine whether it actually bites. Speaking on The Overlap Fan Debate, he made the case that a single-season points deduction, however large, simply does not fit a period of wrongdoing that stretched across nine years. "I think because this has gone on for so long, I do think the punishment should be over a number of years, three to five years," Carragher said, "and then players would move on. But then you've got the financial aspect of how can they afford the wages of those players if they haven't got Premier League money?"

Why speed matters as much as severity

Former striker Alan Shearer, the Premier League's all-time leading scorer, was blunt on the question of proportionality. "Manchester City deserves whatever punishment they get," he told Betfair. "Whatever they get, they have no one else to blame but themselves." He also stressed that the impact of this saga stretches well beyond the clubs directly involved, pointing to Liverpool, Manchester United and Arsenal as sides who may have lost titles, Champions League places and revenue as a consequence of what happened during that period.

Shearer's most pressing concern, though, was the pace at which a resolution is reached. With City sitting at the top of the table and heading to Liverpool in their next fixture, he argued that the longer this drags on, the greater the damage to English football's credibility. City, for their part, continue to maintain their innocence and have lodged a formal appeal against the commission's findings. Whether any of the punishments being floated in these conversations ever materialise remains entirely unclear, but the weight of opinion among pundits suggests the appetite for leniency is virtually non-existent. Sunday's fixture is going to feel different to most.