Like those fawning Maga loyalists genuflecting before Donald Trump, the Manchester City faithful are so far on the wrong side of history as to be lost to us. 

But the players? What might the cost be to them of their misplaced hauteur at Anfield once the reckoning comes, glorying in a cause so abhorrent to the rest of us? Some defend the right of the players to celebrate since, they argue, none were party to the cheating for which City were clipped between 2009 and 2018.

Perhaps so. What we saw at Anfield was more than that. It was egregious defiance, a triple f**k you to the laws of the land, and an emphatic show of support for a corrupt club found guilty on all counts of financial wrongdoing, despite denials that continue to appeal.

Erling Haaland, that giant of a centre-forward who began the rout with a pitiless wallop, can never escape the arm-waving caress he directed at the supporters and the leadership. Rayan Cherki embroidered the day with a beauty of his own, then stuck out his chest with pride, oblivious to the scale of the crimes that brought City to this peak, and the fallout.

And let’s not forget the appalling triumphalism of Enzo Maresca, doing pirouettes on the touchline as if victory at Anfield held the same value as prior successes. All of it is tainted now. 

You might confine the cheating period, but you cannot separate today’s success from those fraudulent foundations, a sense of which was rammed home with the quality of all three goals. The dissonance of those celebrations was the story of the day, deepening the sense of injustice and dislocation. 

And it leaves the Premier League with an unforeseen problem. How is the season ever to continue in this poisonous, liminal context with a verdict ascribed but not yet punished? City will continue to flaunt their abusive power, denying all wrongdoing, while the just continue to wilt beneath the weight of it.

Section W of the Premier League rules, under which the City case was prosecuted, was not framed with this scale of corruption in mind. I mean, who would have imagined in the days before state ownership that any club might bend the rules to the tune of almost a billion quid to further multi-faceted global ambitions? 

And now we are faced with a repeat of the scenes at Anfield, sneaking into grounds via secret passages, the temperature rising with each goal, each fixture exacerbating the unreality of it all. 

Watching Noel Gallagher going bananas among the bananas typified the mood among City fans, and while that kind of emotion is defendable to a point, fan loyalty is ultimately exposed for what it is, another tool to be exploited by a corrupt and ruthless regime prepared to set fire to the whole shebang rather than admit wrongdoing.

Gallagher will not see himself a stooge of Abu Dhabi’s grand design, but that is exactly what he is, doing the work for them by placing his fame and celebrity uncritically at the service of cheats for whom the interests of fans is entirely secondary. For most, Gallagher and fellow devotee and brother, Liam, are Oasis. Definitely, not maybe, singing for their supper.

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Whatever Abu Dhabi hoped to achieve via ownership of City, improving the lot of Manchester’s citizens was not principal among them, merely a by-product of a much bigger game, the association with which has even thrown up awkward questions for the Prime Minister to answer. 

City’s next three fixtures are all at home, starting with the visit of Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League on Wednesday. There is unlikely to be any dissent from that quarter given PSG is the state-owned engine driving Qatar’s own propaganda machine. 

It might be different a week Saturday at Aston Villa, however, a club on the hook for £19.5m, levied by Uefa in June for squad cost rule breaches. Villa admitted their offence and accepted the settlement. The fools.