Whither Pep Guardiola in the post Manchester City universe? The problem with cheating is it burns everything to the ground, reputations uppermost in the ledger of loss.

Guardiola has said nothing since the devastating verdict leaked last week. His loyalty to the regime was absolute. And since he remains a City ambassador following his departure in May, the silence will likely continue until City’s fate is formally revealed. 

Only the first three years of the Guardiola decade overlapped with the 2009-2018 period under investigation. He was, however, in post for the entirety of the four-year investigation, which launched in 2018, and the subsequent hearing to consider the 115 charges relating to breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations.

Thirty-five of those charges were effectively cases of the same offence, failing to cooperate with the investigation. The silence to which Guardiola has contributed since the verdict broke feels wearily consistent with the spirit of City’s routed defence.

It is self-evident that Guardiola’s achievements are in the bin. His apologists, led by ultra dim loyalists like Liam Gallagher and former player Rodri, seek to break the connection between illegal wealth and results.

“If you’re telling me that, because of some sponsorship deal that was signed nearly 15 years ago, the four in a row and Istanbul and all of those things now mean nothing… then you’re being hysterical,” bleated the Beswick supernova.

Rodri was similarly aligned. “What we did, they cannot take it out of us. It is something that is not paid by money, it is paid with effort, with partnership and with being shoulder to shoulder every day,” he said, ignoring the connection between the quality of the participants involved and the cost of buying them.

Of course Rodri sits outside the investigated period, but his achievements and those of Guardiola are indelibly linked since they rest on the shoulders of the damned. Guardiola is doubly cooked because of his uncritical acceptance of all he was told.

He behaved like a medieval courtier, blindly trumpeting the truth as laid out by the Abu Dhabi state. He was steadfast in the veracity of that message, a willing dupe in the employ and at the service of a regime that cynically manipulated the rules.

“Because you believe in your club and the people there. I believe what they say to me and the reasons why,” Guardiola said after the charges were brought.

The same message echoed after his exit was announced in February this year. “Because you believe in your club and the people there. I believe what they say to me and the reasons why.”

His dubious attachment deepens the stain, eating at the purity of the product. The undeniable beauty of Guardiola’s team must now be reconsidered and ultimately devalued by the rigged nature of its design.

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A total of £1.23bn was spent on 76 transfers in the period 2009-2018, including the transformative signings of Sergio Aguero, scorer of the goal that sealed victory against Queens Park Rangers in 2012 to earn the first title of the Abu Dhabi reign, Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling, John Stones, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva, Ederson and Aymeric Laporte. It was upon these foundations that Guardiola’s tainted empire was built.

Plausible denial is not innocence but collusion, the more surprising given Guardiola’s predilection for a soap box when protesting against the appalling treatment of the vulnerable in various conflicts around the world.

City and Guardiola continue to barricade themselves behind process, insisting nothing is decided until a formal verdict is handed down, and even that is subject to appeal. That might work for them but offers little protection outside the City bubble, where sentiment is shaped like a sword, suspended above their heads by the thinnest of threads.