Neil Warnock's Man City shame will have West Ham laughing at the irony

Neil Warnock was glad to see West Ham United relegated out of the Premier League. Yet he’d also be disappointed to see Manchester City booted out of the top division.

Sorry if you’re reading this Neil, but we think your morals might be in a bit of a muddle.

They say elephants never forget, and neither it seems do 77-year-old former Chesterfield, Hartlepool and Sheffield United managers. Because back in February, when West Ham United were already circling the plughole, Warnock revealed that not even the passage of two decades had healed the wounds of 2007.

Carlos Tevez saved the Hammers from the drop at Sheffield United’s expense that season. As we are all so acutely aware of these days, his arrival at Upton Park from Corinthians was later found to have breached third-party rules, meaning The Blades were owed an eye-watering £35 million in compensation.

Warnock would happily have shredded each and every one of those notes, however, if it meant another season of Premier League football – and if it meant West Ham finished in what he felt was their rightful place of 18th.

“You know me with Sheffield United and Tevez, it wouldn’t bother me to see West Ham [get relegated],” Warnock told talkSPORT, his wish granted three months later. “Yep, it wouldn’t bother me to see them go down, I tell you. [West ham going down would be some] long overdue payback.”

Even from our admittedly biased perspective, you can sympathise with the often un-sympathisable Warnock. West Ham should never have been able to sign Tevez in the first place under Premier League rules.

In the end, West Ham’s skin was saved by an Argentine centre-forward who scored seven goals in his final ten appearances, who netted the winner in the final day victory at Old Trafford, and who consigned Sheffield United to an immediate return to the Football League. An Argentine centre-forward West Ham only managed to sign through illicit means.

So one can be forgiven for thinking Warnock is a man suffering from severe cognitive dissonance. A man who so stringently tried to hold West Ham accountable now willing to let Manchester City get away with years of bare-faced financial breaches.

“For all the money, whatever that happened, whenever you get a group of players, no matter how much money they’re on, it doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful. Not in a million years,” Warnock protested in his most recent talkSPORT appearance.

“I look at some of the Tottenham players last few years. They’ve had some good players but no team and no togetherness. I think Pep [Guardiola] instilled that when he had Kevin De Bruyne and all them. He just blended them all, and [the charges] won’t taint my opinion of him.”

As assessments go, Warnock’s is as wide of the mark as one of Ade Akinbiyi’s strikes during that ill-fated 06/07 season at Bramall Lane.

After being found guilty of 115 financial charges, Manchester City face being expelled from the Premier League. It has been calculated West Ham missed out on £28 million worth of top-flight prize money. But that does not even scratch the surface of the sporting or financial ripples churning the waters of English football.

The simple facts are these. Pep Guardiola is a brilliant manager. Kevin de Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, David Silva and Erling Haaland are brilliant footballers. Just like Carlos Tevez was brilliant, belatedly so, in a West Ham shirt.

But Tevez was only a West Ham player in the first place because they broke the rules. Similarly, none of Guardiola, De Bruyne, Aguero, Silva or Haaland would have glanced twice in Man City’s direction if not for the ‘serious breaches’ and ‘sham contracts’ which enabled football’s Faberge egg to encrust itself in ill-gotten jewels.

Warnock would do well to remember that when he goes out to bat for a club who have just inked an Isle of Wight-sized asterisk next to 15 years of Premier League football.