Nico Gonzalez spent more than a year inside Manchester City’s dressing room. Now, from his new one at Newcastle, the Spaniard has put a player’s face to a verdict that has otherwise drawn few on-the-record comments from current top-flight professionals.
Speaking to Sky Sports, he described the fallout from the ruling against City as “a hard situation for everyone.”
The remark is short but notable: few current Premier League players have been willing to be drawn on a case that reshapes the competitive conversation around the top of the division.
A bruising start on Tyneside
Gonzalez’s own first weeks at Newcastle have not gone to plan. The midfielder, signed for a reported £50m rising to £52m in late August, took a ball to the face inside the opening 20 minutes of Newcastle’s 4-1 defeat at Leeds United and was withdrawn as a concussion substitution.
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Head coach Matthias Jaissle defended the call at the time.
“We are all human beings as well, and we take that seriously, so therefore we took the decision to take him off the pitch,” he told reporters, as reported by the Shields Gazette.
He cleared concussion protocol in late September and returned to first-team training alongside Joelinton. He is expected to feature when Newcastle travel to Coventry City on Monday, 12 October.
The verdict hanging over the title race
An independent commission on Tuesday, 29 September found Manchester City guilty of all serious charges relating to breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules between 2009 and 2018, together with the majority of charges relating to the club’s failure to cooperate with the investigation.
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The commission concluded that City used “sham” commercial contracts to artificially inflate revenues and reduce costs by more than £900m of secret funding from the club’s Abu Dhabi owners.
City said in a statement that it was “disappointed and surprised” and insisted that the club is “innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League.” It has pledged to appeal, and no sanction has yet been announced. Analysts have floated everything from a 40- to 60-point deduction to, in extreme scenarios, expulsion from the division.
Gonzalez was still contracted to City when the investigation was coming to a head. He moved to Tyneside before pre-season was over, after being told the club’s midfield plans no longer counted on him.
Newcastle kick off at the Coventry Building Society Arena at 7pm local time on 12 October.
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