Ex-players on the Man City verdict carry ITV News past its hijacking coverage
Pep Guardiola's promise that the club will get through it together opens the clip, and the comments keep arguing with a line about trophies won fair and square.
ITV NewsStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 291,636 views a day, 22 times a normal first day on this channel (13,088).
Watch as ex-players and pundits react to Man City verdict
Close to 130,000 people had watched ITV News' round-up of former players and pundits reacting to the Manchester City verdict within seven hours of it going up. A new upload on the channel usually gathers around 13,000 views in its whole first day.
The verdict is the subject. As the video's description sets it out, an independent commission found City guilty of breaching Premier League financial rules over nine seasons, concluding that the club "clearly intended to circumvent" them through schemes that inflated revenue and hid costs worth more than £900 million. City have said they will appeal and call the decision unsafe. Pep Guardiola, the manager behind most of the club's Premier League titles, answered with a promise that "we will get through this together." The tags also name Micah Richards, the former City defender who came through the club's academy before moving into television punditry.
It was not a quiet day for ITV News. The same day brought the report on the off-duty pilot who brought the Flydubai plane back under control, a full evening bulletin and an interview with Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury ahead of their Cardiff fight. The City reaction clip has more views than those three put together.
Under the clip, the conversation keeps returning to one moment, where someone insists City won their trophies fair and square. Other viewers ask why the club's evidence was not put forward years earlier, or suggest Bundesliga-style ownership rules for the rest of Europe. Several reach for Lance Armstrong and his voided Tour de France wins as the comparison they have in mind.
Published on Trari
What viewers say
Time to look at ownership rules that mirror the Bundesliga for all European leagues.
@superkook191See it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- ITV News
- Subscribers
- 2,250,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,665,597 (on a normal day: 1,375,684)
- Video published
- September 30, 2026
- Video views so far
- 128,984 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 291,636
The numbers
The numbers show a football clip running far ahead of a usual first day for this news channel.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which club did Pep Guardiola manage just before he moved to Manchester City?
Guardiola managed Bayern Munich from 2013 to 2016, after his years at Barcelona, and joined Manchester City in 2016.
