STOCKPORT, England -- On the brisk approach to Edgeley Park on Saturday afternoon, the topic of conversation among the soccer fans streaming toward the stadium was not Stockport County or their visitors, Peterborough United. It wasn't the state of the League One table, or how England would get on against Spain later the same day either.
All anyone was talking about was Manchester City.
At one point during the second half of Stockport's 1-0 win, the loudest group of home supporters at the top of the Cheadle End behind one of the goals began singing "City's going down with a billion in the bank." It's a song City fans have often used about themselves in jest, but it's taken on new meaning in the aftermath of news Friday that the club have been found guilty of more than 100 breaches of financial rules.
News then broke Tuesday with the full scope of the Premier League's guilty verdict against City, with sources also telling ESPN that the club was made aware of the findings over the summer, prior to their aggressive spending in the transfer window.
There was a time when Stockport and City -- clubs separated by just 10 miles -- were genuine rivals. They played each other six times in the league between 1997 and 2002. Stockport lost only once in those head-to-head encounters, but in 2009, they entered administration and were hit with a points deduction. It was the starting gun for a drop through the English soccer pyramid, a journey that bottomed out in the sixth tier.
It's a fate that could now await City. In the absence of anything official from the independent commission tasked with sorting through the Premier League's case, the void of information is being filled with guesswork and Manchester is at the center of the storm.
League One games took place over the weekend with Stockport County's win over Peterborough overshadowed by hushed talk about what would happen to Man City. Mike Morese/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images On Sunday in east Manchester, hundreds of children turned up at Wright Robinson College to play junior matches. The walk from the carpark to the pitches is a long one and discussions filling the time -- between 8-year-olds and 18-year-olds alike -- were all about what might happen to one of the city's biggest clubs.
Amid the mild teasing of City fans, there were debates about whether Manchester United should be awarded the 2012 Premier League title and if Erling Haaland could end up playing in League Two. One City-supporting parent joked that the amount of memes and WhatsApp messages he'd received over the weekend had forced him to draft his own media statement as a catch-all response to each ping of his phone.