The Premier League served up an awkward reckoning of their own making on Sunday when their chief executive handed out winners' medals to the club they have accused of serious and serial cheating.
Manchester City were hit in February with over 100 charges of breaking competition rules that will surely result in an embarrassing and shameful end to the tenures of top executives at either the Premier League or its current champions. Either the Blues have conducted an unprecedented cheating operation over a decade and should have the book, the kitchen sink and everything else at them, or they have been wrongly accused without the evidence to back it up and there should be similarly grave consequences for the accusers.
One significant thing already caused by the announcement of the charges is that it casts a cloud over the achievements of City, both past and present. In the debate over the best-ever teams that Pep Guardiola's side are increasingly part of, nobody knows where to place the current Premier League champions because their foundations have been claimed to be rotten.
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As anyone with even a basic understanding of the law should know, that isn't likely to change any time soon. The extent of the charges against City are so numerous and unprecedented that nobody can say when the showdown will finally be resolved, but several experts in the field have forecast that it will be at least two years and possibly as many as four.
This poses an enormous challenge to saying or writing anything about City in that window while Guardiola and his players crack on with their day job. The charges have to be recognised in the bigger picture, but there has to be limits to the cloud when it is so remote and uncertain.
It wasn't Premier League charges that saw Arsenal fall short or City rise up with their backs against the wall this season, even if the unnecessary timing of the announcement played a small part in galvanising the Blues. If you are inserting the charges as a contributing factor into every match report, you may as well credit God or the Big Bang (depending on your personal belief) with every goal and assist.
The other important thing to recognise is that there is close to nothing publicly available about the case against City and the detail of the charges they must answer, save a few random letters and numbers posted on the Premier League's website so hastily back in February that they had to be updated through the day. There is always an element of unpredictability whenever judges or juries decide cases, so anyone who can tell you at this moment whether City are guilty or not is either lying or a fool (or both).
It is in this vacuum of information that misunderstandings and misinterpretations can happen, as seen in the last week. An article in The Times reported that City's 'heavyweight legal team' had 'disputed the legality of the investigation'.
It was an interesting development, but one that drew inane conclusions treating the news as a smoking gun that City were trying to wriggle out of culpability when in reality it is lawyers jockeying for the best position. As the headline to the article literally states: 'Man City launch legal fight against Premier League challenges' - were they expected to roll over and just accept anything that was said about them?
The Premier League should not be seen as some passive victim in all of this, helpless to the might of City's legal team and their tactics. They are not exactly relying on a bunch of unpaid students who have watched a few seasons of Suits, and knew exactly what sort of timeframe they were looking at when they decided on over 100 charges; as football finance expert Kieran Maguire told the Manchester Evening News back in February: "If you have 100 charges, you need to have the time to have 100 defences."
After the infantile cries online asking why City needed legal representation to prove their innocence, it is another depressing day for the internet to see the conversation move to asking why City are having lawyers do their jobs to prove their innocence. Anyone lacking the mind to recognise such a development as expected rather than exceptional probably shouldn't be commenting.
People do and have though, and it all adds to the noise around the club. The gap where nothing serious is being said for the sensible reasons mentioned above is instead filled with the ignorant comments and pre-judgments from people who can't possibly be in the know - a situation City fans know all too well from the club's legal battle with UEFA at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Meanwhile, Guardiola and his players aim to give the fans even more moments to savour. Erling Haaland wasn't just speaking for himself on Sunday when he said that he had made memories this season that he will remember for the rest of his life.
Despite how they may be depicted in some quarters, City supporters aren't all blind loyalists who have shrines to Sheikh Mansour in their bedrooms and get their pitchforks out at the slightest bit of criticism. There are plenty who are uncomfortable with the ownership and many more who have doubts over whether the club have always stuck to the spending rules.
Again though, there is a limit to how much that does and should enter their heads when they are following their team all over the country and Europe watching a sport that is celebrated for being an escape from everyday life where so many are looking at their own finances with the increasing cost of living. You can be aware of something without feeling the need for it to impact on each memory you make.
There may reach a time when supporters have to reflect on scandalous rule-breaking from the people in charge of the club they love, and come to terms on the consequences of that. But that time may also never come, and it is pointless to get fixated on something that you know very little about that may or may not happen in some years in the future.
While the charges hang stagnantly in the air awaiting a decision that in all likelihood still won't be accepted by many, City fans and players can busy themselves making more memories in real time. As Guardiola said at the time, the history they have made together cannot be unlived even if eventually there are asterisks placed on the achievements in the record books.
The charges are effectively a VAR check on a much grander and more serious scale with nobody able to see the thinking behind the decision before it is made. While everyone waits, they can only go off what they have seen and no celebrations should be stopped before the ruling comes in.
As the league and City showed on Sunday, however awkward or surreal the trophy presentation sounds written down it was business as usual on the pitch.
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