I agree with a lot of what you say, and in a sense what I'm about to say is not aimed at you in particular, it is just a thought that I have been having more and more recently.
I have been working on the assumption that we will be cleared of the most serious charges for reasons discussed at length in this thread.
However the thought that if/when that happens the red-tops and their client journalists will just accept it and go away seems to me to be completely pie in the sky. For as long as the rags, dippers and (to a much lesser extent) Arse and Spuds have friends in the media, we will continue to be hounded, our club belittled, our achievements denigrated.
The cloud, as you put it, that is currently hanging over us will, in other words, be replaced by another one, as sure as eggs are eggs. I don't know what the next cloud will be. If the PL case goes our way, as many of us expect, we might well see a rehash of the 'they got off on a technicality' stance that belittles/ignores the number of times CAS said 'no evidence.' We might see innuendo that we have bought the result. It might be something else completely. But the red-tops will not go away. They know that every small boy who starts supporting City is a future supporter of theirs - and therefore a potential source of income - that they have lost, and so they will keep on going in their attempt to make us the most unpopular club in the league. They can't make us unsuccessful on the pitch. But they can try and make us unpopular off it.
So the way this ends is not that the PL panel acquit us of everything and the anti-City narrative stops. The way this ends is that the media begins to be populated more and more by those who don't remember the glory days of the class of 92 and that magical night in Barcelona, whose formative years featured the Agueroooo goal, the formidables, the real treble winners, the centurions and so forth. (I remember a time when we complained we had no voices in punditland. These days we do. We regularly see Micah Richards, Joleon Lescott and Shay Given in the media, not to mention Steph Houghton, Jill Scott and izzy Christiansen. That progression will keep going.)
Alternatively, at some point Pep leaves, his replacement is markedly less successful than he is and normal service, as the red tops would have it, is resumed. We stop being a target, in other words, when we stop being such a threat.
Either way, the dirty tricks campaign is likely to continue for many years to come. And make no mistake, the red tops are behind it.
So my advice, and I repeat that this is a reply to you without being aimed at you necessarily, is to buckle down, and get used to that cloud hanging over your head. It's not going away any time soon, and when it does it will just be replaced by another.
And reflect on the fact that as dark as that cloud may seem, that is simply a reflection of the beautiful winning football we see week in week out on the pitch, and the extent to which our success hurts the red-tops to their very core.
