All we hear is the sound of silence. To Simon and Garfunkel and the Sicilian mafia, we can add the Manchester City hearing.

City face Crystal Palace in Saturday’s FA Cup final as overwhelming favourites. Their place in next season’s Champions League is almost guaranteed.

The talk is about the future: who will replace Kevin de Bruyne, how to fit in Erling Haaland, and fresh signings.

About the 115 charges hanging over the club, there’s not a peep.

Normal service has resumed. City are winning again, and the silence means they are winning off it as well.

That doesn’t mean they are winning the case, but the delay has been a boon to the club.

Once upon a time, those charges – since rounded up to 130 – hung over them like the sword of Damocles.

They haven’t been dropped; they are still there. But by a large part of the football world, they’ve been forgotten.

City’s fall from a cliff on the field and subsequent recovery has been the story of the season. Not the nuclear threat.

The hearing has taken place – from September to December last year – and we were promised a verdict early this year.

But February became March, then April, and “definitely” before the end of the season: if not, chaos and confusion would ensue.

But the end of the season is nigh, and the omerta remains.

There was a mischievous whisper that it might be next season or even next year, but that was on April 1.

And a more recent quip from a football financial expert may also have been in jest but perhaps not entirely – that the lawyers are deliberately dragging it out.

Well-respected Kieran Maguire noted: “You’ve got to think about the lawyers, they are on the clock, if I’m on three or five thousand pounds an hour, I’m not going to hurry a decision as to when the result is going to come out.”

City’s top lawyer, Lord Pannick, normally charges £10k per hour, but we have to assume he’s on a lower rate due to the bulk order for his services.

Still, it’s more than some players earn.

The few pundits who remember the case claim the season still has much to play for, even though the title and relegation issues have been settled.

In theory, the relegation threat to City could yet materialise if they are found guilty and punished by a points deduction.

It could mean that the team finishing third from the drop might escape with City taking their place.

Likewise, at the top, even a small deduction could have a bearing on who qualifies for Europe, if City are banned from UEFA competitions.

But no one is getting too excited in Leicester or Ipswich as, if found guilty, City will appeal, and it would drag on, and the lawyers would get even richer.

And, of course, City may not be guilty – they may win the case, a result which would drive a coach and horses through the EPL’s Profit & Sustainability Rules.

In the meantime, the delay has enabled them to recover from their mid-season wobble.

At the time, it was called “catastrophic”, but a possible second place in the league and a likely FA Cup triumph doesn’t feel like a catastrophe.

The delay enabled City to splash £180m in January on players they’d intended to buy in the summer.

It helped arrest their decline and brought forward their rebuild.

Would they have signed if City had been relegated? No one wants to join a sinking ship. And would Pep Guardiola have stayed?

He renewed his contract late last year, but had promised to leave “if the club had been lying to me”.

That one is debatable, but now City are leading the hunt for even more players in the summer.

The delay has bought priceless time for them to turn a potential disaster into a blip and now no one is talking about them sliding into the second tier and finding it hard to get back.

If the worst came to the worst, it would be one season only as it was in Italy when Juventus were punished.

Pep may even relish the challenge. He loves the small grounds he’s visited in the FA Cup.

According to reports, the likes of Florian Wirtz, Tijjani Reijnders, Jeremy Frimpong and Morgan Gibbs-White are queuing up to join.

That wouldn’t have been the case if a guilty verdict had been passed.

The problem with this case is that it’s hard to see how the Premier League can win – whatever the verdict.

If City carry out their threat to sue until hell freezes over, it’s hardly a victory. PSR would be no deterrent and the league would lose its authority.

Points deductions were introduced because fines had no effect on state- or billionaire-owned clubs.

Everton and Nottingham Forest were given six- and four-point deductions respectively last season for minor misdemeanours.

So the presumption was that if City were guilty, they would be docked at least enough to be relegated, with all that entails.

But if City do not accept it, no punishment is going to work.

In a situation like this, there’s only one solution. Eventually, all wars end and people come to the table. You would like to think this is what’s happening now.

If a points deduction is a non-starter, how about a massive fine? It could be one that only City – and maybe Saudi-backed Newcastle – could pay but enough to deter the rest of the league.

A hollow victory, certainly, but it may be the only way out of this impasse.

Meantime, Crystal Palace will be out to make history with a first trophy and are in form.

They will have the rest of football behind them as no one wants to see money always winning.

As for the verdict, maybe it’s written on the subway walls.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.