The Premier League is being 'dragged through the mud', with Man City's guilty verdict damaging the top flight's image around the world, says Gary Neville.

This week's bombshell verdict finding City guilty on almost all charges, benefiting from £900million sham deals and revealing the extraordinary scale of their cheating has sent shockwaves through the sport and wider society.

Neville thinks the reputational damage to what he calls the 'country's biggest export' could be long-lasting.

He fears a similar decline experienced by Serie A in the wake of the Calciopoli scandal – the 2006 saga exposing how Italian clubs influenced referees, leading to Juventus being stripped of titles and relegated to Serie B.

Speaking on the latest Stick to Football podcast, he reflected: 'I'm chilled, this is chilling not celebratory. I support Manchester United, you support Liverpool, you were Arsenal. It is chilling to listen to this.

'The Italian game has suffered immeasurably in the last 25 years. We played against Juventus, we've alluded to this before, we felt at the time this wasn't right and the Italian... I'm not saying that's going to happen to the Premier League but we always think that we've got an enormous integrity the Premier League, that we are the sort of league that sets the standard and it's other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match fixing, referee scandals.

'This is now coming to our country, this is now coming to our league. This is the greatest export that we have in our country in the world,' he went on.

Neville added: 'If you go around the world and talk about Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, you talk about the Premier League.

'People talk about the Premier League more than anything when you tell them where you're from. At the moment, we're being dragged through the mud.'

Despite the mountain of evidence against them and comprehensive verdict from an independent commission, City remain intent on appealing.

With that process and the highly-anticipated sanctions still to come, the scandal shows no sign of ending any time soon and threatens to overshadow this season, in addition to the last decade.

That could further plunge the Premier League into the mire reputationally around the world as the fallout continues.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been criticised for his 'tone deaf' statement on City's guilt, in which he shared his concern about the prospect of losing City's Abu Dhabi owners.

Speaking at the home of his side Everton at the Hill Dickinson Stadium, he said: 'I would be really concerned to lose (Man City's Abu Dhabi owners).

'They've been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester and obviously the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.

'I can't intervene more in the process. It would be wrong for me to do that. It would be wrong, I think, to jump to a conclusion before having really studied all of the detail, but obviously it's ongoing, and because it's still contested by Manchester City, then I think it's right that I don't say much more.'

Stan Collymore suggested that Burnham's 'concern' was 'tone deaf', highlighting the 'clunky' comments as an example of the power of sports-washing.

Rio Ferdinand added that he thought Burnham was 'on the back foot referencing Manchester City', but other commenters on the site were more critical.

'This is political interference,' one wrote. 'Already stating that he sees them as a positive influence and not wanting them gone. Unacceptable interference by influencing the (government's Football) Regulator.'

Another added: 'Absolutely disgusting statement from the PM. He's basically saying you can cheat the system all you want if you pay enough. Just shows what sort of morals he really has'.

The row spilling over into the highest levels of politics shows the enormity of the biggest cheating scandal in British sporting history and would appear to validate Neville's fears about how the Premier League could now suffer as a result.