What should happen to Manchester City?

Karan Ahgun

— 3 min read
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What should happen to Manchester City?

The football news cycle has been dominated by Manchester City's guilty verdict in their case against the Premier League over a series of financial and non-compliance breaches. The Premier League's statement was scathing, using the word "sham" multiple times and alluding to an industrial scale of cheating committed by City. City maintain their innocence and continue to claim that they have a body of "irrefutable evidence" which will prove no wrongdoing has been done. There are still appeals processes to go through, as well as sanctions to be handed out but for the purpose of this post, we're going to assume that the current verdict on the charges are upheld.

City were found guilty of all the charges relating to financial breaches between the period of 2009-2018. The independent panel examined evidence which showed that City's owners disproportionately invested funds into the club disguised through sponsorships. This was made public knowledge after Der Spiegel first reported it in November 2018, after analysing data leaks accessed by Rui Pinto. UEFA were proactive in initially prosecuting the club, and handed them a 2 year European competition ban but City were able to overturn this decision on a technicality in the Court of Arbitration for Sport in 2020. Fortunately, there is no possibility of the same technicality being used to overturn the decision today. The most damning piece of evidence was the £900 million inflation of revenue through the "sham" sponsorship deals. According to the documents, City recorded £360 million in sponsorship revenue in title-winning seasons but only £43 million of that was deemed to be legitimate. City were also found guilty of using a "sham" scheme to cover up what would have been the single biggest loss recording over a single season in Premier League history in 2009-10. So essentially, these overinflated sponsorship revenues were directly connected to breaches of the Premier League's financial rules, especially relating to the club's financial health which would have been called into question if there wasn't such a massive cover-up.

As there have been no cases on this scale before in football, the level of punishment ranges. They could go from a fine to expulsion from the Premier League. A fine would be a pointless punishment to impose on City because of the sheer wealth of City's ownership, and honestly it just wouldn't fit the extent of the rule-breaking that's been committed. The most likely outcome would be a points deduction which will certainly relegate City to the Championship next season, but some will argue that just one season in the Championship would not make much difference to City and they would be back up instantly. Expulsion from the Premier League makes sense but the issue would be where to place City and what impact that would have on other teams in the EFL. Whatever the punishment, things will probably get messy. Some clubs will want titles stripped but retrospective awards could be a step too far because you'd need to define te point at which you stop. One thing that's sure to happen is that clubs who feel aggrieved are probably going to sue City, with class-action lawsuits quickly becoming a real possibility. The most likely outcome is a massive points deduction and multiple transfer window bans to ensure that City can't compete at the top of English football for a few seasons at least. Most clubs would find this acceptable but as with every option available, there are difficulties to implement the punishment.

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