After unofficial reports on Friday that Manchester City had been found guilty of almost all 115 charges of breaching financial rules, it was only a matter of time before the true scale of those breaches was revealed. It was no surprise, except perhaps for the near-perfect batting average of the charges, that City were found guilty, but the details remain to be seen. The Premier League released its statement on the situation on Tuesday, and the figure is eye-catching: City circumvented league and UEFA spending limits by more than £900 million between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. (The survey, which began in 2019, covers nothing more recent than the title-winning 2017-18 season.)
Just to establish a reference point for the scale of City’s wrongdoing, when Everton were deducted 10 points at the end of 2023 for a similar breach of the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules, the Toffees were found to have breached the limits by £19.5m. A few months later, Nottingham Forest received a four-point deduction for a £34.5 million breach. (The difference is both an inconsistency in the application of the rules and Forest’s more willing cooperation with the investigation compared to Everton’s.) The scale of punishment is not an individual factor, so it is not as if City would receive a 461 point deduction, or even a 260 point deduction, but the £900 million figure helps to understand the degree of malfeasance City have engaged in since purchase of the club by Abu Dhabi United. Band.
As a reminder, the main accusations against City came in the form of increased sponsorship revenue, whereby listed sponsors allegedly paid a much higher amount in pounds sterling than actually received. The difference between the stated number and the actual number was found to have been paid by Abu Dhabi United Group, helping to increase City’s commercial revenues from around £82 million in the season before the investigation period to £500 million in the summer of 2018. The aim of such a scheme is to circumvent the spending limits that the Premier League imposes on its teams. Even if a club has access to the unlimited spending power that an owner like Abu Dhabi United Group can offer it, it is limited by rules stipulating that spending on players and coaches must be proportional to its revenue. Thus, City gained access to more of their owners’ wealth by disguising the incoming money from those owners as sponsorship income.
The specifics of City’s violations also help paint a picture of a club that has felt emboldened by the success it has achieved at the start of this new era of ownership. The independent commission’s findings are detailed in a (heavily redacted) key decision published with the Premier League’s statement, and of particular interest is a chart on page 20, which shows the specific amounts per season generated by these “fictitious” deals.
While the first season under investigation, the 2009-10 season, had an almost reasonable split of £4.5 million ‘real’ money and £22.5 million ‘play’ money, the latter figure rose to £70.75 million in 2011-12. This season, not coincidentally, marks City’s first Premier League title since 1968, and the first of three during the period under review (eight in total during the Abu Dhabi era).
After the club won that title in 2012, it seemed the need for any sort of restraint disappeared, as the following year’s ‘shadow’ figure soared to £105.75 million and increased year-on-year to reach a final total of £134.73 million in 2017-18, compared to just £11 million actually paid by sponsors. The math is staggering: of the £949.94 million in revenue recorded from Abu Dhabi-based sponsors, City received just £119.25 million, pumping in £830.69 million of Abu Dhabi United Group’s money to fill the gap. The remaining breaches, which took the total to more than £900m, came from smaller charges, including that of paying manager Roberto Mancini, who was in charge during the title-winning 2011-12 season, and another of the sale of players’ image rights to a company the commission considered to be “little more than a front for ADUG”.
The question now shifts to “are Manchester City guilty and how serious is it?” » to “What happens now?” There is no clear answer yet on what level of sanction the Premier League will ultimately impose, particularly with the threat of a lengthy appeal process. The league’s statement said City have until Friday October 2 to appeal, but also that the intention of the league board “is for the entire process (including any appeal and the publication of relevant decisions) to be concluded as soon as possible.” City, clearly, have plenty of money to fight what could be a death blow for the club, and so the end of this never-ending saga (as a reminder, the league began investigating in 2019) might not happen as quickly as the league or rival fans might hope.
The proposed sanctions range from manageable (fines, transfer bans) to crippling (massive points deductions or even automatic relegation) to nuclear: if City were to be kicked out of the Premier League, the EFL, which administers divisions two, three and four in England, would have no obligation to accept City into the Championship, League One or League Two. There is a world in which City are completely excluded from the English football pyramid. City will of course fight tooth and nail against any potential punishment. The alternative could be that Manchester City, winners of eight of the last 15 Premier League titles, ceases to exist as an entity in English football.
Gn sports
