Sensemaker Daily
Manchester City sweeps all before it and kicks financial fair play decisions into the long grass.
Manchester City men’s team will win an unprecedented fourth straight Premier League title on Sunday if, as expected, they beat West Ham or simply match Arsenal’s result.
So what? It’s quite an achievement. No team has ever won four consecutive championships since the formation of league football in England in 1888. But it will not be regarded with unalloyed admiration. City’s latest title, assuming it wins, will be won beneath the shadow of 115 charges of financial irregularity – all denied – brought 15 months ago by the Premier League.
Dragging on. For all City’s on-pitch flair, the charges essentially allege the club has cheated. The case has been years in the making, starting with a spectacular scoop in Der Spiegel in April 2022 which revealed the Premier League had already been investigating City for three years.
By the numbers. Manchester City stands accused of…
- 54 failures to provide accurate financial information between 2009-10 and 2017-18;
- 14 failures to provide accurate details for player and manager payments between 2009-10 and 2017-18;
- 5 failures to comply with Uefa rules including those on Financial Fair Play (FFP) between 2013-14 and 2017-18;
- 7 charges of breaching Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) between 2015-16 and 2017-18; and
- 35 failures to co-operate with Premier League investigations between December 2018 and February 2023.
Big money. The Premier League is a private company. Its shareholders are the 20 member clubs at any given time plus the FA, which holds a special share. In recent years clubs’ earnings have skyrocketed. In 2013, the average turnover of a Premier League club was £128 million a year. In 2023, it was £288 million.
Bigger money. FFP and PSR were introduced to limit clubs’ ability to spend their way to titles. City, which is effectively owned by an Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, and Chelsea (which until the invasion of Ukraine was owned by the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich), are able to countenance transfer fees and wages that often seemed unmoored from any concept of profit and loss.
Huge results. City insists it has evidence to prove its innocence when its case is heard, which the Premier League has hinted will be within the next few months. The problem for the club and the league is that the period covered by the charges straddles three seasons when City won the title.
Punishing times. Earlier this season two much less successful clubs, Everton and Nottingham Forest, were handed points deductions of eight and four points respectively for breaking Premier League PSR rules. Everton had two breaches; Forest had one. As they faced far fewer charges than City, their cases were heard and resolved in weeks. The sheer number of charges levelled at City makes it hard to estimate what sanctions it might face if found guilty, or how long the process will take. City could be fined, suffer a points deduction, or even be relegated out of the league.
Don’t Pannick. On-field and off, City means business. It enlisted the services of Lord David Pannick, best known for defending the disgraced former Prime Minister Boris Johnson over Partygate. The Lawyer magazine suggests Pannick could be paid up to £400,000-a-week by City – the same rate commanded by its star player Kevin De Bruyne.
Stick to football. City is also vying this weekend for the Women’s Super League title. The team is level on points with Chelsea, which has a narrowly better goal difference with one game to play. City plays Aston Villa on Saturday afternoon and hopes neighbours Manchester United do them a favour by halting Chelsea. All the men’s team have to do is win at home against out-of-form West Ham on Sunday afternoon.
What’s more… Arsenal have run City extraordinarily close this season, but its manager, Mikel Arteta, was City’s assistant coach between 2016 and 2018 – two of the years the alleged financial impropriety was taking place.
