Manchester City Financial Breaches Update

We have some breaking news coming out of English football as the

long-running legal battle between Manchester City and the Premier League

took another significant turn Tuesday as the league published a

redacted summary of an independent commission's findings against the club.

The sanctions phase and any potential appeals still to come.

The commissions found that Manchester City committed serious

breaches of

Premier League financial rules over a nine-season period,

concluding the club used a series of sham sponsorships

and commercial arrangements that artificially inflated revenue,

reduced

reported costs, and misrepresented the club's financial

position. According to the Premier League, those arrangements distorted

the club's finances by more than 900 million

pounds. The commission also found the club would

have had and

been in substantial breach of both Premier League and

UEFA financial regulations had its finances been reported

accurately. Premier League CEO Richard Masters said

the

court decisions establishes the fact of what occurred at Manchester City

between 2009 and 2018, adding that the

findings showed the club systematically broke Premier League

rules for nearly a decade and called it the most significant

disciplinary case in league history.

Manchester City said in a statement they're disappointed and surprised

by the findings. They continue to deny the allegations

and will

appeal, arguing the investigation contains

material errors

of law, principle, and fact. Manchester City are

expected to appeal and will have until October 2nd to do so.

After that, attention turns to separate sanctions

hearing which

will determine the punishment, though no timetable for that phase

has yet been announced.

And here to break it more down, because this is a massive, massive story,

is Premier League financial football correspondent and professor at

University of Liverpool, Kieran Maguire.

Kieran, first and foremost, can you just break down the timeline of

what

has happened? Because since Friday, this is now big news upon big

news.

Yes, on, on Friday we had a leak that Manchester City had

allegedly been found guilty of all but one of the

charges. That has now been confirmed by the Premier

League

statement. Um, and o- over a nine-year period, it's

effectively stating that Manchester City has, um,

lied to the Premier League in terms of its financial

statements, has lied to the auditors, uh, has effectively lied to

players and coaches when they were being recruited, and has given

itself a financial advantage of, uh, about

120 million bucks a year o- over the other clubs in the

Premier League as a result of doing so.

Kieran, uh, the, the most incredible thing to me is for the

114 that we heard of the 115 initial charges,

what's the most damning finding that we find from today's reports?

I think the damning finding is that, uh, senior management at

Manchester City have deliberately concealed

information, have conducted a huge fraud,

uh, with the aim of misrepresenting the club's

accounts to all of the authorities with the aim

of achieving a competitive, uh, advantage.

And they've also, when you take a look at the commission

reports, uh,

it talks about witnesses giving false evidence,

witnesses being unreliable, um, and all of these witnesses were

coming from the Manchester City side.

So it, it is a, it's, it's a staggering statement because

normally the- these

commissions are quite reserved and

conservative i- in, in the way that they would present comments.

But this is, uh, this is damning. I did speak to somebody in Manchester a

few days ago who said at the time, "This is worse than the

worst case scenario that had been envisaged by, by staff."

And this

certainly appears to be the case.