Manchester City Financial Rule Violations

To put money into context, I have here the Premier League said the

arrangements

inflated revenue and reduced costs by more than £900

million.

How staggering is that figure in a football context,

in a football stance?

Well, if you take a look at the cost control

rules, the cost control r- rules

allow you to lose 105 million over a three-year

period, so that's effectively works out as £35

million

per season. The fact that Manchester City were

inflating their monies by £100 million per season,

a- and if you then compare that to what happened with Nottingham

Forest

and Everton when they were given significant points deductions

as

far as those clubs were concerned for relatively minor

breaches. It's, it's not just the fact that, uh,

Manchester City has broken the rules, it's the extent to which they've

broken the rules, uh, has gone far beyond anybody's

expectations. There, there's been lots of people messing around

on, on

spreadsheets for the last few days when the announcement came out,

but we're gonna

have to rip those up and start all over again to,

just to try to get a,

a, a quantum of the advantage that Manchester City

generated from a- from adopting this policy.

One of the, the core just grievances in this updated

findings are the sham

sponsorships that affect both inflated revenue and inflated reduced

costs. So just, can you give us just the definition

or what's your

definition of these sham sp- sponsorships?

Yeah. Wh- what has happened is that, uh, Manchester City

have, in theory, got contracts from sponsors for,

let's say,

100 million bucks, uh, for, uh, say a, a three-year deal,

but the sponsor, uh, company itself was only paying

around about 10% of that. So 90 million appears to have

been coming from the club owners a- and funneled through

different bank accounts. Um, so, so that's, that has allowed

Manchester City to, to increase the money coming into the

club, and

on the back of that, it's allowed them to recruit managers,

to recruit

players, and to pay wages which otherwise they wouldn't have been

able to do so.

Now, I'm gonna put you on the spot because the

big thing that this

definitely depends on is the appeal process,

and obviously Manchester City have

until October 2nd. So what are the optics and what are the

prospects of this case potentially dragging on for a long time?

I, I understand that the opportunity for

Manchester City is, is very,

very narrow. Um, if, if you take a look at the Premier League

handbook,

Manchester City can't go to the court for arbitration for sport, so

therefore it will have to be settled domestically.

I think their only chances of, uh, getting any form of

appeal against the commission, this initial commission, is to

prove that the commission, uh, staff themselves, the

three people who sat on the commission, that they were biased.

There's no evidence of this. Um, the Premier League would not have gone

down that particular route. So I, I, it does look as if

Manchester City's opportunities are remote.

Then what will happen next is we will have, um, a, a

verdict in terms of what's the punishment going to be.

Manchester City could appeal that, but on the basis of the,

uh, the, the evidence which Manchester City staff have given,

their

credibility has been shot to pieces.

And then the very final step, which I think is, again, is a remote one,

is could Manchester City appeal to non-sports courts,

effectively to go to sort of the, the high courts of, of

English law as opposed to the sports commissions.

I was talking to some sports lawyers and they say a- again, difficult,

not impossible, but very difficult to get

that through as well.