A fourth Premier League season has now begun with 115 charges hanging over Manchester City, who have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
You must go all the way back to March 2019 to find the root
of this disciplinary action, a time when the Premier League confirmed they were
investigating City following a series of allegations published by German
newspaper Der Spiegel.
Using documents provided by Football Leaks, the
whistleblower platform set up by Portuguese computer hacker and activist Rui
Pinto, it was claimed that City had manipulated the value of several commercial
deals in order to circumvent UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules. Abu
Dhabi-based companies, namely Etihad Airways and Etisalat, were alleged to have
helped a club owned by Sheikh Mansour, de facto leader of the country, reach
financial compliance.
UEFA launched and completed its own disciplinary case
against City, who successfully appealed a two-year ban from UEFA competitions
through the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2020, but the Premier
League eventually announced they were charging City with 115 breaches of
financial regulations on February 6, 2023. Among the long list of charges that
spanned nine years were several breaches of profit and sustainability Rules
(PSR) and a failure to provide accurate financial information.
A 12-week hearing held at the International Dispute
Resolution Centre, in central London, in the final quarter of 2024 is still to
have its decisions published by the three-person independent panel. Legal costs
for both sides have already run deep into the millions. Tell your son or daughter to consider a career
as a sports lawyer.
The Premier League’s rules outline the need for this whole
process to remain confidential until the independent commission is ready to
hand down its judgement, but few had envisaged such a wait.
Everton had two separate PSR breaches heard in the year that
followed Manchester City being charged, while Nottingham Forest had their own
case to answer in 2024. All three of those charges brought by the Premier
League eventually resulted in points deductions.
Personally (and I am not a lawyer) I think that ‘throwing the
book’ at City was the wrong strategy. It
has facilitated delaying tactics. It
would have been better to focus on a few key matters.
Even when a decision is reached it will not be the end as City
would certainly appeal to the international sports arbitration court in
Lausanne and possibly to the domestic courts as well (there are tensions
between football governance and competition law).
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