BREAKING: Manchester United forced to pay “eye-watering” fees to fund PL’s investigation into Man City’s 115 charges – relegation loading for City
BREAKING: Manchester United forced to pay “eye-watering” fees to fund PL’s investigation into Man City’s 115 charges – relegation loading for City
Manchester United could be forced pay significant amounts to fund the Premier League’s case against local rivals Manchester City; money which will “not be recoverable”, the Telegraph contends.
City are accused of breaching the Premier League regulations 115 times between 2009 and 2023. These charges, as relayed by the BBC, are as follows:
• 54x – Failure to provide accurate financial information 2009-10 to 2017-18.
• 14x – Failure to provide accurate details for player and manager payments from 2009-10 to 2017-18.
• 5x – Failure to comply with Uefa’s rules including Financial Fair Play (FFP) 2013-14 to 2017-18.
• 7x – Breaching Premier League’s PSR rules 2015-16 to 2017-18.
• 35x – Failure to co-operate with Premier League investigations December 2018 – February 2023.
Not all of these breaches relation to financial regulations, with thirty-five alleged counts of “failure to co-operate” with the Premier League’s investigation from 2018 up until 2023. The alleged offences date back to 2009 and were first publicised in a report by German newspaper, Der Spiegel. City maintain the emails published in this exposé were “obtained illegally.”
The BBC explains, the allegations revolve around “driving more money into the club from owner Sheikh Mansour through fictitious sponsorship deals, paying then manager Roberto Mancini to act as a consultant to a club in Abu Dhabi and giving players more money than was going through the accounts.”
This would then have allowed “City to sign more and better players than they would normally have been able to.”
Without this additional money, and the quality it enabled the Citizens to recruit on the pitch, “the argument goes, they would not have won what they did and would not have been as far advanced as they were when Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016 and turned them into the most successful team in the world, culminating in them winning the Treble in 2023.”
The allegations against City will be heard, The Telegraph reveals, in “private hearings later this month” with Premier League chief Richard Masters contending it was “time” to resolve the case. The governing body of England’s top division originally charged the Manchester club in February 2023 – over eighteen months ago. A verdict on the case is “expected early in 2025.”
One Premier League owner is quoted by Front Office Sports as believing the Premier League champions “will be relegated” while one from lower down the footballing pyramid thinks a “record fine and points deduction” will be imposed, but “in a way that would allow [City] to admit no fault.”
Several lawyers who operate within footballing circles told Front Office Sports that “everything is on the table” in terms of punishment. “On the severe end, relegation and league titles stripped are on the table, but no one knows how likely that is,” they contend.
Given United finished in second place behind their local rivals in the league table three times during the period of alleged offences – once each under Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer – it offers an interesting hypothetical should City’s title wins for these years be rescinded.
However, a recent ruling in the case by the Premier League against Everton for a breach in the profits and sustainability rules (PSR) will have “significant” repercussions for the one against City.
The Premier League spent £4.7 million in fees to bring its successful case against the Merseyside club which resulted in a “10-point deduction reduced to six on appeal in February.” The commission who oversaw proceedings awarded £1.7 million in costs to the Premier League, who appealed the amount. Everton “successfully argued that it was not liable for what its general counsel, Celia Rooney, described as ‘frankly eye-watering’ costs” and the commission’s decision was upheld.
The case brought against Everton revolved around one breach of PSR regulations; City’s accounts for 115. The Telegraph reveals it’s required “many more hours for the Premier League in-house and external counsel as they have sought to deal with City’s objections.” This makes the potential cost the Premier League have accrued far more than the one spent on the case against the Toffees.
And it is the rest of the Premier League’s nineteen clubs who will be forced to pay for these fees involved in the allegations against City, including United. “All costs for governance are borne by the Premier League’s 20 shareholders, and will be deducted from disbursements of central broadcast rights and commercial funds,” the report by The Telegraph explains.
While there is an exacerbated sense of injustice that it’s City’s competitors who will be forced to facilitate the fees involved in the case against them, it will be money well spent from the perspective of any United fan should the club’s local rivals finally receive the punishment their flagrant cheating deserves
