Breaking: Premier League finally reveals its position on City’s 115-man charge; Arsenal has a chance to win the league and will lose points Bravo, supporters of Arsenal!
The Premier League’s lawsuit against Manchester City, a local rival, may require Manchester United to pay substantial sums of money that “will not be recoverable,” according to The Telegraph.
There are 115 charges against City for allegedly breaking Premier League rules between 2009 and 2023. According to the BBC, these charges are as follows:
• 54x: Inaccurate financial data was not provided from 2009–10 to 2017–18.
• 14x – Inaccurate information about player and manager payments from 2009–10 to 2017–18 is not provided.
• 5x: Noncompliance with Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations from 2013–14 to 2017–18, as well as other UEFA regulations.
• 7x – Violation of Premier League PSR regulations from 2015–16 to 2017–18.
• 35x: From December 2018 to February 2023, the player neglected to cooperate with Premier League investigations
A total of 35 charges of “failure to co-operate” with the Premier League’s investigation from 2018 to 2023 are made, not all of which are related to financial regulations. The German publication Der Spiegel first made the claimed offenses public in a report that dates back to 2009. The emails that were revealed in this exposé, according to City, were “obtained illegally.”
According to the BBC, the accusations center on “paying former manager Roberto Mancini to act as a consultant to a club in Abu Dhabi, driving more money into the club from owner Sheikh Mansour through fictitious sponsorship deals, and giving players more money than was going through the accounts.”
The ability to sign more and better players than they otherwise would have been able to would have resulted from this.
“The argument goes that 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,” if it weren’t for this extra funding and the talent it allowed the Citizens to recruit on the field.
The ability to sign more and better players than they otherwise would have been able to would have resulted from this.
“The argument goes that 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,” if it weren’t for this extra funding and the talent it allowed the Citizens to recruit on the field.
Regarding punishment, “everything is on the table,” according to a number of attorneys who work in the football community and spoke with Front Office Sports. They argue, “On the severe end, league titles stripped and relegation are on the table, but no one knows how likely that is.”
If City’s championship victories from these years are annulled, it presents an intriguing hypothetical given that United finished in second place behind their local rivals in the league table three times during the alleged offenses—once each under Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Nonetheless, the Premier League’s recent decision in Everton’s case regarding a violation of the profits and sustainability rules (PSR) will “significantly” impact City’s case.
In order to successfully prosecute its case against the Merseyside club, which resulted in a “10-point deduction reduced to six on appeal in February,” the Premier League paid £4.7 million in fees. The Premier League appealed the £1.7 million in costs that the commission overseeing the proceedings had awarded them. The commission’s ruling was upheld after Everton “successfully argued that it was not liable for what its general counsel, Celia Rooney, described as ‘frankly eye-watering’ costs.”
The Everton case centered on a single PSR regulation violation (City’s accounts for 115). As they have attempted to address City’s objections, the Premier League’s in-house and outside counsel have needed “many more hours,” according to The Telegraph. As a result, the Premier League may have incurred far greater costs than those related to the Toffees lawsuit.
The other nineteen Premier League teams, including United, will be obligated to cover the costs associated with the accusations made against City. The Telegraph report states that “the Premier League’s 20 shareholders bear all governance costs, which will be deducted from disbursements of central broadcast rights and commercial funds.”
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
