The Premier League v Manchester City and England beat Czechia – Football Weekly

Football Weekly

The episode centers on the massive fallout from the Premier League's verdict finding Manchester City guilty of serious financial breaches an

Key takeaways

• The Premier League commission found Manchester City guilty of serious breaches involving sham contracts and misstated accounts between 2009 and 2018.
• Financial discrepancies are estimated to involve over £900 million in disguised funding and hidden costs.

Main topics

• Manchester City financial investigation
• Premier League sanctions and rules

Notable quotes

City cheated on an unprecedented industrial scale.

Conclusion

The episode highlights a period of profound instability and legal comp

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) This is The Guardian. Speaker 2 (0:11) Have you found yourself confessing personal things to ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude? You're not alone. Something huge is underway that we haven't really found the words for yet. A new voice in our ear, guiding what we think and feel and do. But should we trust it? Speaker 1 (0:29) I just thought, what has this thing done to him? Speaker 2 (0:32) Black Box The Chatbots, a new podcast series from The Guardian Investigates. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (0:47) Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly. Sham City. Yesterday, the Premier League's damning verdict was released, a 40-page document listing City's financial deception and their determined attempts to hamper the Premier League's investigation, accusing important witnesses of lying. Manchester City still maintain their innocence, including a leaked three-minute video from the CEO, Ferran Soriano, where he doesn't blink once, telling staff to carry on as normal. It feels like they'll never admit anything. We await the sanctions, but there are huge questions about the rest of the season. City three points clear at the top and the future of their players. Beyond that, England win in Czechia, an early red card changed it, but Anthony Gordon's becoming crucial to Thomas Tuchel, Trent Alexander-Arnold with one beautiful cross, and a chance to look at Miles Lewis-Skelly and Alex Scott. Meanwhile, Scotland scupper themselves by going down to 10 early, and there's real positivity in Northern Ireland. Also, Robbie Savage is going to Peterborough. We'll take your questions. This is the Guardian Football Weekly. Speaker 6 (1:38) On the panel today, Barry Glendening, welcome. Hi, Max. Hello, Dan Bardell. Speaker 4 (1:42) Hello, Max Rushton. Speaker 6 (1:43) And out in Czechia, George Elek. You okay, George? Yes. Yeah, I'm good, Max. Thank you. Bit croaky, but okay. Bit croaky. Minimals. sleep, plenty of karaoke in the bars of Prague. We'll get to that game. But hopefully, while you were in that pub, you read the entire Premier League statement on Manchester City. Michael says, at what point is it considered refutable that Man City have irrefutable evidence of innocence? Chuck says, should Liverpool and Man United do three separate parades or one parade with three laps? So the Premier League released an official statement confirming Manchester City's guilt yesterday. I've got a few bits from it. An independent commission has found Manchester City FC guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the Premier League's financial rules over a nine-season period and the majority of charges in relation to its failure to cooperate with the league's investigation. The independent commission found that between seasons 09-10 and 2017-18, Manchester City arranged sham contracts, which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on sham agreements with others to artificially inflate the club's revenues. and reduce its costs. The club filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators. Manchester City was significantly in breach of both the Premier League and UEFA's spending limits. During the investigation, Manchester City committed multiple breaches of its duties of cooperation and utmost good faith towards the league. And the commission concluded that the club had made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the Premier League investigation. Barry, it's... Normally statements from official bodies are not extraordinary, but this was. Speaker 3 (3:19) Yeah, and it's confirmation of what most of us have had a fair idea was going on for a long time. And I suppose the summary is that City cheated on an unprecedented industrial scale. They did so very deliberately and then tried to cover up their cheating. by lying about it, and they lied consistently and deliberately, and it appears that despite this finding, they're showing no remorse or guilt whatsoever and are continuing to talk about this comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of our position relating to this case. They've been parroting that line for years. and you wonder at what point, if this irrefutable evidence exists, are they going to produce it and show it to us? And then we can put an end to the matter. I think maybe the most interesting thing about yesterday is that we finally got some numbers put on the scale of their cheating, and it was quite astronomical. It's basically disguised funding, $855 million. and hidden costs of £66 million. So we're talking over £900 million worth of cheating in their favour, which is £100 million per season for the period involved. And that just seems extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. Speaker 6 (4:58) Yeah, and the lying of the witnesses, evidence given by a number of important factual witnesses. called to give evidence on behalf of the club was false in a number of key respects. The commission wrote, arguing that some of the falsehoods had been deliberate. Certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest. I don't know if we should be surprised by the dishonesty, George. Just the people who have given these dishonest statements, you know, it's not the tea lady and the kit man doing it. It feels extraordinary. Speaker 5 (5:27) Yeah, it does. And also, I guess the point on the tea lady and the kit man is that they're kind of... as well as the fans who are showing some contrition and other things. I guess they're the victims here in terms of what's happening with the club, as well as the other Premier League clubs who have been impacted and general Premier League fans. But yeah, I mean, I guess we shouldn't be surprised. It feels like everything the Manchester City are being accused of and have been found guilty of is relatively brazen. You know, I'm no lawyer, but I don't understand how everyone assuming that the Manchester City lawyers are trying to frustrate this process and trying to drag it out as long as possible. Claiming irrefutable evidence and being found to be lying about the evidence they're providing seems to be quite a bad way of going about that. So it's just a total mess. It feels like we're basically in a moment of civil war at the top table of English football right now. And given what's going on at the moment and reading the statements yesterday, it seems pretty crazy that Manchester City are going to be playing Premier League football next weekend as domestic football comes back. the relationship between the most successful club of the last 20 years and the Premier League itself is obviously at a stage where in Manchester City they feel like they're being persecuted but the Premier League are trying to do whatever they can to implement the rules and basically stamp out what they see to be systematic cheating. So, yeah, it's a mess. It's a... how this... It's hard to understand what the process is now. We saw the Premier League saying that they want this to come to a conclusion as soon as possible. It feels... Pretty unlikely that we'll see any kind of resolution to this, given the way the Manchester City are clearly looking to fight it, rather than ask for forgiveness and accepting the findings of the Premier League. So I guess there's a possibility that Manchester City might even win the Premier League this season, despite all this going on, which would be pretty interesting, given the noise. Speaker 6 (7:14) Manchester City's response, they issued a statement soon after the Premier League statement came out, saying Manchester City... Football Club is both disappointed and surprised by the opinion of the Premier League Commission that's been published today. The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all its positions relating to this case. The club will therefore be relentless and, where necessary, proactive in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums. Jack says, do you trust a man who cannot blink for over three minutes? This is the Ferran Soriano video. By all accounts, producer Joel was saying there's an AI function that if I was, say, reading a long bit of text, he could... he could do something that meant I gave eye contact to the camera like I'm doing now if you're watching on YouTube. But it doesn't tell you where to blink clearly, so it looks mad. He says the whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation that the owner's personal money was somehow and secretly put into the club via some sponsors from Abu Dhabi. This is just not true. He also said, we'll take all necessary action to protect the club and seek compensation from any party that tries to damage it now and in the future. They have until Friday to register their appeal. I mean, there are so many ways we can discuss this, Dan. And I think back to when I asked you a difficult legal question, you said, oh, I hope he doesn't ask me on this a few pods ago. But for George's point about this season coming up, you know, that game against Liverpool, you know, just waiting for these sanctions to come out. And also from, you know, actually, you're an Aston Villa fan. And Gabby O'Connor made a good point about the number of players you sold to Manchester City. And that is, you know, Barry, Milner, Delph. And that is one club in one bit of this sort of extraordinary tangled spider's web. Speaker 4 (8:51) Yeah, I think there's going to be so many clubs that have kind of got individual grievances and individual cases against what's happened with Manchester City here. And it just isn't going to be a swift conclusion either. So they're going to be going to countless grounds for probably. a year, two years, whilst this all gets ironed out because the appeal process, I believe, is going to take an awful long time. But we're all going to be none the wiser to what's going to happen. Meanwhile, Manchester City are probably going to continue beating a lot of football clubs as they carry on through this journey. And teams like Stoke got to an FA Cup final and then Manchester City beat them. That's a huge thing for Stoke. Villa at the time were battling Manchester City for top four at a time when Manchester City had never finished. in the top four. Villa and Newcastle fans have had massive grievances with the ways that the rules work and we've always cited Villa and Newcastle fans that, well, when Chelsea got taken over, when Manchester City got taken over, they could go out, they could spend what they wanted and they managed to turn themselves into the massive juggernauts they are today. So that's a problem because Villa and Newcastle can't do that now because of the rules. But little did anyone know that not only could they just go out and spend what they wanted, they could also just completely manipulate financials and just... basically have free reign to go and do what they want. And I feel sorry for the fans. I think if I was a Manchester City supporter now, everything that's happened in the last 10 to 15 years would feel more than tainted to me because they can come out and say, Manchester City almost saying it's like a single fact that is wrong and is causing all this. There's 115 charges, I think it is. That's an awful lot of wrongdoing. If they're not guilty of one thing, they're probably going to be guilty of another. But I've struggled to see how they can just continue playing in the Premier League and, as George says, potentially win the Premier League this season. With all this just hanging over every single week, it is absolutely the biggest thing that's ever happened in football since I've watched football. Speaker 6 (10:52) We're all waiting for the sanctions, right? It is sort of that gif of... is it Michael Jackson eating popcorn, going, what are they going to do? What can they possibly do? I don't know what I expect you to answer with, but I think that moment, and it's so weird, we all get into this to watch football, and now we're waiting for this thing to be decided by an independent panel. Whatever about Speaker 3 (11:17) the sanctions, we'll get to them, but pre-Abu Dhabi City, when they were down in the third division, Their fans used to sing this song, We're Not Really Here, which was quite funny because the notion of City being in the third tier was quite ridiculous. That's where they were. And if they continue playing in the Premier League this season, which looks certain to happen, it's almost going to be the same. They're there, but they're not really there because all evidence suggests they're not going to be there for very much longer. But I don't think... They can be on the Premier League's roll of honour. I think they need to be stripped of the titles. Not sure there's much appetite, even from players and clubs involved. I know Tony Pulis wants his FA Cup. Wayne Rooney doesn't want any extra league medals that are tainted by association with City's cheating. There are different views on that, but I think the Premier League, for the years they've won it, and possibly the years since, because... They won eight trophies in the time they were under investigation, but I think they've won 15 or 16 since, not counting Community Shields. There's league titles, there's FA Cups, there's Carabao Cups, there's a World Club Cup, the UEFA Super Cup, and a Champions League. So as far as the Premier League is concerned, because it's they who took action against City, I think those years should... maybe be left blank. They can't possibly stay in the Premier League, but the question then is where do you put them and for how long? Do you give them multiple points deductions year on year to make it incredibly difficult for them to work their way back to the Premier League? Do you give them mass transfer bans so they can't bring in new players? Presumably if they're down in... League Two or the Northern Counties League or wherever it is they end up, Erling Haaland and everyone else isn't going to want to stay there. So it is absolutely fascinating to see what happens. But as for their immediate future in the Premier League, it just renders the competition a farce if they're still playing in it and still