What Punishment Will Manchester City Get?

The Rest Is Football

The episode dissects the landmark Premier League verdict against Manchester City regarding 115 alleged financial regulations breaches, exploring the legal landscape and potential sanctions ahead of

Key takeaways

• Miguel Delaney confirms that legal advice permits journalists to use terms like 'cheat' since liability has been established by an independent commission, though sanctions await appeal.
• Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, expressed concern over losing City but emphasized non-intervention in the regulatory process while praising their community investment.

Main topics

• Manchester City financial charges verdict and appeal process
• Potential sanctions: points deductions vs. expulsion

Notable quotes

"The language was so strong... Even the fact that the word sham is used a few times. That's remarkable."

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while drastic measures like expulsion face s

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:11) Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Football with Alan Shearer and me, Gary Lineker. On today's episode, we'll be answering your questions all about Manchester City and the latest verdict on the 115 charges. And to do that, we're joined by journalist and expert on this matter, Miguel Delaney. Miguel, thank you very much for joining us. I imagine you've been quite busy over the last week or so. Speaker 2 (0:35) Just saying to Alan before we came on, I think since this broke on, what was it? Well, we actually had murmurings on Friday morning, maybe Thursday evening last week. And since then, it's just been nonstop. And even this week, it feels like every few hours when you feel like it's maybe calming down, there's a new kind of escalation to the story. But you're obviously the kind of main development of the actual decision on Tuesday. So since then, elements like this latest story with Etihad. The Prime Minister offering comment on it. Speaker 8 (1:05) Yeah, I've got actually the Prime Minister's quotes here. Andy Burnham said, I would be really concerned to lose them, Manchester City's owners he's talking about. They've been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester. Obviously, the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is. I can't intervene more in the process. It would be wrong for me to do that. It would be wrong, I think, to jump to a conclusion before having really studied all the detail. But obviously, it's ongoing. And because it's still contested by Manchester City, then I think it's right that I don't say much more. I do actually thank the City Football Group and the wider ownership for the money that they didn't just put into the Etihad and the campus around it, but also... into the city. It leads me perhaps to a first question, Miguel, and that is from Connor, who asks, are the public right to condemn Manchester City prior to the appeal process, or should we still be cautious after they were found not guilty on appeal during the UEFA hearing? Although it wasn't that because it was time barred that they were not. Yeah, Speaker 2 (2:08) that was down to a technicality and a different context. And look, this is actually a very direct legal question for journalists and how we can speak about it. Right up to, I would say, fundamentals of this story, like whether you can use the word cheat. And the legal advice is we can because the core of the process is completed. We have an outcome. There is liability. They're still awaiting sanctioning, as you say, appeal. But appeal is a choice. A lot of clubs, they don't take up the option to appeal because often it can make things worse. It can make sanctions worse. So as of right now, we can talk freely. about what the outcome is, what the verdict is. And I suppose freely used comment. Yes, I think as journalists, certainly, we would always say now pending appeal, you would still say city insistent upon their innocence. But that isn't the same requirement, say, as it was before Tuesday this week. Because, I mean, as of now, the charges have been proven. Almost all of the charges have been proven. Speaker 3 (3:08) You said about how busy you've been in the last week or so, whatever it may be. I mean, the noise is not going to go away. If anything, when Premier League football returns, because of the fixture that we're all going to be looking at, Liverpool, Manchester City, leading up to every single game that they play, the noise will get louder, no? Speaker 2 (3:31) Oh, yeah, completely. And look, even standing back from that. So basically since December 2024, I think a lot of us have been on high alert for every international break just because the expectation was that the Premier League, they wouldn't want to disrupt the kind of the match week by having this massive outcome in a Premier League. And there are issues maybe kind of how it affects teams, even if City say at the moment that is potentially unavoidable. But obviously they keep going on and every time it comes round and there's a bit of a murmur. You're initially a bit dismissive because you heard it so many times before. This time, it was immediately very different from the chatter back. But also, and just relevant to the point about the games, this is obviously the longest international break we've had outside of a tournament. So it's basically a long, long time for the waves of this story to keep coming around to rising. And yeah, usually in these sort of situations where you've got kind of big stories in the news cycle. The games disrupt them. So, like, a classic, actually, that is almost a sister story to this summer or autumn, which was the Infantino crisis. And it's amazing some of the stuff that's been discussed about that in the last few days, because it's as if people in UEFA, say, or whatever, using the distraction of Manchester City to talk about everything, to talk about governance matters in different ways. But Infantino, say, was banking on the leagues coming back to just distract from the story. He was right. In this case, suddenly we have all manner of new questions. We've got Enzo Maresca's first press conference. We've got all the details that are going to happen when the Man City team get back together for the first time. I mean, just from speaking to people around the England camp this week, say, some of the players are obviously interested in it. This is their teammates. I've heard from a few sources that players have noticed maybe naturally a bit of concern from the City players. Up until Tuesday, I don't think City actually spoke. the players to happen. Actually, would players say they'd want them all back together? Everyone will have seen that video of Ruben Diaz and Haaland talking after the game. We don't actually know what was said to them. And then, of course, as you say, Alan, the opposition and the venue. I mean, Liverpool would probably see themselves as one of the teams to suffer the most from, if not the 2009-2018 period of the investigation, the consequence of that, which is what City were able to become and how they would feel they had this... truly historically special team in Klopp's Liverpool that probably didn't win what it could have won because of who they were up against. And I'd say Anfield, they're going to let City know. I mean, you can already see how it's going to go, can't you? You can see what? A banner with Sham on it or something a bit more creative than that. Speaker 3 (6:09) Therefore, then it's like it's imperative for the Premier League and for everyone that this is sorted ASAP. Speaker 2 (6:18) Yeah. Speaker 3 (6:19) It's not going to go away until the sanctions are put upon them. I guess then they'll appeal. But it's so damaging for the game, isn't it? Speaker 2 (6:27) So I've actually done a piece on this with The Independent this morning. And I was talking to a few people this week about this, where someone said to me, I don't think people realize how much of a farce some games could be. Because the line that was used to me was, whatever about previous seasons, every single game now is going to have an asterisk on it. Speaker 5 (6:44) There Speaker 2 (6:45) could be a massive points deduction by the end of the season. There might not be. The appeal process, especially if City go to the high court, might go on into next season, which would be very damaging. A question from Whitesy. I Speaker 8 (6:57) guess the obvious question is, how can Manchester City be so confident as to say they're innocent and have the evidence to prove it? Is this just chess puffing or is there a sliver of a chance that the Premier League have dropped a clanger? Well, it's an independent ruling for a start, wasn't it? Not necessarily the Premier League. Speaker 2 (7:15) Yeah, and look, obviously with every step of this, I must say, I'm well acquainted with a fair few lawyers now because you want to be on some way on top of the detail. Obviously, we're journalists, not lawyers. But they would say that the consensus seems to be that this is going to be very, very difficult for a city to overturn. And one of the reasons for that is if you read the decision so far, we still await the main document, which could run to a thousand pages. But they would point to how most of this case is based on the evidence. It's not about matters of law. where you could potentially pursue angles of appeal. And also appeals, at least certainly before the high court, would have to come down to procedure. And we have this big part of the case, which has almost become a cliche, but the city are still repeating it. The initial description was of a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence. Well, I mean, the process we've had so far is when that evidence would have had to be shown. It's going to be very difficult to introduce new evidence to this case, except in exceptional circumstances. And the Premier League seems to have found it quite refutable. So there's always the chance. You have to allow for the possibility and speak in those ways. But even like the constant reference to cast a court of arbitration for sport, that came down to a few different elements. Like the main one was the technicalities of time barring. where with one of the sponsorships, UEFA had the most evidence and meant they could draw inference from patterns of behavior for other examples, according to Swiss law. They came down to a vote on whether what mattered was that was the date of payment or the date of submission, because it had to fall within the May 2014 to May 2019 time period. And two of the judges against the other one decided that date of submission was more important than the date of payment. So an entire tranche of evidence was just stricken off, couldn't be entered, hence it couldn't be proven. The Premier League haven't had that. So it is a different context to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. And also, of course, they can't appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Speaker 8 (9:20) Yeah, I mean, it's almost certain, I would imagine, there's going to be an appeal. Can the Premier League still give them the punishment during that appeal? Do they have to wait to the end of it? And will the appeal take as long as the actual case itself took, which was obviously a substantial Speaker 2 (9:42) amount of time? With this, because the scale is so big, it's verdict first liability, as they put it. And because there is... a chance that could be appealed. It means there's no point in imposing sanctions right now because suddenly you're putting them on and potentially within six weeks, you have to overturn them again. So purely on the Premier League process, I think the expectation is this could, so City have until Friday this week, Friday 2nd of October to appeal that we know they will appeal. I think the timescale has been put forward, even if it does potentially take time to get the panel together. given that has been one of the issues and why this case has been so long running. I think the most optimistic expectation is it would be in November, maybe more likely into January. And that is when sanctions would be imposed. And then it comes down to, I suppose, whether a city want to take it to the High Court, which does. I mean, there's still the small possibility there from speaking to legal sources that that could end up the absolute farce of this going to a retrial. But I think that's the discussion for into the future. Speaker 8 (10:47) A question from Chris. Is there a chance that the club will face criminal charges? Will HMRC and SFO be keeping an eye on the outcome, misstated accounts, fraudulent trading, tax avoidance, etc.? Speaker 2 (11:02) So I think there is an expectation. The outcome after appeal ends with City still guilty of nearly all the charges and especially the key charges. it would go further. And there's two relevant sections of law to that. Section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006, I'm going to have to read these because I suppose the detail is important, that states that dishonestly making a false representation, such as false financial accounts, with the intention of making a gain or avoiding a loss, can lead to individuals being imprisoned for 10 years and facing an unlimited fine. The quote, a representation is false if it is untrue or misleading, and the person making it known that it is or might be