Manchester City has lodged a “comprehensive” appeal, the club confirmed Friday, following the publication of a report by an independent commission detailing large-scale financial rule-breaking by the Premier League giant in one of English soccer’s biggest scandals.
“The club’s firm position,” read a short statement from City, “is that, on multiple grounds, the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe.”
City has protested its innocence throughout the long-running case, which dates back to 2018 and reached a milestone Tuesday, when the Premier League published a verdict saying the Abu Dhabi-controlled club was “guilty of all charges related to serious breaches” of the competition’s financial rules from 2009-18.
City has yet to receive a punishment. According to the Premier League, potential sanctions could be a reprimand, fine, points deduction or, in the worst case, expulsion from the competition. No team has ever been expelled from English soccer’s top flight.
City officials said they would lodge an appeal and that was filed on Thursday evening, the club said, ahead of Friday’s deadline.
“The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case,” City said, using language from previous statements on the case.
Premier League regulations state that the chair of the three-person disciplinary commission that found against City now has to appoint a new appeal board. That also will consist of three people, one of whom “shall have held judicial office,” the league’s rules state.
The appeal board will then schedule a hearing that should finish within 12 weeks after the appeal is filed, and cannot exceed five consecutive days.
That will be addressed in a separate, confidential hearing with the commission and there has been no word whether sanctions can be imposed before the decision of the appeal is reached.
The Premier League has only said its intention is that the process is concluded “as soon as possible.”
City was found to have systematically broken the Premier League’s financial rules for nearly a decade in what the competition’s chief executive, Richard Masters, described as the most significant disciplinary case in the league’s history.
The investigatory panel found that City artificially inflated its revenue — using what the league has called “sham” commercial deals — by more than $1 billion from 2009-18 to circumvent financial fair-play rules that restricted rival clubs, and allowing City to buy some of the best players in the world.
That was the foundation of a long and unprecedented period of success in which City changed the landscape of the world’s most popular soccer league, with the northwest club winning eight league titles from 2012-24.
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City committed almost all of the 115-plus violations, the commission found: 80 from 2009-18 for alleged financial misdeeds and another 35 from 2018-23 for allegedly not cooperating with the investigation.
Source of sponsorship could be focus in appeal
City is likely to focus part of its appeal around the issue of how its Abu Dhabi-based sponsorship deals were funded.
The commission found that sponsors in Abu Dhabi only paid 119.25 million pounds ($158.4 million) of the 949.94 million pounds ($1.26 billion) stated in club accounts, with the remaining 830.69 million pounds ($1.1 billion) being paid by the Abu Dhabi United Group, the private company of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan that bought City in 2008.
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Sheikh Mansour is a member of the United Arab Emirates’ ruling family.
City contended that “no part” of the deals were funded by the ADUG and that, instead, the Abu Dhabi government — which owned the sponsors — had helped to fund the deals “from time to time.” And so in City’s opinion, that source of extra funding was misunderstood, the commission wrote.
The panel rejected that explanation by City as untrue, concluding it was “concocted well after the event” to disguise the source of funding.
In an internal video to City staff — obtained by broadcaster Sky News — City chief executive Ferran Soriano said: “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.”
On Friday, the Football Association — the governing body of soccer in England — expressed concern that the “integrity” of the game had been affected by the scandal.
In its first reaction to the case, the FA said: “The independent commission’s decision has significant implications for the integrity of the game. We are carefully considering the decision and its implications and will take action where appropriate.”
The FA added that it would “continue to monitor developments closely” and would not comment further because proceedings were ongoing.
The City case is currently a soccer disciplinary proceeding, not a criminal investigation. On Thursday, a cross-party committee of lawmakers called on Britain’s tax authority to assess the case.
The chair of the Treasury Committee, Dame Meg Hillier, wrote to the permanent secretary of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), saying: “While I acknowledge that taxpayer confidentiality may inhibit what you can disclose, I would welcome reassurance from HMRC that you are seized of the importance of these issues and the public interest in the case.”
In another example of the widespread impact of the scandal involving City, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has been repeatedly asked his view on the issue.
On Wednesday, Burnham said he would be “really concerned” to lose City’s ownership from English soccer, saying they had been a “huge partner in the building of modern Manchester” and of City as a global force, while also saying he was not getting involved in the process.
Burnham was formerly the mayor of Manchester.
On Thursday, Downing Street sought to clarify that the prime minister viewed the ruling as “serious and there can’t be any suggestion that anyone is above the rules.”
“If wrongdoing is established, those responsible should face the appropriate consequences,” Burnham’s office said in a statement, which stressed that the independent process was ongoing.
