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Will Man City be punished or walk away scot-free? Premier League hearing to start next month

Stuart Thomas

Expert

19 minutes ago

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Some time in mid-September, Premier League giant Manchester City will finally face the music and be forced to defend itself against alleged Financial Fair Play infringements between 2009 and 2018.

There are reportedly 115 individual breaches that the Premier League will claim occurred during that period and after a lengthy wait in organising a hearing to sort out whether City has indeed cheated its way to the top of the table, a decision could well be reached by the new year.

The hearing will potentially take between two and three months to complete, with City certain to attack the allegations with a powerful legal team and a well prepared defence considering exactly what is on the line.

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(Photo by Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

The possibility of monstrous fines, a slashing of points in the 2024/25 race for the title and most brutal, relegation from the top tier, are all on the cards should the club be found guilty. Yet proving all the allegations will be an enormous task for the governing body, with many already predicting a light penalty based on guilt found on far fewer than the 115 total charges.

The cynical view will be that City’s power and influence will be looked kindly upon and a negotiated, watered-down settlement will be likely. Even if guilt should be proven, the financial benefit brought to the league by the big clubs might not be missed by those charged with dishing out a punishment.

Frankly, a slap across the wrist is expected by some, despite the fact that proven allegations will be tantamount to cheating and an undermining of the oft-forgotten importance of fair play in professional sport.

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The origin of the Financial Fair Play rules set out by FIFA and enacted for the 2011/12 European season were based around the body’s own research in 2009, where around half of 655 clubs on the continent were found to have suffered a financial loss in the season prior.

The potential damage to the game, should that situation have been allowed to continue, could have been disastrous. Struggling clubs taking one last swing and using money they simply did not have in the hope of fortunes turning was a dangerous model for the 20 per cent of clubs estimated to have been in serious danger in terms of survival.

Football right across Europe was essentially in debt. The FFP regulations were a direct attempt to rein in spending and protect teams from themselves. Clubs are permitted to spend no more than €5 million over what they earned per assessment period, which runs for a period of three years.

Pep Guardiola. (Photo by Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

The Premier League will claim that City have exceeded that amount, essentially allowing the club to continue to bring in the names required to win the league most years. Of course, the devil is always in the detail and the fine print presents the space in which the club will seek to be exonerated.

The amount paid to players and the transfer payments made to other clubs will not be in question, what will be is from where the money had come. There are exceptions in the regulations that City will no doubt try to exploit and receive pardon.

Direct contributions from a club’s owner can be deemed permissible in certain circumstances and to certain amounts. How much and how often City Football Group injected and were permitted to inject money into the club will be the key battle ground and one can only image the paper and email trails that the legal minds will have been trawling over since the allegations were first made in 2023.

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For those of us not happy with seeing Manchester City win six of the last seven Premier League titles or people aware that the club has only slipped outside the top three on the ladder at seasons’ end just once since 2010/11, a throwing of the book if guilty will be welcomed.

However, the complexities of the hearing will no doubt suit the team assembled to defend England’s most successful modern club.

Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal fans will be hopeful of a severe punishment that levels up the playing field in their favour and football as a whole needs to ensure that whatever precedent is set by the decision, FIFA is comfortable with the ramifications going forward.

It will be the most significant financial and competitive decision ever made in the game. Clubs have been punished previously for illegalities, yet the taking down of Manchester City would be simply astonishing considering its status in the biggest league in the world and the financials involved.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the hearing, which will be held behind closed doors. I wonder if we will ever know the full details of what initially brought the allegations to light and whether a bundle of Premier League titles might well be tarnished by this coming January.

Or perhaps this is all a misunderstanding and City will walk away scot-free and win

Stuart Thomas is a sports writer and educator who made the jump from Roar Guru to Expert in 2017. An ex-trainee professional golfer, his sporting passions are broad with particular interests in football, AFL and rugby league. His love of sport is only matched by his passion for gardening and self-sustainability.

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