Man City: Where along the line will they take a long, hard look at themselves, writes Ian Herbert

The club provided a 79-word response to the Premier League’s announcement that it was accusing them of 100 breaches of its rules. However, they actually had the temerity to claim that they had provided “extensive engagement” and a “plenty of detailed material” to those investigating their conduct.

That was ridiculous. So impossible has it been to extract the necessary documents, that the Premier League was forced to go to court last year and initiate an arbitration process to obtain them. City hired lawyers to challenge that process, arguing that the arbitrators would be biased against it. A judge ruled against him. The city hired lawyers to challenge this publisher’s right to report on that judge’s findings and to be in court when a publication decision was made, even though we had promised not to publish any of it. The judge ruled against him.

It was Lord Justice Males, in that case featured by Associated Newspapers, who saw through City’s obfuscation and backsliding, in a case then heading into its third year. “It is astonishing, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made after two and a half years, during which, it should be noted, the club have twice been crowned Premier League champions,” said the judge. .

When a humiliating cache of emails published by Football Leaks in 2020 led UEFA, for the second time in six years, to accuse City of deliberately inflating sponsorship deals, the club said the evidence was “incomplete” and invalid.

It certainly seemed pretty comprehensive. The emails apparently included City chief executive Ferran Soriano’s missive suggesting the club raise cash to prevent an FFP breach in 2013 by having sponsors pay bonuses for winning the FA Cup, despite City’s they had lost to Wigan.

Manchester City have been charged by the Premier League for breaching financial rules

That was the match in which Mancini was sacked, requiring a payout of £9.9m, which would open another hole in attempts to get past FFP. In another leaked email, non-executive director Simon Pearce apparently suggested “an additional amount of sponsorship income from AD (Abu Dhabi) that fills this gap.”

The city solicitor, Simon Cliff, insisted that the entire trade deal operation be named ‘Project Longbow’ in homage ‘to the weapon the English used to defeat the French at Crecy and Agincourt’. This is how City felt about UEFA and its rules.

And there was the obscure sound company called ‘Fordham’ to which the club sold its image rights revenue stream to gain a lump sum of £24.5m needed to pass the same financial sustainability rules. Despite selling off that revenue stream, it emerged that the club was actually making a profit from it.

Pep Guardiola alongside owner Sheikh Mansour, who bought the club in September 2008

The city is accused of breaking financial rules more than 100 times in nine seasons (Pictured, Sheikh Mansour, left, speaking with President Khaldoon Al Mubarak, right)

Fordham’s story may sound arcane and dry, but he was instrumental in City’s attempts to abide by the rules set for any team wishing to compete in the Champions League. When I wrote it, in 2016, the full force of City’s anger was unleashed. A demand from a specialist Internet law firm to have it removed, to post an apology, and to tweet that apology.

It would have been an unprecedented level of ‘contrition’. But our detailed 1,500-word defense of the story was sent by return mail. We have not heard from the City or his attorneys on the matter. Two years later, the Football Leaks cache showed that we really only had half the story. City’s owners, the Abu Dhabi United Group, were actually financing Fordham, according to the leaks, as a way of paying part of the players’ salaries. It seemed that City were not only increasing their income against the rules, but also reducing their main wage bill by doing so.

Leaked emails saw City charged by UEFA two years ago and face a two-year Champions League ban. They successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which found that the alleged crimes occurred too long ago to be investigated, according to its Statute of Limitations. The city was still fined the bulk of £9m for what CAS called its “obstruction of investigations”.

The club has been accused of how they paid Roberto Mancini, the man who was in charge of their first Premier League victory.

Manchester City have won the Premier League six times since the Abu Dhabi takeover

If found guilty, Man City (Erling Haaland pictured) could face a points deduction or sending off

This time there will be no statute of limitation on the independent commission of the Premier League. There will be no appeal before the CAS if the decision goes against the City.

The Premier League is under pressure from its 19 other clubs to apply the utmost rigor to this, and especially from Liverpool, who already have a complaint for having managed City so closely for so long. Those clubs have complied with FFP, being consistent with the view that if you play in someone’s competition, you abide by their rules, regardless of your views on them.

City is confident of legal success, as always. They are skeptical of the process, as they always are. They were quick to point out on Monday that the Premier League was likely to use the timing of the charges ahead of this week’s government white paper on football governance as evidence that it is capable of tackling governance issues on its own.

The next set of machinations will likely stretch well beyond Pep Guardiola’s tenure, as City’s lawyers will review every inch of the Premier League case. “They are going to put up a very solid defence,” says Kieran Maguire of Liverpool University.

Some would say that the reputation of City and its owners is now on the line. Others would say that dirty emails, an army of lawyers and a steadfast reluctance to release documents to investigators have already left it hopelessly tarnished.