On Citeh

At about three yesterday afternoon, I saw a post on BlueSky that said Manchester City had been found guilty on 114 of the 115 charges brought by the Premier League in early 2023.

These comprise of:

54 x failure to provide accurate financial information from 2009-10 to 2017-18.

14 x failure to provide accurate details for player and manager payments from 2009-10 to 2017-18.

5 x failure to comply with Uefa's rules including financial fair play (FFP) 2013-14 to 2017-18.

7 x breaching Premier League profit and sustainability (PSR) rules from 2015-16 to 2017-18.

35 x failure to co-operate with Premier League investigations from December 2018 to Feb 2023.

My thoughts:

1. Failure to provide accurate financial information could be the most problematic. Filing incorrect or inaccurate financial accounts is a serious matter in business, and those responsible are barred from being company directors, or worse could receive a visit from the Fraud Squad.

2. Failure to provide accurate drails for player and manager payments will alert HMRC, who will be reading the report, when it comes out, carefully.

3. It is any organisations primary obligation to obey laws, rules, regulations and other requirements for it to operate. Saying it did not agree to the regulation in the Premier League at the time isn't a defence.

4. The club has always denied any wrongdoing, even when there is clear evidence to say otherwise. Chelsea had a fine for some, though not as many, breaches, reduced to a financial penalty of £10m. Manchester City have done the opposite, tried to delay and delay any investigation. The 35 charges relating to failure to co-operate show that.

5. If the club are thrown out of the Premier League once the appeal process is completed, where should they end up? Unless there is an additional promotion place for the Championship, then dropping them into the EFL should be refused. This is a Premier League matter only anyway.

6. 114 charges, at say a penalty of 10 points for each offence means a points deduction of 1,140 points. I'm not sure if stripping titles and tropies is in scope, or appropriate, but then my team didn't lose to a team that had cheated and then covered their cheating up for a decade.