Well, everyone is talking about the long list of alleged breaches by Manchester City over a four-year investigation conducted by the Premier League and what the punishment might be for all of this – we are here to make some sense of it all for you. The scale of the accusations and the sheer number of them is unprecedented within the Premier League, and in the coming months or years, we might know what power the Premier League truly has.
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What are the alleged breaches?
The alleged breaches can mainly be grouped into four separate categories:
- Manchester City’s accounts are wrong for a nine-season period spanning from 2009-2017/8. The Premier League is probing into the sponsorships that Manchester club had during the time and if they were of fair value.
- Surrounding Roberto Mancini’s pay, the Premier League allegedly says that a side contract from a UAE club topped up the Italian’s remuneration. The issue is that Mancini has taken a role of a consultant for a couple of days a year, and this was added on top of the Man City contract.
- These groups of alleged breaches are a bit more technical and focus on the City’s lack of compliance with license requirements to play in Europe.
- The final group of breaches, as stated by the Premier League, is the lack of cooperation from Manchester City to hand in documents and comply with certain procedures that the Premier League has in place.
So, in essence, these four groups of alleged breaches span from 2009 to the current season, and all are serious to a certain extent, but when you look at them all at once one might think this is quite a serious situation.
In light of all that has been published on Monday morning, Manchester City denied any wrongdoing from their end and are eager to get this process to an independent commission so they can clear their name. A similar stance from the club for the battle that they had in 2020 with UEFA when their two-year ban from European Competition was rescinded.
Potential consequences for Manchester City
A lot of people have been on and around the internet saying their opinions about what the Manchester City’s penalties should be if they are found guilty of these offences. The Premier League, on the other hand, does not stipulate thresholds for specific misconduct. So this is truly something that we cannot say exactly what will or should happen. In actual fact, the hand book allows a considerable amount of power to this three-person panel that will hear this disciplinary matter.
Looking back at different clubs that were found guilty of minor breaches of the handbook, most teams were handed fines and/or points deduction – as per the case of Derby last year. Since the scale of the accusations published this week are so great and span over several years, we might se something that we haven’t seen before.
Obviously, Manchester City will contest this tooth and nail with their top-tier lawyer team, who will make the process as difficult as possible. The aforementioned three-person panel has tremendous power over the nature of the punishment given to the club; there could be a series of points deducted this season or next, depending on when this is resolved, relegation from the Premier League and heavy fines.
As in any other court ruling, evidence will be the main factor in all of this; if the Premier League has sufficient evidence of Manchester City implicitly manipulating their accounts to hide costs or inflate sponsorships to stay in line, then yes, serious penalties will be imposed.
Timing
A very interesting question is: why wait all those years to charge the club for these alleged breaches, and why now is the right time?
This dates back to the hacked emails in 2018, and we also saw how long it took UEFA to proceed with its investigation. In private, inside the arbitration rooms, Manchester City have been fighting a series of accusations in which they lost some of them along the way, but that comes before we go into the actual body of the accusation, so basically, this has been trench warfare, and it will continue to be that way.
The timing of this might be because of the length that this has taken the Premier League to conduct its investigation. On the other hand, a very interesting take was that Man City believe that these charges were published now because of a white paper expected in regard to increased regulations for football. So Manchester City are feeling that they are the victims in a show of power from the Premier League in order to show the government they are more than capable of controlling the clubs on their own, with no need for an independent regulator.
This ruling will, in no stretch of the imagination, be concluded in a matter of days or weeks, this will be fought for months and, should there be a decision, Manchester City will appeal it, so we might not hear anything about this for quite a while.
On-pitch impact
Footballers are people who don’t live their lives in a vacuum, so they would know what is being said about them and their team. It’s not easy to cancel everything out and not question the integrity of the club that they work for. This is already something that manager Pep Guardiola has commented on, saying that, should the club lie to him about anything, he will leave the next day and no longer be a friend. So that is certainly something that could impact the performances of the team on the pitch.
In recent games, City has experienced a drop from their usual greatness, currently playing catch-up to Arsenal. The big question here is, will the dressing room remain harmonious to a certain extent or will there be players who fear for the worst? We are pretty sure that if the club is found guilty and City are demoted to the Championship, they will lose a couple of players.
Unrest has been reported a couple of weeks ago in the dressing room when Joao Cancelo made his thoughts clear about the manager and wanted more playtime. Pep Guardiola preferred Rico Lewis instead of the Portuguese, and that instigated his move to Bayern Munich, which shocked everyone by how fast he has gone.
How will the team react to these allegations when they face their rivals Arsenal in the coming weeks? Will the defeat against Spurs dampen the mood even more and force Pep Guardiola to make changes again? Is it remotely possible for a team of Man City’s power to be relegated? How will the panel judge these accusations?