The astonishing details of Manchester City’s almost decade-long cheating have now been exposed in gory detail.
As the Premier League released their verdict to shine a light on the extraordinary scale of the club’s guilt on Tuesday afternoon, the football world scrambled to make sense of the wrongdoing.
There’s a huge amount to digest from the biggest sporting scandal in British history and behind the £900million artificially pumped into the Abu Dhabi-owned club, there were seven thousand pages of damning evidence.
In spite of the mountain of proof finding them guilty of ‘all charges related to serious breaches’, City reacted by accusing the Premier League of creating a ‘conspiracy theory’.
But the specifics of the long-running case finally brought to light lay out the level of deception and cheating that even includes key witnesses lying to the commission.
Here, Daily Mail Sport’s Mike Keegan sheds light on the most egregious offences.
THE £900M HOLE AND DODGY DEALS
From 2009 to 2018 City claimed commercial income of £949.94m when only £119.25m had come from sponsors – which was the figure which should have appeared in the accounts.
The Premier League said the panel found City arranged ‘sham contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on ‘sham’ agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs’.
It added that the panel, whose hearing concluded in December 2024, had found that the club had falsely altered the financial picture at the Etihad to the tune of £900m.
The Premier League said that City was actually ‘significantly in breach of both the Premier League’s and UEFA’s spending limits’ during the time period in question – 2009-2018 – when it won eight major trophies.
Deals with a number of sponsors were part of ‘a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees’, the statement added, saying that ‘the remainder was funded by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club’.
The panel also found further ‘sham’ arrangements, funded by ADUG, which allowed City to record lower operating expenses that it incurred, along with a ‘”sham” circular arrangement with Fordham, an entity that purchased the club’s players’ image rights, that was funded by ADUG’.
The result was that the club had ‘filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators’.
Had City reported accurately ‘it would have been in breach of both the League’s and UEFA’s spending limits by a very substantial amount’.
(L-R) Manchester City Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Manager Pep Guardiola, CEO Ferran Soriano, and Director of Football, Txiki Begiristain are pictured in 2024
LYING WITNESSES
One of the most eye-opening elements of the verdict was City witnesses being accused of lying in front of the three-person independent panel.
The lop-sided ruling rounded on ‘a number of important factual witnesses’ who gave evidence on behalf of the club.
The Premier League say such evidence was ‘false’ and stated that some gave evidence ‘they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest’.
The statement added that City’s core defence was ‘untrue’, describing it as an explanation ‘concocted well after the event in an attempt to obscure and conceal the realities of the Disguised Funding Scheme’.
The report noted that issues ‘were fiercely contested between the parties’. It added that proceedings lasted for 42 days and acknowledged that it had ‘taken us much longer than we would have wished’ to reach a conclusion, which ‘was regrettable’. Transcripts of evidence given ran to more than 7,000 pages.
The identity of those figures accused of lying to the panel have not yet been revealed.
THE ROAD AHEAD
All punishments, including expulsion, transfer bans and points deductions are open to the Premier League and a sanction hearing will take place in due course.
Premier League rules state that after City lodges its appeal the chair of the panel should appoint a three-person appeal board ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’.
Any objections to the subsequent appointments should then be lodged within two working days. The whole process should be concluded within 12 weeks.
Al Mubarak and Soriano maintain the club’s innocence and accused the Premier League of a ‘conspiracy theory’ despite the mountain of evidence and comprehensive guilty verdict
Whether that will be the case remains to be seen. It is unclear whether a sanction will be handed down before an appeal takes place.
Richard Masters, Premier League chief executive, said: ‘There are elements of the case that remain to be decided, including, importantly, what sanction must follow for these breaches.
‘Now we have the Commission’s decision, we are committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process, to provide certainty for the League, our clubs and fans.
