Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has said Manchester City could be thrown out of the Premier League after being found guilty of all charges of financial breaches by an independent commission.
The league has said City breached its financial rules on a huge scale between 2009-10 and 2017-18 after arranging ‘sham’ commercial deals as part of a disguised funding scheme.
Nandy told Channel 5 News: “I don’t want to preempt any kind of appeal process, and they are entitled to a fair hearing. But what I would say is that the ultimate sanction is very serious indeed.
“I mean, a club can be expelled from the Premier League if these sorts of allegations are upheld, with obviously huge repercussions for everybody.
“So there are very serious sanctions, and I think the bigger issue is how do we make sure that we have clearly understood rules that are upheld and applied consistently, and that we can move quickly when they’re breached.
“The Premier League is one of our greatest exports. It brings joy to millions of people, and we want to make sure that we protect it for the fans for the future.”
Former City chairman David Bernstein said the league’s findings were “damning beyond belief” and that “the sanctions cannot just be financial”.
Bernstein, who spent five years in the role before stepping down in 2003, also suggested the club’s board should “be suspended immediately.”
He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “It is damning beyond belief. My immediate thoughts are, should the board continue? Should the people involved be suspended immediately?
“Very, very serious. I think it’s really terrible. There’s a school of thought with lawyers that is ‘deny, deny, deny’, but this is a football club that is part of a league and the whole credibility of the league is at stake here.
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“I would go as far [as to say it is a deep-seated form of fraud] and if it is, I’m not a lawyer but as a thought this is something so serious that it goes beyond the football authorities.
“The sanctions cannot just be financial, so it’s got to be way beyond that. If the appeal fails, Manchester City cannot stay in the league, they have to suffer. And I say that as a supporter and a fan.”
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire says City’s breaches have “gone far beyond the worst-case scenario that anybody initially envisaged.”
Maguire told BBC Radio 5 Live: “If you Google what the word ‘sham’ means, I’m getting the words ‘fake, false, fraud’. It’s very, very significant.
“I think the quantity of money involved — [approximately] £900 million over a nine-year period — is a staggering misstatement, and it looks like it’s been a corroborative fraud.
“The fact that the auditors were unaware of it, there must be collusion at the club.
“I think it’s gone far beyond the worst-case scenario that anybody initially envisaged.”
City have confirmed their intention to appeal, stating the commission’s decision “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.”
When asked on what grounds City could launch an appeal, Maguire added: “I’ve spoken to some sports lawyers today, just in case this did arise, and the consensus that I had coming back was that it’s difficult but not impossible for Manchester City to say that ultimately this is some form of commercial dispute between two entities and therefore it should be taken away from the football authorities and dealt with [by] the standard legal courts in the country.”
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“Blue Moon” podcast host and City fan David Mooney said he had been “taken aback” by the scale of the league’s findings.
“I don’t think there’s a word in the English language that covers how damning this is,” Mooney told BBC Radio 5 Live.
Mooney said it was “a really dark day to be a City fan” and when asked about possible sanctions, he added: “The book needs to be thrown at the club.
“Ultimately, if they’re not successful on appeal, they’ve lied to the fans throughout all of this, they’ve lied to the football bodies. They’ve lied to everybody.
“So, what is an adequate punishment? I don’t know.”
Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane said if he was a City player he would throw all the medals in the bin.
He said on ITV: “They knew it would hurt a lot of people, but they’ve still done it, and if I was a player I’d be 100% sticking those medals in the bin.
“It’s cheating. You’re hearing nonsense about some ex-players saying ‘oh well they won on the pitch’. Because it was cheating! It was cheating going on.”
