I realise the news about this event is old, over a week old now, but I’m playing catch-up. Why? We have a general election on 7th November, so it’s hard to absorb all the daily chaos, and you can bet all your peanut M&Ms that I’ll discuss that soon. However, that event is not today; you will be relieved.

So, after that charming little info dump, and before we discuss the title of the blog post, we absolutely need to understand what has happened to Manchester City F.C. and why a middle-aged white straight New Zealand man-child cares about it. Technically, I care what’s happened, not about the team per se.

If you would like an in-depth analysis of the event, then I suggest reading some professional journalism, not my woke musings. But, for the sake of time, let’s quickly go over one of the biggest sporting scandals I have ever heard about. I also want to establish three points about this scandal to put it in context for people who have no idea what I’m waffling on about this week.

1.) Professional football is a business, as it’s a form of entertainment. Hundreds of millions of every possible currency you can think of flow around the world and into various organisations that run and administer the sport at a national and international level, like FIFA, UEFA, and the Premier League. The money we are talking about, involving salaries, merchandise, tickets, and also sponsorship, is colossal.

2.) I care about this issue for two reasons: I love football, as you already know, but I also follow the Premier League. I have been doing this because my team, West Ham, played in it, but sadly they were relegated last season.¹

3.) Manchester City was bought and owned by a company called City Football Group Limited in 2008, which, as I understand it, was backed by the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), which is majority-owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. It also helps to know that Al Nahyan is the current deputy prime minister and vice president of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and his brother, Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, is the UAE President.

The chairman of Manchester City is Khaldoon Al Mubarak, who has corporate, investment, and policy roles within the UAE government. There are at least two other companies involved in the ownership: Silver Lake and CITIC Group, but from what I have gathered, the scandal does not involve them, to the best of my understanding. Crystal clear? Sweet, because things are going to get a lot worse.

Manchester City Football Club are, wait for it, a football club that, would you believe, is based in Manchester. They play in the English Premier League, which is the highest domestic division in the country, as well as in the Champions League via UEFA.

Over the last 10-15 years, the men’s team have won the Premier League Title, FA Cup, EFL Cup, FA Community Shield, Champions League, UEFA Super Cup, and FIFA Club World Cup. Some of these titles have been won multiple times over that time period.

I can’t tell you 100% when the media first discovered the issues, but just like Two-Face, I have two examples. As I understand it, in 2017, a hacker obtained files from the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC). Some of these files were related to Manchester City’s potential financial breaches.

Later that year, Der Spiegel, a German magazine, published information concerning financial breaches committed by Manchester City. In 2019, UEFA launched an investigation into Manchester City’s potential wrongdoing and found them guilty in 2020 of “Serious breaches of the UEFA Financial Fair Play Regulations by overstating its sponsorship revenue in its accounts and in the break-even information submitted to UEFA between 2012 and 2016.” (UEFA investigation).

The punishment from UEFA was to ban Manchester City for two years from the Champions League, which doesn’t sound like much; but it is. It really is because of the vast amounts of money involved. Anyway, Manchester City managed to get the ban overturned.

Fast forward to February 2023, when the Premier League brought 115 charges against Manchester City for serious financial breaches, from the 2009–10 to 2017–18 seasons. This included:

54 counts of failure to provide accurate financial information, 14 counts of failure to provide accurate details for player and manager payments, 7 counts of breaching the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), 5 counts of breaching UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations, and 35 counts of failure to cooperate with league investigations. (The New York Times).

So in 2024, an independent commission started an in-person, but private hearing to judge the charges. With me far so? Good, because now it gets crazy! On 29th September 2026, the verdict of the hearing was revealed to the media and public. Manchester City was found guilty of 114 out of 115 charges, and it has shaken the football world and the sporting community to its core. According to the release, Manchester City were found guilty of:

• Creating sham and double contracts.
• Disguised owner-injected funding money as sponsorship income (Over £800 million).
• Inflating revenue, along with understating and reducing costs (Over £900 million).
• Filing inaccurate financial reports.
• Hid true funding sources from auditors.
• Broke both Premier League and UEFA spending rules.
• Failing to co-operate with the investigation.

I do need to say that Manchester City has filed an appeal, so we will have to see how that plays out. Reaction to the news has been swift and powerful, not just from reporters, sports pundits, and celebrities, but also from the general public, largely condemning Manchester City.

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Many people have proposed possible sanctions and punishments for Manchester City, but I give some much-needed context.

The Premier League have deducted points from teams before, with Middlesbrough (3 points, January 1997), Portsmouth (9 points, March 2010), and Nottingham Forest (4 points, March 2024). At the end of the 1994-1995 season, Tottenham were handed a £600,000 fine, a 12-point deduction, and a one-year FA Cup ban; however, they got the points and ban overturned.

Everton F.C. are the most recent club to have faced a points deduction. In 2023, an independent commission deducted 10 points for breaking the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability rules (PSR), going £19.5m over the limit. Their appeal succeeded in reducing the points deduction from 10 to 6 in 2024. The saga continued, with the club handed another points deduction, but this time it was just 2 points, because they overspent £16.6m during the 2022-23 season. They appealed the decision, but later withdrew it.

Just to clarify, in total, Everton was docked 8 points for £35.1m of financial breaches, over two seasons. During this time, they did not win any trophies.

Switching sports, we are going to look at rugby league, in particular the NRL (National Rugby League) in Australia. The NRL is the highest domestic rugby league division in Oceania; my team, the New Zealand Warriors (Up the Wahs!), plays in it. However, we are not talking about the Warriors, but rather the Melbourne Storm.

From 2006-2010, the Storm won the Minor Premiership (2006, 2007, and 2008), Premiership (2007 and 2009), Runners-up (2006 and 2008), and the World Cup Challenge in 2010. During this time, they were a juggernaut in world rugby league. But, as you might guess, some financial shenanigans were happening behind closed doors.

It was revealed in 2010 that the club was keeping a second set of books and was breaking the salary cap rules for over five years, which the NRL strictly enforces to make sure each club has an equal footing and chance. Because of this massive salary cap breach, the Storm had been effectively cheating, so the NRL could not turn a blind eye to the champions, and their punishment was swift and merciless.

Their punishments were:

• Being stripped of the 2007 and 2009 premierships.
• Being stripped of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 minor premierships.
• Being stripped of the 2010 World Club Challenge.
• Fined AUS$500,000.
• Forced to return AUS$1.1 million in prize money, which was redistributed to the other clubs.
• Deduction of all eight premiership points they had received in the 2010 season.
• Barred from receiving any further premiership points (including points automatically awarded for a bye during the season) for the rest of the 2010 season.
• Ordered to cut their payroll by $1,012,500 to meet the 2011 salary cap by 31 December 2010. If they didn’t, the club would have been suspended from the 2011 NRL season.
• Sentenced to finish the 2010 season at the bottom of the ladder.

Like the Premier League, I follow the NRL, and this scandal was seismic in the rugby league and sports world. The champions were caught cheating through financial breaches.

So, I’m sorry if that felt like reading the Silmarillion, but we are heading into more entertaining shores, because that’s the crux of the blog post. We need to absolutely assume that Manchester City are, in fact, guilty of these financial breaches; so we need to imagine the next step: what should their punishment be?

Any form of punishment for Manchester City has yet to be revealed to the public, but as fans of the sport and justice, we can speculate. The Premier League’s punishment for such a large-scale fraud on England’s national sport has to be severe for the entire planet to see.

Some possible options could be:

Points deduction

Remember that Everton got 8 points deducted over two seasons because of financial breaches costing £35.1m, while Manchester City have spent a nine-season period breaching financial rules over £800m. It also pays to point out that Everton co-operated with the Premier League and Manchester City did not.

It’s been said that the punishment Everton received should be the benchmark. So by that standard, at an average of 4 points per season, a minimum of a 36-point deduction could be handed down to Manchester City. It would keep them out of the Champions League for the 2027-2028 season, but also, it would prevent them from winning the Premiership.

Relegation

Because of the vast fraud and deception committed by Manchester City, relegation is an option. It’s not practical to send them down immediately, or maybe it is, but at least they could be sent down to the EFL Championship (Second Division) for the 2027-2028 season. Granted, they would be back in the Premier League for the 2028-2029 season, but many players could leave, so promotion could be impossible.

Fines

A financial option the Premier League could enforce would be a fine or a collection of fines. Basically, it’s a slap on the wrist, but would a £10m fine mean anything to a club that has committed over £800m in financial breaches? If they are going for a fine, it would have to be at least a nine-figure number to really hurt them and set an example.

Compensation

Another financial option could be compensating the other clubs in the Premiership. Whether the money went to teams that directly lost titles and trophies to Manchester City, or just every other team in the competition, compensation is a reality, considering teams are already planning on taking legal action against Manchester City.

This also covers returning prize money that the club has won during 2009-2018, whether directly to the Premier League or other Premier League teams.

Title and Trophies stripped

Like the Melbourne Storm, Manchester City are past winners of premierships, and they have been caught cheating. One punishment could be that Manchester City could be stripped of their Premier League, FA Cup, EFL Cup, and FA Community Shield titles and trophies from 2009-2018. Whether these titles and trophies are awarded to the runners-up or left each year with no winner would be up to the Premier League.

Banned from Champions League

Manchester City indeed won the 2022-2023 Champions League, but it falls outside of the time period that was investigated; however, Manchester City still played in the competition between 2009 and 2018. Because of this, UEFA may decide to ban Manchester City from playing in the Champions League for an unspecified period of time. All of that sweet money flying around, and Manchester City wouldn’t be able to touch it.

Banned from English Football

The Premier League may also take the nuclear option of banning the club from all forms of football in England and Wales; this includes the women’s team, for an unspecified period of time.

The Premier League may decide to use all of these options, some of them, none of them, or even some punishments I haven’t listed. But, whatever the case, the punishment must be complete. There is a fear that this scandal may destroy the Premier League, so they must make Manchester City an example.

There are some people who believe that Manchester City didn’t cheat because it didn’t make the players train or play harder and better; it hasn’t altered any scores. They played with the correct number of players and did not employ any foul tactics in their games, so they did not break the rules.

I understand their position, but Manchester City cheated on paper. This cheating allowed them more money to buy more expensive players, altering everything. The British government did not make these rules; it was the Premier League; it’s their competition. A sports club can’t pick and choose which rules and laws to follow and expect no consequences, any more than I can.

Manchester City cheated for nine years and won multiple titles and trophies because of that.

I love football, and I know the amount of money players and clubs are involved in is obscene. I mean, we are talking about players earning over £100,000 per week is madness, compared to our tiny one-income family. But the fact is, people still believe in hope, fairness, and justice. And in these times, corporations, companies, and the elite seem to be able to skirt around rules and laws because they can.

So imagine if the organisation and people behind Manchester City could face justice. I’ve read and watched various things that promote the concept of nobody being above the law and that even the rich and powerful can still experience justice. They can’t commit this level of fraud and believe there will be no consequences.

On a personal level, I need to see justice for this disaster, because what Manchester City did was unacceptable, and there needs to be accountability to show the children of the world that what we do matters, and it matters what we do. I see that even Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and ex-mayor of Manchester, is being dragged into this mess.

I hope every single person involved in this fraud should be investigated and, if need be, prosecuted, because I still believe that it shouldn’t matter how much money you have in your bank account; you still must answer for your actions, just like anyone. Otherwise, what’s the point of laws and rules?

What are your thoughts about the Manchester City scandal? What should the punishments be? As always, please let me know.

I appreciate you listening to this week’s rant, so cheers! Thanks again for reading, following, and subscribing to Some Geek Told Me. Please don’t forget to walk your dog, read a banned book, Clayface is coming, and I’ll see you next week because Reform UK have outdone themselves. Later, gators.

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¹ We will be back.