Manchester City told their punishment for breaking all the rules

 

 

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By Tony Attwood

We have all known for a very long time that the threats of relegating Manchester City through the entire football league and dumping them in the Conference were never going to happen – amusing though those ideas were.   The threats allegedly made by Manchester City were such that the League itself was having to contemplate how far it was going to fight the inevitable legal action.

So we had the situation in which the threat remained that the club might get a financial penalty that might mean nothing to them, given that the club is, or at least has been in the past, funded by much of the world’s oil supplies.

However, now the story is being widely circulated that ManC have a penalty of sixty points deduction, which would leave the league table reading….

 

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts
1	Arsenal	31	21	7	3	61	22	39	70
2	Manchester United	31	15	10	6	56	43	13	55
3	Aston Villa	31	16	6	9	42	37	5	54
4	Liverpool	31	14	7	10	50	42	8	49
5	Chelsea	31	13	9	9	53	38	15	48
6	Brentford	31	13	7	11	46	42	4	46
7	Everton	31	13	7	11	37	35	2	46
8	Fulham	31	13	5	13	43	44	-1	44
9	Brighton and Hove Albion	31	11	10	10	41	37	4	43
10	Sunderland	31	11	10	10	32	36	-4	43
11	Newcastle United	31	12	6	13	44	45	-1	42
12	AFC Bournemouth	31	9	15	7	46	48	-2	42
13	Crystal Palace	30	10	9	11	33	35	-2	39
14	Leeds United	31	7	12	12	37	48	-11	33
15	Nottingham Forest	31	8	8	15	31	43	-12	32
16	Tottenham Hotspur	31	7	9	15	40	50	-10	30
17	West Ham United	31	7	8	16	36	57	-21	29
18	Burnley	31	4	8	19	33	61	-28	20
19	Wolverhampton Wanderers	31	3	8	20	24	54	-30	17
20	Manchester City*	30	18	7	5	60	28	32	*1

 

*60 points deducted for breaking the League’s financial rules.

This would mean that if the Mancs win their remaining eight games, they will have 25 points, which might be enough to keep them in the Premier League next season.   For this not to be enough, the Mancs could have a less-than-perfect run through their last season, or Burnley would fail to get the necessary six points that would take them up to 26 and above ManC even if the Mancs won all their remaining games.

So the Championship would seem likely but not utterly certain.   And the question would then be, what would this mean for their squad if they did go down?  Do they have contracts that include clauses guaranteeing the sale of players in the event of relegation, or in the event of the club not being in the Champions League?   This also leads to the fact that one more club might be able to take up a Champions League place.

Clearly, some of their players would not want to play in the Championship having been playing in the Premier League this season and so would want to move in the summer – although obviously they are tied to ManC for their remaining eight games.

In fact, it is quite possible that all of their players might demand transfers in the summer.  That would be interesting since it seems likely that ManC would not try to spend their way out of the problem by paying above the odds for Premier League players who would be unwilling to play in the Championship even if it is just for one season.

But these are uncharted waters.   We are still getting information on this issue and will update this piece as more info, or at least most thoughts, become available.