By Tony Attwood
As you will know if you have been paying attention, Manchester City face 115 charges against them, brought, in effect, by their fellow clubs in the Prem,ier League. Nothing has happened in the case for over a year. The last we heard was that ManC said that if found guilty of anything, they would sue the Premier League out of existence. Our thought was that the rest of the league ought to resign from the League before ManC has a chance to do that, and set up a new league without the ManCs in it.
So now we’ve had a four-year investigation, 115 allegations of foul play, and a statement of defiance from the club saying in effect, “touch us and we will destroy you.” Which is rather different from just saying “not guilty.”
Of course, I am not a barrister or judge, and my engagement with the legal system has been two bouts of jury duty (once at the Old Bailey for three months, once for four days at Northampton Crown Court) plus once pleading extenuating circumstances in a “driving without due care and attention” in a county court case. (I made the judge laugh, and he let me off with a five-pound fine and a warning).
So there we are, that’s my legal experience, which clearly shows I am not in the slightest way qualified to say if the Mancs did disguise payments made by the owners as sponsorship money, or paid bonuses to players and management which were not declared as they should be.
But I am told by some in the know that the judgment was reached in September 2024, around the time that ManC made the threat against the rest of the league concerning what happens if they are found guilty of anything. Other cases (Everton, Forest etc) have come and gone, but this one is still there. We sit, and we wait.
The only rumour of note since the start has been that the person behind organising all the alleged illegal sponsorship payments was Jaber Mohamed, a side man of Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who now runs Abu Dhabi (what with it not being a democracy and all).
So we still wait, but as we wait, thoughts have turned elsewhere – in particular to the issue of how much clubs pay in wages to staff, including players, and how that relates to the income of each club. And this is important, because obviously the more you are willing to pay, the better the players you get. But then we are back to the question, “Where did the money come from?”
Now, various figures circulating suggest that the percentage of income paid out in salaries ranges from 74% for West Ham United down to 44% at Tottenham Hotspur.
But such figures of course need a bit of looking at. West Ham can afford to pay 74% because they pay what in technical financial tersm is known as “bugger all” for their ground, having been begged to take it off the state’s hands by Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister.
In fact, in terms of a high percentage of income going to wages, the top and bottom of the range among the big clubs is as below, and it is important to remember the rules here, which are….
Clubs can spend a maximum of 85% of their revenue on player costs (wages, transfer fees, agents). We only have the wages figures here In 2024/25 Arsenal spent around £100m in transfer fees and received about £80m for sales. But please do note that different sources give very different figures in this regard.
Additionally, we have to remember that clubs playing in European competitions are restricted by UEFA’s rules to a 70% of their revenue spent on player costs, which makes Chelsea, Villa and West Ham’s positions look extremely dodgy. But of course, there may be all sorts of special circumstances that I don’t know about. This is merely the data I can find: I didn’t do the research.
| Club | Wages per annum | Income Percentage spent on wages |
| Paris St Germain | £457m | 65% |
| Barcelona | £442m | 54% |
| Real Madrid | £429m | 44% |
| Liverpool | £421m | 60% |
| Manchester City | £397m | 57% |
| Bayern Munich | £376m | 52% |
| Chelsea | £353m | 72% |
| Manchester United | £340m | 51% |
| Arsenal | £338m | 49% |
| Tottenham Hots | £249m, | 44% |
| Aston Villa | £268m | 71% |
| West Ham United | £172m | 72% |
So, these figures above are estimates based on information revealed by clubs and then reported in the media. And it would appear that clubs have to provide significant levels of evidence to back up their figures, and Uefa then compares the details for the clubs that has bought with the data from the club that has sold each player. Quite simply, selling clubs want to maximise the income received for each sale to help explain their expenditure, and buying clubs like to make out that they have paid less to avoid overstepping the amount they are allowed to spend on players.
Ideally, spending on players should not be much more than 50% of income, which makes PSG, Chelsea and Villa look somewhat dodgy, but like West Ham, they might have a good explanation.
And a final footnote, the figures quoted here are those that are publicly available and generally quoted – you may well be able to find variant amounts quoted elsewhere..
I am not sure what legal action Man city can inflict on the premier league as this is an internal ruling matter.
For example if one player tackles another player and breaks his leg, then it becomes a premier league ruling matter whether to ban the offender for a short period of one or three games or longer.
As an example. When back in 1988, Arsenals Paul Davis broke a fellow players jaw off the ball with a straight knock out punch( victim was Glenn Cockerill), he got a record 9 match ban and a £3000 fine. This ban was one of the longest in English football history at the time.
Glenn Cockwell at the time could not then take Paul Davis to court for ABH and sue him, because the punishment by the premier league was final and within the agreed rules of the premier league for which authority is legally signed and given by its teams and players that are members.
The same goes for ManCity. They cannot take further legal action because they have an agreement to abide by the premier league rulings. Which is in it self a legal contract.
ManCity in order to take their case outside the premier league rulings to a civil legal court would have to prove that the league punishment was unjustified and unscaled.
Which would bring us back to the premier leagues problem with Everton’s position now that they have already scaled their justice to watch how ManCity is punished because if not fairly scaled they would then be able to take legal action if the premier league do not scale their punishment equally when dealing with the 115 charges against Man city. The premier league have already set a scaled precedent for punishment and must continue.
Regarding the false accounts etc.. it is very hard to prove.
Not saying this is MC but as an example, one example of false accounts that really any team could create is dodgy sponsorship deals.
Extremely hard to prove without heavy investments in expensive lawyers and auditing accountants.
The premier league must have found it very difficult to prove 115 charges with ManC without top quality exception accounting audits and probably with the help of the tax department who would also have taken an interest as there is no doubt tax claims and payments with earnings etc. etc.. Very complicated.
Yet the premier league have found away and have charged MC, so they must be confident and have the evidence.
The problem is that the premier league have cornered themselves by setting a scalable level of punishment when they punished Everton by docking them points and not just fines. They have set themselves a precedent for future punishment.
So they have made it back or white with no grey area, it’s either full punishment with points deducted or no punishment, but it must not be scaled by fines as this is not a deterrent, and it must be scalable to Everton’s punishment to make it look like fair justice was served.
Otherwise Everton and could retake them to court for non scaled unfair justice, and the premier league would then lose all credibility with all it’s members.
The premier League are tight lipped. It all seems a bit to hush hush secret at the moment, whether or not they have concluded their findings( as was suggested in December 2025) and whether the punishment verdict is now all that needs to be decided with an announcement now expected in May or June 2026.
The fact that the media is no longer all over this case is astonishing.
If it was Arsenals that had 115 charges, they would be like a dog with a bone, week in week out without letting go of the story and reminding us every week of the 115 charges.
Well, Daveg, I’m not the sharpest chisel in the box but to me it looks as if the prem have well and truly blown it (yet again) .I’m thinking of the Chelsea74 verdict and the punishment meted out to them this week. In any case I was given to understand that ManC115 reaction to the charges was and is , not guilty and we don’t recognise the authority anyway. Ultimately the legal fees have to be paid and manc115 won’t give up until they get their version of justice. So again we’re back to the majority of clubs leaving the Prem and starting up without Man sour City.
@daveg,
I don’t know it what I’ll write is valid in the 115 charges, but as far as I can remember there were original emails from City115 that served as proof that sponsorship deals etc were indeed overvalued.
So no need for deep accounting there. The PL has the smoking gun. Will they dare to act ?
The other thing is that every club relegated, every club not champion, every club who lost it’s european qualification spot, and every european club in the CL could sue City115 to oblivion for list revenue etc. Why should they not ?
And now that Senegal have lost the ACN after 6 months of winning it, this opens the door to the same thing happening at City
I think that FIFA and UEFA are quite comfortable with the exclusion of one of their own from all competition , seeing that the Russians are persona non grata in their competitions for the present moment . Kicking out Man City out of the EPL is not a big item !
Now what do we call the new format ? The Super Duper English League ? May be a lil too long , methinks , so what would you suggestion be ?
@LeMmy
Sorry for the late reply but Just to cap this off regarding the premier Leagues leniency towards Chelsea. This was their reason for the non point deduction and instead a £10m fine and one year transfer ban.
The Premier League says it applied leniency on the grounds that Chelsea’s new Clearlake ownership ” self-reported rule-breaches” committed under a previous era, and that the current hierarchy displayed “exceptional” levels of co-operation. It has also made clear that the secret payments “did not mean profit and sustainability rules limiting losses” would have been broken.
This is clearly quite different to both the charges against Everton and ManC on many fronts when broken down and analysed.
Although in my opinion, I would rather have seen that a smaller yet scalable points deduction should have been the punishment or at least a two year transfer ban added, rather than the nonsense of an affordable fine for Chelsea, although this is a large fine to the rest of us non billionaires.
They are basically saying the amount of money did not interfere with the overall cap on profits to sustainability declared and that had it not been for their self volunteering confession that the premier league would not have known this accounting infringement to exists.
A lesser commited account infringement than Everton, so I would have given them at least a 3 point deduction, but at least they got a one year transfer ban added to their fine which would be hurting them more than just the fine. Their case was a lot different to MC and Everton, but points deductable is the strongest punishment and best deterrent moving forward, but I can understand this being different.