By Tony Attwood
Around a week ago the BBC published an article on the internet headlined, “Everyone wants clarity over Man City charges” which probably sums up the current situation. Indeed the question of why the enquiry has taken so long now seems to be asked just as often as what punishment (if any!) ManC are going to be given.
In fact I am sure it is true that most of us would like to know what is going on with the charges brought by the League against ManC and why so far at least the club seems to have been left untouched having broken virtually every financial rule that football has to stop clubs just spending and spending other people’s money in order to make their way to the top.
Indeed even the most gentle and obsequious commentary suggests that something has to be done, for the piece noted above adds “For a number of years Manchester City were allowed by the Premier League to spend whatever they wanted in order to attract new players. Now it seems that freedom is being reigned in.. But the question remains.” Which is putting it lightly.
And it is the fact that this uncertainty about ManC, what they got away with, and how they got away with it for so long, that is now creeping into uncertainty about the validity of the Premier League. After all, if one club can seemingly spend as much as it wants on the players it wants, and then have an enquiry into what it did, but then have absolutely nothing happen – well, that seems to be an invitation for anyone else to do the same,
Indeed, I think there is the start of a real fear that if the League doesn’t get this matter sorted in the near future, some publishers are going to take this issue into their own hands and stop quoting Manchester City as having ten titles. To put it mildly, questions have been raised about all the titles since Sheikh Mansour took it over in 2008. If he has been pumping money into the club illegally since then, then eight of their titles are questionable, leaving them with two titles.
And maybe that is the problem – the club refuses to accept that it has only won the league twice, rather like Preston, Burnley, Portsmouth, Tottenham Hots, and Derby. I mean, who wants to be associated with Tottenham?
There is also a bit of a fuss being raised by Newcastle, who have been punished for spending in the same way, although to a much lower level. How come ManC are still there?
So we have two questions – why did it take the league so long to start enquiring, and how are ManC going to be punished?
Now I think that over time we have come close to an answer – the Premier League and other football bodies don’t have any legal power to investigate the financial arrangements of the Abu Dhabi United Group. Quite simply, you can’t demand they attend courts or enquiries, and even if one did, they wouldn’t.
Of course we are used to that with transfers where 97% of the stories the media publish are untrue. But with an entire nation state?
With transfer rumours we are reliant on journalist-inspired tales invariably published without sources being quoted. Here we started to learn that something odd was going on when some eight years ago Der Spiegel started publishing internal emails they had got hold of.
But then we discovered the League can’t force ManC to hand over documents, so really nothing could progress.
Now, of course, it is blatantly obvious that if a club playing in a league that is utterly dependent on everyone agreeing the rules, one club won’t hand over documents because technically they don’t have to, that club is not abiding by the rules. Normally they would be kicked out straight away.
Now I can’t say that in reply Manc’s owners said they would sue the League and FA out of existence if they tried to do that, because I have no evidence, but that is a possibility that has been mentioned. And in response, the League presented 115 charges in February 2023. That is three and a half years ago. They allege disguised funding, inflated sponsorships, and hidden payments.
The Court of Arbitration in Sport felt it could not arbitrate, and so we had a hearing at the end of 2024 with half a million bits of evidence to look at.
And that is where we seem to be stuck, and it is possible to argue that this is where we are going to be forevermore, with ManC’s owners possibly hinting that they could keep this going forever, or launch counterclaims that could take up so much time and cost so much in legal fees that the League would have to give up.
So what can be done?
Certainly one way is to publish the list of league winners with asterisks such as
| Season | League winner | Total number of titles |
| 2017–18 | Manchester City* | Disputed |
| 2018–19 | Manchester City* | Disputed |
| 2019–20 | Liverpool | 19 |
| 2020–21 | Manchester City* | Disputed |
| 2021–22 | Manchester City* | Disputed |
| 2022–23 | Manchester City* | Disputed |
| 2023–24 | Manchester City* | Disputed |
| 2024–25 | Liverpool | 20 |
| 2025–26 | Arsenal | 14 |
* The total number of points gained by Manchester City in these seasons is disputed and is subject to enquiries being made by the Premier League.
The fact is that the winning of the league by Manchester City is disputed during these six seasons and thus the statement is true; until the dispute can be resolved (which of course may take many years) we can’t really know who won the league in those seasons.
If the delays to resolving the matter through the normal footballing processes continue, then Manchester City will sit on their two titles – those of 1937 and 1968, the remainder being in dispute, until the cases can be dealt with.
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