City have been accused by the Premier League of 115 violations of Financial Fair Play regulations dating back 14 years.
In the interests of time and brevity we can’t detail all 115 breaches here, but they can all be collapsed into the idea City have failed to provide the Premier League with information that “gives a true and fair view of their financial position”.
In addition to these allegations, the Premier League have also accused City of not co-operating fully with their investigation, which began in 2018.
Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon.
Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation.
Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack.
Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.
City have been accused by the Premier League of 115 violations of Financial Fair Play regulations dating back 14 years.
In the interests of time and brevity we can’t detail all 115 breaches here, but they can all be collapsed into the idea City have failed to provide the Premier League with information that “gives a true and fair view of their financial position”.
In addition to these allegations, the Premier League have also accused City of not co-operating fully with their investigation, which began in 2018.
Donate to The Luke Alfred Show on Patreon.
Get my book: Vuvuzela Dawn: 25 Sporting Stories that Shaped a New Nation.
Get full written episodes of the show a day early on Substack.
Check out The Luke Alfred Show on YouTube and Facebook.
One of the rolling themes of the Premiership season has been the worldwide discussion about Financial Fair Play, or, if you prefer, Profitability and Sustainability. The debate applies, most obviously and dramatically, to Manchester City, so let’s begin there.
The City saga dates back to nine seasons between the 2009/10 season and the 2017/18 season, and is, therefore, the longest-running period of alleged breaches in the history of the game. City’s malfeasance, therefore, is of a quantitatively different order to what has happened at Everton and Nottingham Forest, and what could or might have happened at Chelsea and Newcastle United.
Think of it this way: City is a planet, while the other clubs are shooting stars.
To recap, City have been accused by the Premier League of 115 violations of Financial Fair Play regulations dating back 14 years. In the interests of time and brevity we can’t detail all 115 breaches here, but they can all be collapsed into the idea City have failed to provide the Premier League with information that “gives a true and fair view of their financial position”.
Specifically, it is alleged that they failed to provide accurate financial information relating to former coach, Roberto Mancini’s salary, as well as the salaries of players for a five-year period, during which Mancini was coach for some of the time.
A year ago Mancini said his City contract was above board and he had paid his taxes. At that point he did not expect anyone to approach him in connection with the alleged Financial Fair play breaches, which seems slightly strange.
In addition to these allegations, the Premier League have also accused City of not co-operating fully with their investigation, which began in 2018.
City have always contested the charges, sometimes vehemently, but will now have an opportunity to disprove them because a date in “late autumn”, which, in all likelihood means September or October in the Northern hemisphere, has been set for City’s hearing.
This means that the outcome of the current Premier League season will not be affected. Sanction, whatever form it takes, will in all likelihood apply to the season in which the trial takes place and will not be retroactive or retroactively binding, so all those fans of other clubs who are expecting an unexpected foot-up or points windfall, calm down.
The hearing is anything but straightforward. This is because it has been widely speculated that Manchester City, in keeping with their traditional high press on such matters, will appeal the decision. Such appeals could take years, so while witness statements will be garnered through the summer to build a case against them, a decision might not be made until the summer of 2025 – in approximately 18 months’ time, in other words. This is about when, just to add a little spice to proceedings, Pep Guardiola’s contract comes to an end.
You probably don’t want to hear this but much speculation is tentative and contingent. It should be held in parentheses. The appetising thrill of City’s comeuppance shouldn’t be savoured – not just yet – because we’re still in the first-half, passing the ball backwards more often than not, and waiting to see if an opening emerges.
The “late autumn” trial date for City reminds us that City have been in a similar quadrant of the pitch before. On hearing the news of the trial date, Aleksander Čeferin, the president of the Union of European Football Associations (otherwise known as UEFA) told the world’s media that he saw the FA’s charges as a vindication that Uefa’s financial misconduct charges against City for a three year period in 2020 were “right.”
City challenged those charges, taking the case to the Court for Arbitration in Sport (CAS) in Switzerland. CAS ruled that UEFA’s initial banning of City from the Champions League for two seasons in addition to a £25-million fine was procedurally flawed.
They argued that their view was that UEFA failed to prove sufficiently that City’s alleged breaches had occurred and that some breaches were “time bound.” They reduced City’s fine substantially and overturned their European competition banning.
A year ago, however, after a five-year investigation, the FA charged Manchester City with the 115 breaches we have already heard about. The charges against City appeared to lose momentum but the more cut-and-dried Profitability and Sustainability charges against Everton and Notts Forest have brought matters back into the spotlight.
People have asked (and people in the media have asked) why the Everton and Nottingham Forest matters appear to have been expedited so quickly, while the City issue drags on. This has caused the authorities to hurry up.
The Everton and Nottingham Forest situations are this. All clubs within the context of the FA’s Profitability and Sustainability rules are allowed to spend £105-million in excess of their earnings in any three year period. In Everton’s case an independent commission found that they overspent this £105-million excess by £19.5-million pounds.
As a result of being found guilty of this flagrant example of loitering financially off-sides, Everton were deducted 10 Premiership points. The deduction has cost them dearly because they are currently third from bottom and would be relegated if the League were decided now, at the beginning of February.
With the ten points, their season might almost be rosy-cheeked with perkiness and shades of good health. They would probably be in the comfort of mid-table, somewhere between Wolves and Fulham, looking forward to beginning the 2024/5 season where they and their fans believe they rightfully belong – which is, of course, in the Premiership.
Everton have appealed the independent commission’s first decision, but, in the meantime, a second independent commission have found that they’ve again exceeded excess spending by £19.5-million pounds for a second three-year accounting cycle.
Before the second commission can finalise its business however, Everton’s appeal to their first sanction must be heard. Only when this is finalised will they make a finding. For their part, Everton will presumably go the double jeopardy route in their appeal (mitigation) argument, saying that they’ve already been punished by the ten-point deduction. Is it really necessary to punish them again?
Forest, to the mirth of many, recruited with great and largely mis-placed energy in the pre-season transfer window. Such commitment to expanding their squad – and staying up – has resulted in them also being in breach of Profitability and Sustainability rules. Like Everton, they don’t deny that they’ve over-spent, and, like Everton they will be contesting, whether this takes the form of an appeal or arguments in mitigation.
Both the Forest matter and the Everton matter must be wrapped up by the time the Premier League hold their Annual General Meeting (AGM) in the English summer. This is because it is at the AGM that next season’s 20 premiership places get decided, so time, in the case of Everton’s appeal and Forest’s case, is of the essence.
The City matter, meanwhile, is in a completely different quadrant of the regulatory pitch. That one will go into extra-time. We might even be witness to penalties. And who knows what little legal skulduggeries and shenanigans are going on behind closed doors or in the back of coffee-houses in Geneva, Munich, Vienna and Seville as we speak?
Now that a sort-of date has been set for City’s hearing, lobbying can begin. City own or have investments in 18 clubs across Europe. This is an empire, while Everton, Forest and Newcastle are only clubs. Empires do not traditionally come to the table ready to admit defeat and hand the keys. When it comes to the 115 breaches, we are in for a very long season. The football world, in fact, is in for a war.
If we were being critical, we might say that the Premier League’s AGM is the almost perfect definition of a talk shop. Why so? Well because the Premier League is a members’ organisation, made up of club representatives who tend to see things – understandably – in terms of narrow self-interest.
To be clear, narrow self-interest is what is whatever’s good for Arsenal, or Liverpool, or Everton or Nottingham Forest, for that matter. What is best for the professional game of football in England is secondary to what is good for a club, and blocks or clubs (like the established league founders, for example) should it come to that.
The problem hasn’t gone unnoticed. There has long been talk – again, that word – of a statutory body for oversight in English football, a regulator, in other words. The matter was raised in the House of Commons in 2023. A white paper was circulated, which should set all our hearts a-racing with glee.
The idea here is that there is a need in situations such as these for independent governance. This might take the form of independent directors chaired by a lead independent as part of a Premier League governance overhaul.
Such directors would not be affiliated to a club. They would be able – at least theoretically – to make decisions in the best interests of the broader game. It would be their responsibility to keep the broader ambitions of the entire environment uppermost in their minds.
Maybe it would take an independent form – that of an independent statutory body adjacent to, or above, the Premier League. On the face of it, this looks unwieldly, expensive, dull. At the same time, it can’t have escaped the savvy observer’s attention that the FA’s application of Fair Play has been ponderous.
Richard Masters, the chief executive of the FA, has received complaint about not reacting fast enough. There have been more general moans from the media and the football-loving public about lack of communication. There are times when the saga, with so many moving parts, does seem fiendishly difficult to unravel. It also takes place within different time-frames – the City time-frame is different to the Everton time-frame – which further clouds the issue.
The charges against Manchester City were levelled a year ago, in February 2023, yet the FA didn’t appear to be dealing with the matter with any great urgency. That was until the Everton over-spend happened. And that was until Forest’s feeding frenzy in the transfer market. The logic of Fair Play suddenly seems inexorable. Heads will roll. Although – note the equivocation – perhaps all they will do is roll back onto the necks and shoulders that once supported them.
One of the buried assumptions of this week’s episode is that we all know what we’re talking about when we evoke phrases like FFP and Profitability and Sustainability rules. It’s wrong to assume too much, so let’s do a quick trawl through the genesis of the idea.
There once was a time, remember, when clubs didn’t simply fold, they went belly up. Think of Glasgow Rangers; think of Leeds United; think of Portsmouth, who were high-profile and had nine points deducted when they collapsed in February 2010.
And let’s not forget Queens Park Rangers and Derby County, Luton Town and Southampton. Or, for that matter, casting our gaze further afield, have a good look at the travails currently of Barcelona and Juventus.
The method of going belly up might have been subtly different each time. It might also have been given a different name. Some called it receivership. Others talked of dissolution or voluntary liquidation. The clubs sometimes re-emerged under a different owner or a consortium of owners or an overseas owner. The fact of the matter was that 15 or 20 years ago, this kind of thing happened so often that it began to make important people uncomfortable.
The converse of this idea is that football clubs have a remarkable and frankly loveable knack of landing on their feet. They might leak money, true. But soon they are re-inflated with gusts of hope and optimism. Clubs have been known to come roaring back.
As part of this story it’s important to know that, in 1992, the Premier League was re-branded. New digital technologies stated becoming available through the 1990s which meant that cable and satellite TV, encryption and flat-panel display spread the re-branded English game to all corners of the world. This included the Middle East, the Far East, the former USSR and Africa.
As a result of re-branding and the reach of satellite TV, wealthy, frequently hopelessly vain men, were turned on to the Manchester derby, or the Liverpool one. They looked at Arsenal or Spurs or Chelsea and liked what they saw. Once, 130 years ago, it had been a gold rush. Now it was a goals rush. The lust for clubs and goals, goals and clubs, had began.
One of them, Roman Abramovich, started circling over Chelsea owner, Ken Bates. Seven or eight years ago, Abramovich would have bought newspapers or media empires, but that was old biscuit, not sufficiently sexy or glamourous enough.
Instead, he bought Bates’ club from him. Once the deal would have been sealed with a good malt whisky. According to authors Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski, the two shook hands over a bottle of Evian water at a swanky London hotel.
Abramovich was a worrying figure with a shady past. Was he a villain or a saint? Pro-regulation administrators saw him as a character type: the football sugar daddy. They wanted clubs to – this is a by now famous phrase – “live within their means”, which is the quintessence of Fair Play and Sustainability thinking. They wanted owners to be reputable individuals or groups or consortiums, who passed the “fit and proper persons test”.
They worried that big money would inflect the game away from the middle and make it the playground of the unaccountably super rich. They worried that football clubs would become unmoored from their traditional communities to become free-floating pan-global entities.
Their fears seem to have been realised. Under Sheik Mansour and his Abu Dhabi Group, Manchester City have won the league title six times in the last ten years, and five in the last six, the only exception to that being Liverpool’s win of the title in 2019/20, in which City were runners up.
There is another aspect to all of this which, for the sake of simplicity, we can describe as the tension between appearance and reality. Clubs are outward-facing. What happens on the pitch is everything. What competitions teams win, which players play for them and how they go about winning counts for everything.
Or does it? What Fair Play and Sustainability rules are really saying is be transparent and, importantly, be congruent in the way that you conduct your business. Let your back-end work in the way you like the fans to see your team work on the pitch.
It is quite clear that Chelsea’s recent recruitment is of the try-and-pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey while-blindfolded type. Nottingham Forest have gone on a recruitment bender. Farhad Moshiri, Monaco-based British-Iranian businessman and owner of Everton, has clearly not put appropriate checks and accounting balances in place at his club. There is the issue of Everton’s over-reach, in the form of their new stadium, and what of money that is (or isn’t?) coming from Moshiri’s Ukrainian pal, Alisher Usmanov?
It’s all a bit of a mess, isn’t it? Imagine if Everton, Nottingham Forest and Chelsea played football to the standards they bring to the running of their business? They would be utterly unwatchable. This, as I see it, is the logical extension of Sustainability and FFP rules and regulations. There is a moral imperative here. The imperative says: “Run your business to the same high standards you aim for – and hope to achieve – on the pitch.” Seen in this way, I don’t think that FFP and Sustainability and Profitability rules are such a bad thing.
The only caveat to this is that I, like many of us, get reflexively offended when greeted by paternalistic arguments or interventions. I always curdle inside slightly when I hear about rules and their applications that start with the premise that powerful organisations must help people to help themselves because people are unable to help themselves to begin with.
In beefing up on my subject for this episode, I’ve watched a number of informative and detailed podcasts (thank-you to the Athletic) and read a good many articles and sections of books. I am struck in all this that what we are witnessing in the FFP and Sustainability debate is a subtle trick of the light, where what many are talking and writing stands at a slight angle to matters as they pertain to City. What I’m saying is this.
Much news reporting and comment in the long second half of this issue is under the illusion that the City’s 115 alleged breaches are about football. They aren’t, I beg to differ. In City’s case, given their hard-tackling on the matter, we are dealing not with football but with British and European legal and financial realpolitik, the two stand close in the team photo but they’re different players.
I wonder, for example, if there are any Brexit implications in the case, given that Britain was a member of the European Union (EU) when many of the breaches were alleged to have taken place, but Britain is a member of the EU, no longer.
City’s lawyers aren’t going to bring a two-page argument and a couple of dusty arch-lever files to the hearing. They will bring all the obtuse fine-print of contracts they themselves drafted. One-hundred-and-fifteen breaches, can you imagine?
They aren’t going to spend time looking at their feet like scolded schoolboys. They will bring fair means and foul to matters as they unfold in the “late autumn.” Haven’t they already tried to discredit the Premier League-appointed barrister because he’s an Arsenal supporter?
I believe the media ought to know this, and some of them do, and some of them are being disingenuous not to tell us that this hearing will dawdle through the months for years. This is not exciting news. We crave closure. The Premier League season opens, proceeds through a drab middle enlivened slightly by the presence of the January transfer window, and closes. Our Amazon Prime series’ open and close, periods of employment open and close. But all these things taken together constitute life, and life tends not to be as clear cut as a mini-series on Netflix.
Finally, don’t believe enough has been made of the comments made by UEFA president Čeferin. You might say that this is nothing more than a case of sour Slovenian grapes, Čeferin is Slovenian, by the way, but I think what he said is germane to the City case. He’s been UEFA president for going on seven-and-a-half years, so isn’t some fly-by-night carpet-bagger with a small office above a repair workshop.