The long awaited hearings into Manchester City’s alleged breaches of Premier League rules are due to be heard in mid-September, HITC understands.
Sources have confirmed to HITC that the independent commission, who is due to hear the case of City’s 115 alleged breaches, will begin on September 16th subject to any further delays which is described as ‘always being possible’ given legal hearings.
The hearings are due to last for around ten weeks with the schedule for an outcome set for early 2025.
The charges were made against City in February 2023 following a five-year investigation by the Premier League. They relate to a 14-season period dating from 2009 and feature various counts of failing to provide information relating to player and manager payments, plus failing to comply with Uefa regulations and also failing to cooperate with the Premier League from 2018.
The main hearing is separate from City’s legal case against the Premier League which they launched in June this year and was brought against the league’s associated party transaction rules (APT) – those results are due in two weeks.
Q & A with football finance expert Adam Williams – all your questions about Man City hearings answered
On the main hearing, there are many questions being asked from; Will City escape punishment? Could they be relegated? Have City done anything wrong?
To answer all those questions and more HITC sat down with GRV Media’s Head of Football Finance, Adam Williams to get the answers.
HITC – Man City have had a long time to prepare for this and seem confident, you think this is well placed?
AW – I think there is always a degree of bluster and bombast when it comes to these cases. That is to be expected.
While the case will be decided at the trial itself, I think both sides are also supremely aware that there is also a battle in the court of opinion to be won and lost.
Naturally, City and the Premier League have kept briefings to a minimum and want to have as tight a control over the narrative of the situation as is possible.
City’s confidence may well be genuine. They have the resources to have secured the best possible legal representation and a long time to get their case together.
However, I don’t think we can really take anything concrete from the noises they have made either in public or have fed to the media.
Put it this way – they would be unlikely to brief anything else to the media, regardless of what the genuine perception is of their prospects is internally.
HITC – Rival fans are getting excited about the talk or relegation etc how likely do you think this is?
AW – It is impossible to speculate on the outcome of the case itself.
But I think we can say with some certainty that, if City are found guilty, the punishments will be extreme and unprecedented.
The implication of the alleged offences is widespread and sustained regulatory subversion from City that UEFA’s former chief investigator, Yves Leterme, has publicly said would, in theory, amount to fraud.
If found guilty, it would also mean that they deliberately and continuously misled their auditors, BDO. That is serious.
This case is entirely different to the situations involving Everton and Nottingham Forest, which were essentially about arithmetic in terms of the PSR threshold and the semantic or accounting interpretations of the rules.
In City’s case, the allegation is that they knowingly broke the rules and misled the Premier League and their auditors.
Again, I have no idea whether this is the case. And Man City insist that they will be cleared of all charges.
But if they are not, I’d say relegation is almost an inevitability.
I think many would argue that the logical extension of that would be to strip them of titles too, although whether that is practical – with the redistribution of prize money etc – I’m not sure.
HITC – By the same token, some around City think they could escape without a major punishment, just a fine…again do you think this is likely?
AW – I’m not a lawyer, but virtually all people with expertise in this field think that if the charges are proven then there has to be some sort of retroactive, structural punishment.
I don’t think a fine, however large, would cut it.
Perhaps they could be found guilty of one or two minor offences and cleared of the remainder, in which case there could be a more modest financial punishment.
The honest answer is that there no precedent for any of this in the Premier League, so we just can’t say with any degree of certainty.
HITC – Do you think there be any impact on their breaches case due to the the separate lawsuit they launched over the EPL’s Associated Party Transactions (APT) rules?
AW – While I suppose there were consistent themes from a narrative point of view, the two cases are entirely separate from a legal perspective.
There have been no changes to the Premier League handbook for 2023-24 in terms of associated party transaction rules, which indicates either that City have lost that case or that there has not been an outcome as yet.
In any case, the consensus was that City were always highly unlikely to be successful in that particular case.
In the 115 charges case, there is far more uncertainty.
The perception I’ve witnessed among supporters seems to be that City will definitely be found guilty.
However, I think the implications of that verdict mean that outcome is nowhere near as likely as people think. From my point of view, I have no idea what is going to happen. No one does.
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