Manchester City and FA Breaches
By: Benjamin Saunders, Health and Wellness, 24
City’s Current Season
Manchester City, one of the prominent teams in the Premier League, is potentially facing several violations due to breaches in the FA rules. The Football Association (FA) has linked Manchester to several violations over the last few years. Along with this, Manchester City has won 5 out of the last 6 Premier Leagues and is being threatened to lose several of these titles.
What are FA breaches and the charges?
Manchester City are currently under trial for breaking financial fair play rules around 100 times over as long as a 9 year period. This started in 2009 and continued all the way through to 2018. During this stint, Manchester City managed to win the Premier League 3 times.
The Premier League’s financial fair play rules are designed so that clubs can only spend as much money as they have earned. Many clubs can get around this by inflating and overexaggerating how much they earn and tend to hide how much they are spending. The reason Manchester City has been potentially charged for breaches for over 9 years and was identified was due to the club not providing proper financial information. According to the Football Association, City did not give all documents and never gave complete financial statistics that happened between the managers for over four years. If they are truly guilty, it was most likely that the club performed secret contracts for managers and players. This was so that they were able to pay the players and managers more but document it as less. To add to this, they have also been under suspicion for lack of compliance with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The FA accounted for around 4 years of violations and UEFA added in an extra 5 years of violations.
Ways the club has gotten around this
During the 2020 season, UEFA found that they had breached rules once again and banned them from European competition for two seasons. The club resisted the ban and brought it to court. From there, they were not banned for two seasons of European Competition and only fined 10 Million Euros compared to 30 million. Although evidence was there to an extent, the time frame was such a long time ago, that the evidence could not have an established time frame and evidence could not be used. This was a very fortunate scenario for Manchester City, as European competitions are the most important part of success and earnings outside of the nation’s league.
What are the potential punishments?
The Premier League holds quite strict rules when it comes to breaches with financial fair play. Many times, it comes with point deductions in the league but in the case of something as severe as Manchester City’s, it could be complete expulsion from the league. The interesting part about point deductions is that if they are to be found guilty for the seasons prior, the deduction will take place in the current season. This means that although City are leading the table currently, with the number of violations, they could potentially drop all the way to last place and be relegated.
Commotion with other clubs in the League
Many clubs have already stated that they wish for Manchester City to be relegated if they are to be found guilty. Some presidents of clubs have also mentioned that the taking away of previous titles would be a good idea. However, the FA came out and presented that this would not happen, as it would cause too much confusion in deciding how to present old trophies to new clubs. Along with this, smaller clubs like Everton for example, have been given smaller violations and have been deducted points recently which raises a great deal of irritation as a giant club like Manchester City is not being charged as of now.
Can City attempt to Appeal again?
Once the independent commission is formed, and the commission decides how to address the issue, City would potentially be able to appeal. It would be much harder for them to combat the charges as they are so specific and such a large ordeal.