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Seven Takeaways From Official Report Into Man City’s Nine Years of Cheating

A partially redacted 40-page document exploring City’s stunning guilty verdict had plenty of nuggets within it.
Grey Whitebloom|
This is not a great time to be a Manchester City player.
This is not a great time to be a Manchester City player. | Carl Recine/Getty Images

It’s taken 1,331 days, out-lasted three U.K. Prime Ministers and tested the patience of everyone associated with the Premier League, but the judgement is in: Manchester City are guilty.

The Premier League gleefully reveled in victory (which is still subject to an appeal from a club which defiantly describes itself as “innocent”) with a statement that used the term “sham” like a child who had learned a new word.

However, beside that bluster, the independent commission (which is not a “Premier League commission” as City seem intent on calling it) which came to this decision revealed a detailed reasoning for this ruling across 40 partially redacted pages. The insight was eye-opening.

Why the Case Took So Long to Reach a Verdict

Lord David Pannick KC walking.
Lord David Pannick KC reportedly costs £5,000 per hour. | Lucy North/PA Images/Getty Images

The independent commission made a point of addressing the delay which also served as a warning to City to not even consider the prospect of a retrial given all the evidence that has already been painstakingly analyzed.

“It has taken us much longer than we would have wished, and much longer than we had anticipated would be the case when the hearing concluded, to produce our decision. That is regrettable,” a statement read.

“However, we were fortunate to have available to us throughout the period in which our decision has been being prepared not only all of the documents that were used at the hearing but also:

  • (a) verbatim transcripts of the evidence given by each witness and expert at the hearing. Those transcripts ran to approximately 7,000 pages.
  • (b) extremely detailed written submissions from the parties (that they had supplemented orally over four days at the end of the hearing) on the evidence and each of the numerous issues that we were tasked with determining in the proceedings.”

Unless there is anything new that can be unearthed, it would appear that a final verdict has been reached.

MORE FALLOUT ON MAN CITY CHARGES VERDICT

• Premier League Stun Man City With Scathing Official Guilty Verdict

• Man City Charges: The Premier League’s Multi-Year Investigation Explained

• The Potential Punishments Facing Man City for 115 Premier League Charges

• Every Premier League Points Deduction in History—and the Clubs Hit by Them

• The Premier League Champions If Man City Are Stripped of Titles

Scale of ‘Disguised Funding Scheme’ Laid Bare

Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium.
Manchester City have been sponsored by Etihad for decades. | Visionhaus/Getty Images

In 2011, news broke that Manchester City had agreed a 10-year sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways—the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, a nation for which the club’s owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the vice-president and deputy prime minister—worth £400 million ($528.2 million at current rates). In response, Liverpool co-owner John W. Henry wryly tweeted: “How much was the losing bid?”

The implication all along is that City had their finger on the scale in what the Premier League have now described as “sham commercial deals.” The independent commission called it the “Disguised Funding Scheme” and has broken down the scale of this artificial inflation during the seasons under review.

Year

Total Sponsorship Fees (£m)

Fees Paid by Sponsor (£m)

Sums Paid by ADUG (£)

2009–10

27

4.5 (17%)

22.5 (83%)

2010–11

41.25

12.75 (31%)

28.5 (69%)

2011–12

86.75

16 (18%)

70.75 (82%)

2012–13

121.75

16 (13%)

105.75 (87%)

2013–14

127.5

16 (13%)

111.5 (87%)

2014–15

123.2

16 (13%)

107.2 (87%)

2015–16

136.17

16 (12%)

120.17 (88%)

2016–17

140.59

11 (8%)

129.59 (92%)

2017–18

145.73

11 (8%)

134.73 (92%)

Total

949.94

119.25 (13%)

830.69 (87%)

Between 2009 and 2018, City racked up almost £950 million ($1.25 billion) in sponsorship fees. Yet, only 13% of that was actually paid by the companies thought to be doing the sponsoring. The remaining £830 million ($1.1 billion) was pumped in by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), the company which owned Manchester City.

This detailed breakdown shows how this “sham” investment inflated over the years, making a sizable leap ahead for the 2011–12 season, which just so happened to be when UEFA’s financial fair play (FFP) rules were first implemented.

Shocking Example of Shortfall Plugging

To give a sense of haphazard nature of this industrial cheating, the independent commission laid out a scenario where City had to hurriedly plug a shortfall to avoid breaching UEFA’s FFP rules.

On May 25, 2013, just five days before the end of that 2012–13 financial year, City were found to be “£9.9 million ‘short’ of complying with UEFA FFP for that season.” Without approaching their declared sponsors, “a number of modified” agreements were conjured which claimed to include bonuses for events that already happened and fund a U.S. tour.

Miraculously, those new clauses ensured that the shortfall could be “plugged.”

‘Continued Concealment’

If City had been cheating for (at least) nine years, the obvious question is how they got away with it. Rather than any detection from the Premier League, City were thrust into this unflattering spotlight by a Portuguese hacker who had run out of interesting stories on Porto and Benfica.

In order to maintain what the independent commission branded “continued concealment,” City are accused of “tweaking” the operation.

This was to “reduce the likelihood of difficult questions” by third-party regulators, such as the Premier League, and allowed them to operate the ‘Disguised Funding Scheme’ for all nine seasons under inspection.

Man City’s Excuse

City have always—and continue to—maintain their innocence. The vague notion of a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” that has so regularly been alluded to by the club has now been unmasked by the commission. It did not stand up to their scrutiny.

When faced with these damning figures of “disguised funding,” City argued that “no part of any recorded sponsorship fee had been paid by ADUG or from or using ADUG funds.” The argument City made was that the sponsors “applied for financial assistance from the Abu Dhabi government” only “from time to time.” On each of these supposedly sparse occasions, the government accepted the application and made up the shortfall (which added up to $1.1 billion) via the Crown Prince’s Court.

City’s owner Sheikh Mansour is a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, which was bankrolling the club’s sponsorships. The links aren’t that hard to draw and the commission rejected the explanation as “untrue” and one constructed “very late in the day.”

Bold ’Dishonesty’ Claim

Manchester City’s chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak and chief executive officer Ferran Soriano.
Manchester City’s chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak and chief executive officer Ferran Soriano are both in the spotlight. | James Gill/Danehouse/Getty Images

Language is everything in a legal document, especially one involving an organization as litigious as Manchester City have proven to be. So, when the commission described certain witnesses who offered up evidence at the hearing as “dishonest,” it’s a pretty bold claim.

The commission explained that, while “the majority” of witnesses had been “doing their best,” an unspecified proportion gave evidence at the hearing “that they knew to be untrue.”

Fear of Backlash

The official report.
The names of those sitting on the commission had to be redacted. | Premier League

Perhaps the most depressing takeaway from the 40-page document arrived after 10 words. The names of the three individuals sitting on the disciplinary commission were redacted.

Given the fierce reaction that the journalists simply reporting the facts of this case have been subjected to, the backlash awaiting those who actually ruled on the decision does not bear thinking about.

Nevertheless, it’s still a damning indictment on the society we have created for ourselves that the identities of these impeachable bastions of law should need to be hidden.

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Grey Whitebloom
GREY WHITEBLOOM

Grey Whitebloom is an Associate Editor for SI FC. He has more than half a decade of experience in sports media across all its various guises, from the fast-paced demands of news articles and match reports to in-depth research required for features. Whitebloom graduated with a First Class Honours from University College London and found himself named on the Dean’s List—which, despite his initial fears, was a form of praise rather than a punishment. He specialises in the Premier League and Champions League, while also boasting an extensive track record of La Liga coverage.

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