The Systemic Reckoning: Inside Manchester City’s Financial Verdict

Hello and welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Emma Payton. On Friday, Manchester City were found guilty of almost all of the 115 charges relating to breaches of Premier League financial regulations. Today, we're here to explain what those charges actually are, what the immediate fallout has been from the verdict, and crucially, what happened next. Well, I want to start this episode with a quote which reads, of course, we can do what we want. Well, that is the line in the hacked emails published by German Outlet Dispiegel in 2018 from former City Football Group board member Simon Pierce. Three and a half years after the charges initially dropped, we finally have a verdict. So let's get into it then. I'm joined in the studio by managing editor of News, Luke Bocher. Hello, good morning. How you doing? I'm all right. I'm all right. How are you? I'm good. All good. We've got Manchester United correspondent, Karris Jones. Hello. Hello. Good to see you. Thank you. And all the way to New York. We've got our senior football reporter, Adam Krafton. Adam, always good to see you. Thanks for for dropping in because it's pretty early doors where you are in the city that never sleeps. It is. There's also something this weekend called a Norista, which means there's a massive storm across the east coast of the United States. And TBD, if that is the premier league, it's a sign hitting globally after the past few days. Just stay safe. Stay safe. Well, we are recording on a Sunday morning, which obviously means that something big must have happened. Guys, is this the biggest sports story that you've had in your lifetime? Did you say the scale of it and the money involved? I think there's obviously been massive sporting scandals. You think of Lars Armstrong, who was just talking about off air, and you think about within football, Calcio Poli was massive as well. The interesting thing, I think, is those scandals were massive because of the resolutions that they had. You went to getting titles stripped and relegated Armstrong, getting titles stripped. We are so far from the resolution of this, and yet it already feels like enormous. So I think it's going to run and run and run. I think the implications of it are just so low. We were talking again before just saying every time you think about, okay, well, if there's this sanction, like this could happen, but then what's the knock on effect on this club? Do they then get involved in claiming for a trophy that they lost or a Champions League place of Europe every time you think about the potential implications of this when we reach the sanction stage, and the scale of what took place over such an extended period, I think that's what makes it such an enormous story. Yeah. We'll get onto sanctions in a little bit. Adam, where does this scandal rank for you? I think it will depend on the sanctions. I mean, if this all ends up with a big fine, then ultimately not very high, it makes it just a kind of a dramatic version of Everton or Nottingham Forest or Chelsea more recently. So I think we have to sway and see what the punishment is before we can kind of do a rankings. I know our website is desperate to do a rankings. But until we can do that rankings of where this lies in the biggest impact scandals at least, I think we have a sense now of kind of the ethics of it. What football fans really want to know is what is going to happen. This is not the podcast where they're going to find out. No, but we're going to chat about what potentially could happen. That's going to come up a little bit later, but Adam sort of set the scene because you've been across this story for many, many years now. So what was your reaction on Friday and how does it feel now to finally have a verdict? Yeah, I think it probably feels vindicating for many people who have written about it for a long time because I think, you know, look, a lot of this seemed quite clear, really, you know, like when you look at what Manchester City's commercial income was between kind of the decade, 2010 to 2020, and you compared that to some of the more historically established clubs. I'm not saying bigger clubs or clubs more deserving, but clubs who you would instinctively think like Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United could command greater commercial income. Man City were often getting more money in than that from a commercial point of view. And that didn't make sense. It didn't make logical sense because, you know, you would walk around big cities around the world. And it wasn't the club that people were asking you about or the jerseys they were wearing. So I think it felt, it felt right that, you know, this was being looked into. I think if there's a surprise, I think it is how comprehensive the guilty verdicts appears to be. I mean, 114 of 115, if that's how it, you know, turns out to be, we await the Premier League statement. It is stunning because it gives, I mean, you are accusing the club at that point and the people who work there and finding them guilty of extraordinarily serious things. Things that really would question whether these executives can carry on in their roles, whether their ownership should remain at the club. And as you say, you know, we'll get on talking about potential punishments. You know, we should probably say at the start, Man City continue to deny. As I feel like we've been saying every episode for the past 10 years, Man City continues to deny wrongdoing. The Premier League had yet to release a statement. And yesterday in his statement, Caldwell, now I'm about at the Man City chairman, basically came out and said, you know, there's forces trying to destabilise our club, which, you know, I mean, I think some city fans may have been comforted. I think for those of us who live in the United States, it felt a little bit like a certain man coming to the podium saying, you know, they're all out together. So yeah, it's, it's a fascinating situation. Luke, what's it been like covering this story from a news perspective? Because we've been waiting for an outcome for so long, but it almost felt like this bombshell on Friday. What were the first sort of whisperings you heard on the news desk? Yeah, I think, you know, without portraying too much confidence of the fantastic journalists that we have that broke the story. I think you started to get whispers very late on Thursday and kind of into Friday morning. As you said, there's been so many false starts kind of where people thought that, you know, they heard that someone had heard that this was coming and it was going to go one way or the other way and I think, you know, your sort of initial reaction after all of those is that, okay, like, let's be careful, obviously, you can't, the story you can't afford to get wrong, right? But then, I think throughout Friday, it became clear that it was, it was quite real, I think, you know, within the industry, I think, you know, people at different outlets were kind of messaging each other, which I think is when you know that it's like, okay, this is proper. And then, yeah, as you said, it's really like this, I think it's strange because it's been in the pipeline for so long since effectively February 2023, you obviously have three years to kind of get prepared and, you know, have all the kind of content to use a terrible word, I think. But to have all the content that you want ready and I sort of, you know, compare it to the Yogan Club announcing, he's leaving Liverpool, right? Where that kind of just came out of nowhere, like Liverpool kind of announced it, put it on their website, put it on social media, and everyone was kind of scrambling. It was chaos. That was a, like, not that this wasn't a bombshell, but that was a proper bombshell because you had, you know, everyone was like, okay, we need this, we need that, we need this. And, you know, the reaction podcasts were a plenty. Whereas this, I think everyone's kind of known it's been coming, everyone's been chasing it. But because of the sort of legal ramifications, it's been so tight lit and I think both sides have been afraid of leaking it before it's time, really. So yeah, it's been, it's been a long time coming and kind of, yeah, as we were saying, it doesn't, the verdict is in. And so it was, but it doesn't feel like we're anywhere close to resolution. So I think there are going to be many more reaction podcasts. Yeah, it's including, including ours. Yeah. I'm curious. You, of course, cover Manchester United for the athletic. What has been the response of, of city's rivals? I mean, as you'd expect, right? I think there's been a lot of glee from rivals, a sense of, as Adam was kind of saying, of like, of vindication. I think particularly from the United perspective, if you look at the period that these, that these charges cover, it's the period where city kind of overtook United, really, right? So for, and that was a result of United's decline as well as cities, acceleration, but for their fans to be able to, for United fans to be able to kind of cling onto that as, you know, okay, well, where did that success come from? Was it valid? Does that help us feel a little bit better about the way things have gone? I think definitely. I think there are also, you know, United fans who want to know what happens next. They're one of the clubs who lost out to City on Premier League titles in that period. I think the fans of most of city's rivals will be mostly concerned with the sanction more so than like, the kind of the element of the verdict, like if it feels, like it will feel like vindication to a lot of people, but it doesn't ultimately mean anything to their club. They want to know how their club could potentially benefit, which I know will, will come on to in detail. Yeah. That's all anyone wants to know, isn't it? If you're a fan of a rival at the moment, well, Matt Slater, David Ornstein and Sam Lee Marshalled our immediate reactions show when the news initially broke on Friday, but today, what I want us to do really is to give a bit of a history lesson and then of course throw the story forward. So firstly, between us, we're just going to explain what the charges actually are as they fundamentally break down into five categories. So those categories are 54 charges of failing to provide accurate financial information, 14 charges of failing to provide accurate details for player and manager payments, seven charges of breaching profit and sustainability rules, five charges of failing to comply with UEFA's FFP regulations, and then 35 charges of failing to cooperate with Premier League investigations. So let's just make our way through these. Luke, if you start by explaining to viewers and to listeners what failing to provide financial accurate financial information means, yeah. So this is the biggest kind of charge of charges, basically half of what city work used of by the Premier League. I think effectively, all Premier League clubs, as part of the Premier League rules that they kind of sign on to on a yearly basis have to provide, they basically agree to provide accurate financial information to the league in order to comply with the league's financial fair play or FFP rules as they've been come to known. So this is kind of with the charges, city of kind of alleged to have breached five or six of these clauses, kind of every year over this nine year period, I think it is all kind of broadly relating to FFP, which those rules were tweaked a little bit season to season and they see evolved into becoming PSR nowadays, and I think the key question, I think effectively from the 54 charges of about accurate information, was city reporting the true revenue or were they trying to disguise it through these sponsorship deals and through, you know, the other bits of charges that I think will come on to. So that's failing to provide accurate financial information, what about failing to provide accurate details for player and manager payments? This is one of the fun ones, most of them are quite boring, this is one of the fun ones. So the manager who won the first Premier League for Manchester City, most famously, Roberto Mancini, he had a kind of a fixed base agreement, according to all of these league details and league documents, which I think was about 1.4 to 1.5 million. However, he also had a consultancy agreement for a sister club called Al Jazeera in Abu Dhabi, and they were paying about 1.75 million a year for about four days of coaching per year, which seems to be a little bit higher than what he was being paid to manage Premier League club, and these payments appear to have been sort of filtered out of city through a vehicle and then paid out by the sister club. So the suggestion is that it was basically a different kind of owner injection still within Abu Dhabi, but enabling Mancini not to do it on their books. And you saw a similar one with players where there was contracts around Kaya Ture's image rights, again, where this company ADUG, presumed something like Abu Dhabi United Group, would make the payments rather than being Manchester City, all of which helps Manchester City to kind of balance their books at the end of the year. Now we don't know that these specifically are the ones, but we do know what the charges are, which relate to the full details, I think, of manager or player remumeration, I pay. And what we also know is that Disfigure had leaked these, or Disfigure published these documents around Yaya Ture and Mancini, and that therefore gives the impression that these are probably the ones that Premier League would have been looking into. Right. Adam's taken the fun one. Carey, so you get preaching, proper and sustainability rules. Yeah, I mean, this is effectively kind of an implication of the first two categories that we've just touched on. This is basically, if the allegation is that these things were reported improperly, were they reported properly, would City have breached PSR, which is sort of the Premier League mechanism that dictates how much clubs can spend based on their revenue and where they can spend it and all this sort of thing. So the question is, okay, if you're kind of guilty of the top two, would those payments had they been reported properly, then mean you breached PSR? Now, this is quite interesting, obviously I covered Chelsea last season, at the time when they had a settlement agreement with the Premier League and investigations over payments they'd made to agents and things like that. And while it was found that they were guilty of like kind of payments not being reported properly and fed in properly, the Premier League went back and effectively recalculated how do you report it all this properly? Would you have breached PSR? And they found that the answer was no. And so that's an element of mitigation in that case, which is obviously different to this one. But if the Premier League have found and based on the fact that we believe they've been found guilty of all but one of those charges, there's seven charges of breaching PSR, we can kind of infer from that that this is an element of what they've been found guilty of. That takes away an element of mitigation straight away and makes it more serious, not only have you reported these things improperly, but it has also taken you over your spending when that. Yeah. Luke, failing to comply with UEFA FFP regulations? Yeah, so this one might seem a bit strange on the surface of it because the Premier League and UEFA separate organisations, but it's very much in the Premier League rules that if you remember of the Premier League, you must also adhere to the rules and regulations of UEFA, nice little kind of hand-in-hand agreement there. You think pretty simple, but it's made far more complicated by the fact that UEFA had its own case against Manchester City, which I think came right initially in 2020, and they initially hit City with quite a big sanction, a two-year ban from any UEFA competition and a 30 million Euro fine, but then that was taken to CAS by City who always, as Adam said at the top, vehemently kind of maintained their innocence, and that got a little bit complicated because if you're potentially of a man-city persuasion, you might say that UEFA kind of exonerated City because the CAS basically got rid of that two-year ban, reduced the fine down to I think 10 million Euros. But if you look at the reasoning for that, CAS basically ruled the charges that UEFA had kind of thrown City's way had fallen outside of UEFA's own kind of window for taking action, which was over the previous five years, whereas Premier League rules don't have that kind of window, and all that they were unproven. So it's not quite as simple to say that City were cleared by UEFA or exonerated. They still got this 10 million fine. So it's up to people who are far smarter than me to kind of assess whether that constitutes them still breaking UEFA rules, which would then have them in breach of the Premier League rules, but yeah, that's the UEFA part of it. Fifth category, failing to cooperate with Premier League investigations. Yeah. That's basically what it says on the tin rise. So the Premier League rules say City and any club kind of in the situation need to provide full complete and prompt assistance to the Premier League boards to help them with their investigation, basically. So the accusation here is that they didn't, some would say, you know, obstructive, didn't fully help the investigation, however you want to phrase it. And this is again a point where this would make any sanction more severe if they found guilty of this again within Chelsea's case, a massive mitigating factor was effectively the breaches were under the previous ownership and the new ownership effectively is a longer story than this, but held the hands up straight away and said, look, we've found this turned over what the Premier League needed to see. And I think the phrase used was they had like exceptional cooperation with the investigation. And I think that was a huge reason why their sanction was not that severe. So if you look at kind of the flip side of that in terms of what that could mean for City had they not cooperated, it's likely to, you know, impact any sanction that they have. And it's worth referring back to the UEFA case here as well. So while, you know, in a sense, City were, their fans will say they were exonerated. UEFA did and Cass did find that, you know, they haven't cooperated fully. So you can see that this is not kind of a new thing of whether they have cooperated fully with investigations into them. That was the case at the UEFA case and with Cass as well. That's a long standing thing. Right, well, this is, of course, a fast moving situation and the football world we've seen haven't we since Friday has just been reacting across the weekend, really? So Adam, let's start then with Manchester City's initial response on the Friday when this news dropped. What did we hear? Yeah. I mean, their initial statement was, it almost felt like a bit of a holding statement. It was, but what, I mean, crucially, what it didn't do was deny what was being reported. And I think that that is significant. It also, now, that there is a difficulty there because Manchester City's legal obligations may be such that they really can't say anything at all about the process. However, you would have expected either City or the Premier League in the past 48 hours as the kind of, the world has blown up about this to be clarifying in places either through official or unofficial ways, you know, if it was different. So that City's initial statement was kind of a bit of a placeholder. The significant one, I think, was that Caldwell and Elmerberg, the City Chairman, kind of wrote a letter to fans on the City website yesterday and you know, they're kind of continuing to fight. There's still a way to go in the process. It's not being resolved yet. You know, kind of did this thing of there's so much I'd love to tell you, but I can't because of all this legal stuff. And kind of suggested there was like a bit of a conspiracy going on of people trying to destabilise the club and undermine the club. We won't let them do that. Oh, and by the way, we'll see you all for Liverpool and PSG in a couple of weeks. And that was kind of, that was kind of it. And I get that because the reality of these, you know, there has been, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say well over 100 million probably spent now by all parties over the past 10 years, defending, fighting, litigating this. You know, when we think about how other clubs are looking at this, I think one of the things that is losing city sympathy and empathy and has done for a long time is really if you strip this back, what City did is they tried too hard to win, right? Yes, they basically went too fast, accelerated to win and made it an unfair playing field relative to the rules. Now, you can have your own debate about whether those rules were fair in the first place. We hear this a lot now with Aston Villa, with Newcastle, basically saying the rules are set up to make sure that the teams that were big in the 90s, Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Liverpool, not so much that time. But as a brand and Chelsea kind of in the early 2000s win forever. And what Man City kind of did is they had a look at those rules and they said, we want to win faster. You know, we've come in in 2009, we've got Rabinio, we've gone and got Tevers, we want to win really fast. So I think on that basis, people had some sympathy. I think where they lost the sympathy is how they've acted since. And how they've acted since is this, basically, this pattern of making it as difficult as possible for any investigations to take place. That's why so many of these charges relate to failing to cooperate. You know, they went to court to challenge the Premier League's right to, whether it had the jurisdiction to investigate it, you had the Premier, it felt like at every single stage that kicked the can as far down the road as possible. And it got to the point where anyone who brought it up was kind of made to feel like they were a bit insane for, oh, why are you still talking about this? Why are you still going on about this? And it's why actually a lot of TV coverage really at times would kind of gloss over it a bit because you would be, and I found this myself, there were times I'd watch City or go to City Games where you're so kind of bedazzled by what you're seeing on the field by these artists on the field that it almost felt impolite to be like, oh, but have you want it all by cheating, you know, in the boardroom, at least. And just one final point is people say, oh, well, this is nothing really to do. It's not paper. It's not that brilliant team. It's not laundry. It's not these guys. And it's not. But you don't get pep in 2016 with the entire club apparatus built around him with the CEO from Barcelona with the sporting director from Barcelona with a million catalans in the building, as well as people from Manchester, this perfect setup, you don't get that without what you do to accelerate the development between kind of 2009 and 2016 in the first place. And I think that's it. The whole thing is built on this. And they went as fast as they could to enable that dominance and be so clinical with it. Luke, just going back to what Adam was talking about a few moments ago. What did you make of what the city chairman Caldune Al Mabarak said on Saturday? I thought in terms of, you know, the words are always fantastic. I thought he was a textbook. It was very political, I think. It was kind of a textbook example of creating almost a sense of like self and other, right? I think. You know, he used, I think I've, you know, I've written it down. He used some people and we have faced challenges. There are many, many who want to undermine the momentum of our club. We will, we will not give them that opportunity. You're really creating a sense of it. Use the word family, I think, twice in like the first kind of two paragraphs or so. I think it's, he's done a really great job in kind of stoking this element of like it's man city versus everyone else. Everyone loves to be the underdog, right? And this statement, I think, goes a long way to kind of presenting city as the underdogs, you know, against the big, bad Premier League who are coming along to try and take all the glory away from them and the, you know, kind of what carousel is talking about. The fans of all the other 19 Premier League clubs against, you know, little old man city from Main Road. I'm being, you know, I'm facetious a bit, but I think it was a great, and Al Mabarak, let's not, he is a politician, right? He's not just city's chairman, he's been involved in the Abu Dhabi government before. So it's no surprise, really. I think that his statement kind of echoed that. I thought it's, you know, it's really interesting by contrast that we haven't heard anything from the Premier League, but that's you both, you know, Al Mabarak and city's initial statement on Friday, both said, you know, they're very clear to say the process is ongoing. It's not finished yet. And I think the Premier League will be wary of kind of dipping their toe in too early while it is still ongoing. There's so much, so much money, players Adam said, and the legal process is obviously, you know, it's, it's going to be so far reaching that I think both sides have been very scared up till now to kind of, you know, reform away the other or try and be seen to claiming victories and, but I think this is the, this struck me as really interesting because I think it's the first time really that someone from either side I think is trying to probably win the kind of court of public opinion. Yeah. It remains to be seen how much weight that will carry throughout the kind of legal process that is upcoming, but yeah, I thought it was great. It really made me laugh. Nothing from the Premier League, but what about Premier League clubs and city's rivals? I mean, so no one's like publicly stuck their head up above the parapet and gone, we're going to sue Manchester City, but you can bet that a lot of clubs are loyering up. And like as we've reported, like the lawyers are very much aware of this and are in the buildings and are, you know, Premier League clubs, we've reported are planning legal action. We understand it could be a class action, which is kind of like one of the better word, like a joint lawsuit in layman's terms, right, where clubs would come together to seek damages. And this is all basically related to the idea that clubs could be entitled to compensation based on effectively. This is the, if city are winning, someone else is losing, right? If any clubs are winning, someone else is losing. So then the domino effect that you go into is, okay, for instance, Manchester United are obviously one of the teams that finished second to city in title races in the Premier League in years where we now have seen that they've been found to be breaching the rules. Everyone goes on about, are the titles going to be stripped, are the titles going to be handed back? We saw David DeHair on Twitter saying, okay, so how many titles have I won then like Liverpool as well will also be in there? There's also, you know, it's further reaching than just who finished first and second is to knock on effect down the table, right? Who missed out on Champions League? Who missed out on Europe? How far down the table do you go if you're going to seek compensation? And there is precedent to this. I think the Burnley and Everton case is kind of the most glaring of these that will come on to when it was, it was found by the Premier League that after Everton breached PSR in the 21-22 season, Burnley with an entitled compensation because they got relegated when they finished 18th, Everton finished 16th was about, I think, four points between the clubs. So this is the thing and this is why when that case broke, those quite a lot of noise made about it because it was so well, if that's what you're going to do is about 35 million pounds for that one season and that one case that was, you know, in the scheme of a case like this tiny, what on earth are the implications for compensation to other clubs in a case like this, that the ripple effects are potentially enormous and that's why the lawyers are in. Yeah. And pick up on one club you mentioned there in Manchester United because Adam, I want to ask you about this because you reported on Friday that United have already conducted internal assessments to establish the losses incurred because of city's behaviour. So to tell us more about this. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of what, what carousel clubs are looking at how they may have been directly impacted. So the easiest way to do that is if the team finishes one place above you and went and gets a load of, gets a trophy and a lot more money for finishing top of the league and that's what happened. Three times for Manchester United. I mean, it feels semi-pathetic. I think it's a certain extent, particularly in those, you know, a couple of those years, the money in ice were like over 20 points or something or around 20 points behind city. But you can understand the argument and more, I think that there's another year, there was the 2015, 16 year where I think Louis Van Gogh was the Manchester United manager and United finished fifth city finish fourth. It was separated by gold difference, you know. Those were the years where city were really, you know, were kind of accused of being at it. And I think those kind of arguments where there is such a significant difference between being in the Champions League or not. I mean, if Manchester United finished fourth, Louis Van Gogh probably keeps his job. And there's a lot of sliding doors moments that you can relate to this. Steven Gerald slip in 2014. Manchester United fans should be careful what they wish for here. Do you want to erase that from the history books or do you want to keep that in, right? So as a result of that, there's all of these moments, careers that have been impacted, reputations that have been damaged, coaches who have lost their jobs. So you can take it far beyond just whether a club could have won a title or not. If you're a club that was at the bottom of the division and finished, I don't know, 18th. I've not looked into it as an example of this. But was there a team that finished 18th by one or two points and lost both games against Manchester City that season? Could they have a case? Tottenham. I think finished fifth, three years out of five between 2011 and 2016. You know, just before that period where they had to really tighten their belts. If they'd have been an established Champions League club, join those years, what difference would it have made to the Pochettino years that came after? In the same way, you know, I thought about Arsenal. That period where they were in the new stadium and basically were trying to just finish fourth every year because of the way it was towards the end of the Venger reign. But remember how Man City took apart their team? You know, at a bior, Nazari, Kolo Torre, Kleece, Bakery Sanya. You know, if that money wasn't money that City should really have been able to spend, what impact did that have on Arsenal Venger's last five, six years at Arsenal? Now, you can get into kind of a pity situation for yourself where you tell yourself a story that this is all Man City's fault. And that's probably what clubs could do with lawyers. So it's really hard to work out what cases are legitimate legal cases, what is deserving of compensation. But, you know, if these cases start to work, then it is big, big trouble for Man City and big, big trouble for the Premier League. Because you're into kind of a law fair, aricky, really. Can I pull it back to Man United for just one second out of them as well? Because obviously a trend that we've seen in recent years is they have hired a lot of executives who used to work at Manchester City. What does this mean for them? Good question. Yeah, I'm very good question. Not to bring the mood down among Man United for the tour. Well, based on the performance, it might not be bad news. If things do end up changing. But Man United CEO, Omar Burrada, was at Manchester City, I think, from 2011, worked on the business side, worked, I think, on the sponsorship side, became the CEO, sorry, COO, Chief Operating Officer of Man City around 2016, then later became Chief Operating Officer of the entire City Football Group. There's other senior executives at Manchester United who were at Manchester City. And so what is interesting is I know that Manchester United's value assessments of what their losses may have been have continued during the period in which Burrada has been CEO of Manchester United. So it's not like he got into the building, we better stop guys. I mean, he's got to act in the interest of Manchester United. Now he's the Manchester United CEO, I should say, there is no evidence at the moment at all that Burrada specifically has something to answer. But I'm sure there will be questions. I saw a story this weekend suggesting that he didn't have a part and has nothing to worry about. But I think that's one of the questions that will probably look more out in the coming days, weeks and months. Now, before we move on to talk about potential sanctions, Keres, who else have we heard from? Who haven't we heard from yet, but expect to? No, I mean, everyone like him. No Gallagher, David DeHeyer. Everyone's getting involved, right? I mean, Rodgerie, we heard from as well, quite like defiant about CISTI's position, speaking in around Spain's game, Ruth Pinto, the whistleblower, who's like was a massive part of the initial, the emails that went to Disbeagle said, on Twitter, historic decision for English football, one that comes to crown the work I carried out through football leaks. So, you know, he's clearly quite proud of where his work's got him to. Sorry, I'm Donnie, the mayor of New York City, tweeting 114. We obviously know he's a big arsenal fan, so that's, you know, where he stands on that. I hope New York, I wonder how much context New York has had on that. Andy Burnham, obviously we know his football is a big part of how he relates to people as a politician, the prime minister of the UK, it's a massive issue, and I'm sure it is one that he will take really keen in trusting when he was first asked about it. He gave a very straight back response, I think, to ITV, saying, you know, no one should jump to conclusions. We need to see the full statement, but also there's so much more that's still to come, right? Like this has potential implications at government level, because of relations with the UAE, we've not heard like an official government kind of response, sponsors in city, investors in city, Pep Guardiola. Like, I would imagine that we would not hear from those people until an appeal has taken place, because they're presumably kind of acting under the same presumption as city and the Premier League of this whole process is still ongoing, and given the amount of time it's taken, how complicated it's been, how much money's at stake, the last thing anyone wants is to have to rip it up because of some procedural you can start from scratch. So it will be a long time probably before we hear from a lot of those bodies, but they will be thinking about it, they will be aware of it. It's got huge implications for governments, companies, everyone. I think there is a real issue here for the UK government. The UAE is a hugely significant security trading investment partner for the UK. It is hugely invested in Manchester. Andy Burnham's response was really interesting, there's the former Mayor of Manchester. Andy Burnham is someone who usually will give quite a populist response when asked about a football issue. The fact he didn't, I actually thought was quite revealing. I thought it was quite, it showed how delicate he sees the issue to be. And I must say, as someone who grew up in Manchester, I am conflicted on this because, you know, if you look at that part of East Manchester now, compared to when I grew up not far from there 20, 25 years ago, it is transformed. And that is partly because of the Commonwealth Games in 2002 and all the investment that came because of that. But it's also because of, you know, around a billion investment that has come via Abu Dhabi with stadium improvements with the surrounding area. You now have that co-operina, that either the club or Abu Dhabi are kind of half in on. A new hotel's about to be built, it would be one of the biggest in the Northwest. Now, none of this means that they should be allowed to cheat, of course, each other. But we also shouldn't forget that there is an impact, right, on both in how it's changed, and there is also an impact if these people pull away. And the challenge for the new Mayor of Manchester, but also the UK government is, how do you protect investment at a time where everyone is saying, you need more investment, more growth, and probably Burnham's kind of next few years and success will depend on driving that investment in growth, while also being politicians that want to stand for integrity. And that is a really complicated and hard thing to do. And the other thing we should say is, Abu Dhabi is so, so intertwined with Manchester City, right? Just even on the most basic level, Sheikh Nansal, Deputy Prime Minister, Vice President of the UAE, they wear the airliner, right? A stadium wears the airliner, with Eti had. Several of their sponsors are, you know, experienced Abu Dhabi, visit Abu Dhabi, Eti Selah. I mean, even the ones which don't have names that you think may have siblings on the board, siblings are al-Mabarak on the board, right? Like, I'm not making that up, that's the case. And all hands off arrangements. But as a result of that, a judgment on Manchester City could well be seen as a judgment on Abu Dhabi. And if Abu Dhabi's whole aim with this was to increase their standing and reputation and the solidity of its business ties across the world, this becomes hugely damaging. It's hugely, hugely damaging. And you wonder what the impact of that will be. And I think the UK will have to work very hard to kind of keep them in the tent. And I'm not sure how they, how they balance that. And many people will say they shouldn't. But as I'm saying, you can't forget, you know, the impact that that could have on an area that hasn't really had investment. Some other sources over the past couple of decades. We'll just on the topic of integrity before we move on and talk about what happens next. Adam, I want to get your thoughts on what this has done to the Premier League brand because you've written a piece over the weekend about its credibility. And it's, you know, on one hand, you look at it and say, well, maybe their integrity and credibility has been enhanced by holding City to account here. But then you look at it on the other hand and say, we'll look who's currently top of the Premier League at the moment. Yeah, I mean, it was ridiculous enough a couple of years ago when I think the last title, maybe it was the last title they won. You know, you had Richard Masters walking out, being booed by the Manchester City fans. And basically the guy, or the guy who represents the body that was accusing Manchester City of being serial cheats was giving them a trophy. And it felt ridiculous then, but it feels even more ridiculous now. The sanctions can't come fast enough, really, if they're going to come. Because, you know, imagine last day of the season there's a point in it between Arsenal City and City and the league. I mean, it would be disastrous for the Premier League. For the club that they accuse, and now found guilty of being cheats, get to be the champions and have the ticker tape and the blue and white ribbons on the trophy, I just think it's completely unsustainable as a situation. And, you know, you also wonder, I was thinking about, you know, one of the big broadcast deals in the United States, one of the Premier League's biggest ones, is up through a new one in the next couple of years. Now, if you're that broadcaster, if you're NBC, do you look at these past 15 years and say, is the Premier League still worth what we thought it was worth? Because it's what some of what we've seen, is it real? You know, I think I still feel like it's real because it feels like an economic thing, but as we've said, there's a sporting impact of that. So, sorry. I think they're in a really, really tricky place now, the Premier League. The only thing I would say is, sometimes interest is generated by stories, right? The Premier League is an ongoing storyline and actually the Man City Cheating storyline has probably gripped people as well and I think now is gripping people. I don't think it's something that's going to turn interest away from the Premier League. It's just something that people are now fascinated by and if they're not, if they weren't aware of it previously, they're learning about it now. In the same way, I think, as people thought, oh, no one will ever watch the Tour de France again because of Lance Armstrong. Actually, I think more people than ever now are into cycling and people are still watching track and field despite doping scandals. So, this isn't that. It's not needles in arms. It's a former, I mean, Venga, a long time ago, talks about financial doping with Chelsea. It's probably a little bit more like that. But it does put the Premier League in a situation where they need to get on with it. And we should be saying that for 10 years. Let's get on to the sanctions then because I think that's what everyone wants to know. They want to know what is going to happen next. I know you all love a clause and the crucial one here is rule W 51 of the Premier League's handbook. That is where the potential punishments are outlined and there is a whole spectrum here from expulsion, relegation, points, deductions, financial fines to, well, just a warning, really. First of all, timeline here. When do we expect the sanctions to land? Do we have any idea? I mean, it's the million, or multi-million dollar question, really, isn't it? I think Adam, I think earlier in the show, spoke at length, not criticism, but at length for the possible sort of counterfactuals, examples of clubs that were relegated by a point or two. And how long does it take for that, as an example, if city or found to have breached PSR in one particular season, then does the league have to calculate, okay, back then we would have deducted them this many points. And that would have had this impact on these clubs in that season. Therefore, okay, they should be fined this much or deducted this many points. And they have to do that for every single season, potentially. So there's so many things to go through. And I think one thing that's, I mean, this case is unprecedented, as we've said, but potentially one thing that's kind of been levied at the Premier League and other kind of PSR financial cases. I think the rules are a bit tighter, a bit clearer now, but in previous editions of the handbook, there isn't really like a, okay, if you break this rule, you get this set punishment. It's all a little bit vague and a little bit kind of up to interpretation. Of course, that makes sense in a case like this, because it is so complicated. And there are so many different, you know, we went through them at the top of the show. There are so many different charges that all kind of impact each other. So there's a multitude of things to get through. And, you know, as Adam said, will it be resolved by, you know, the end of this season? I really don't know, because there's going to, you know, city is set to appeal. As I said, I think it's significant that, you know, in a case like this, I really would normally publish this kind of decision on its website with, you know, the kind of full written reasons, which, you know, you'd expect could be in the thousands of pages for a case like this. They haven't done so yet. So that step hasn't even been hit yet. And so we're not even into the sort of publication of appeals and counts of appeals. I mean, there's no doubt, right? I mean, you were probably more qualified to talk about it than me, Adam. But this case, there's no doubt this will end up at cast, right? And how quickly... It can. I don't think it can. Can it not? No, I don't think it can. I think that's part of the kind of the agreement that this is dealt with by the Premier League. I'll check on that after the show. But I'm pretty sure it can't end up at cast, which, you know, is some saving grace. Yeah. But I mean, just how long it's been to this point, I think. And it's so at the beginning, I think, in terms of appeals and what comes next, I don't know. I just don't know how long any sanctions will take to come, I think. You would have to guess and assume... So again, to take it back to when Citi were initially banned from European competition by UEFA and then they took it to cast and they won. Part of the whole element of that appeal was the idea that Citi hadn't quite played all their cards out in the initial case and then they did so at cast. This is just an educated guess from me. But considering the length of the hearing and the length that this process has been already, I can't imagine they have many cards left to play. So whether that kind of affects any appeal, I don't know. But it's worth pointing out that the appeal that Citi had against UEFA in 2020 and the appeal process that we expect them to go into now are very different kind of things in terms of how they could play out. So you look at the level, just the sheer length of time that this has taken. And I think we all expected given how contentious the issue was, both sides have pumped into it that probably whoever lost, so to speak, would launch an appeal pretty much straight away. But yeah, there's no precedent. This is the thing that we always just come back to with this case. There is no precedent for how long this takes, how whether do they appeal the charges, and can they then appeal the sanctions separately? If they fail on appealing the charges, it's just such a tangled web of stuff. And because there is still this sort of policy of silence from the Premier League and from Man City, they've never given us as in us the public a timeline for when a verdict would be reached. So I wouldn't imagine they would give us a timeline for the appeal process and the sanctions either. So we just got away. So it's a wedding game. What do you all think it should be? Let's have some fun. Oh, this is tough, isn't it? What is proportionate? Adam, you spoke earlier about Lance Armstrong. You mentioned doping, of course, that's a very different situation. I think in the Lance Armstrong situation, he was stripped of the titles right. So he got the yellow jersey taken away from him, but then they didn't go to anyone else. So because we've been talking at Lenko about the ramifications for all these other clubs and it's like, where does it end? Well, you're right. And I was actually just thinking before the show, say, say, for example, Liverpool get given their title from whichever year, whichever year they got, you know, 17, 18, I think. Yeah, 999 point. And they, I presume if they were to win that title, be given that title, do their players? Are they then entitled to the Premier League win bonuses? Title win bonuses from Liverpool? Would Liverpool have to factor that into whatever compensation claim? Would club be owed an extra five million for winning the title? I don't know. But it occurred to me that there could be actually be costs that come about for clubs who are given these trophies as well. Do all staff get bonuses in those situations? So there is a, as you say, there is this slippery slope. It's why, you know, I spoke to a very senior former Premier League executive. It must have been about two years ago now. And I said to him, what do you think would be right? What would be the fair way to go about it? What he suggests, and I still think is probably the best suggestion I've heard, is that aim should be, if city were found guilty, to decelerate them as much as they were accelerated unfairly in the first place. So this would be, his idea was essentially, for the next three to five seasons, so rather than a one-off points deduction, you basically deduct them maybe 20 to 25 points per season for the next three to five years, which essentially renders it almost impossible to get into the Champions League for the next three to five years, which kind of leaves them in a kind of maybe mid-table island at best for the next three to five years. Now lots of people will hear that and say they should be in the National League or the AFL or whatever. My argument to that would always be, if the Premier League doesn't deserve cheats, why do the AFL deserve cheats? I think there is something in there equally, other people I've spoken to say the punishment should be so severe that they have to spend the season out of the Premier League, but I do quite like that idea of decelerating them, and stopping them from having that kind of Champions League football and revenue and also having to work within the new revenue rules. I think it would have quite a long-term impact in the way that they were able to have a very long-term impact by how quickly they accelerated. I don't know, that's just one idea I heard a few years ago that stuck with me. I don't know if the Premier League would do that. I think the thing about the concept of like, say, I don't know, pulling a number out of thin air, but a 100 point deduction in the Premier League for a season, that effect, you know, that's a relegation, right? That's effectively a relegation by a points deduction. If it's just for one season, presumably, they just come straight back up. Obviously, you know, you can never guarantee that in the AFL, et cetera, et cetera, but a squad of cities, caliber, I don't know, you know, there's always chatter about what if these players have relegation clauses? I have no idea how many of them would have a clause of that effect, but you would imagine they would keep a lot of their squad and they would be able to come straight back up. At that point, it hurts them temporarily, but does it effectively become, you know, a year of an exercise in nostalgia for Manchester City fans who want to heart back to the main road days and, you know, the olden days where life was great and whatever, except for how that's all the team was forming. Kerry, don't you think as well, they could, if they were to do it as I, as the person suggested to me, I think it also stimulates that there's a way to do these punishments that actually make the sporting side of the Premier League interesting as well. Well, if you just do 100 point deduction now for the rest of the season, I mean, a lot of football fans would find it funny and et cetera, but basically it means all their games are irrelevant. Yeah, exactly. You have, you have to separate sort of what would be funny as a fan of a rival team to what is actually best for, what is actually the most fitting punishment for what they have done and what they've been found guilty of and what actually preserves the integrity of the Premier League best in the long run. To that point as well, I feel like I've got no doubt that the next time a controversial decision goes against Manchester City or in favour of Arsenal or Liverpool or whoever it is, some will say, ah, the Premier League doesn't want City to win this year. They've told referees, they've told officials to favour other clubs because it's easier for everyone if City kind of finished second or third or fourth this year. That's what we've got to look forward to, I think, for the next kind of like six and nine months. Yeah, there's going to be a ride, isn't it? Thank you so much for your company. Adam, Karris, Luke, really appreciate it. We are dedicating an entire week of shows to this story so we will be bringing you further developments as we get them. For now though, we'll catch you next time. The Athletic FC.