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Manchester City's ongoing legal battle with the Premier League is yet to be resolved and if found guilty, the club could receive a huge points deduction
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has insisted that Manchester City are unlikely to be automatically relegated down the football league if they are found guilty of their 115 charges.
The club's ongoing legal battle with the Premier League is yet to reach its conclusion despite the independent hearing coming to an end. City were charged with allegedly breaching financial regulations from 2009 to 2018.
City has repeatedly maintained its innocence, and although it's often referred to as 115 charges, it's believed there could be up to 130 potential breaches. Between 2009 and 2018, the club won three Premier League titles.
Back in December, City published its financial report and highlighted the wait for the verdict from the independent commission. It read: "On 6 February 2023, in accordance with Premier League Rule W.82.1, the Premier League referred a number of alleged breaches of the Premier League Rules by Manchester City Football Club to a Commission under Premier League Rule W.3.4.
"In response to the charges, the Club issued a public statement that it welcomes the review of this matter by an independent Commission, to impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position. As at the date of publishing these financial statements the independent Commission is still in the process of reviewing the matter.
Talk of punishment has been present ever since the charges emerged, with some speculating that they could be relegated all the way down to League Two or the National League. However, Maguire has claimed that a hefty points deduction is more likely because the Premier League and EFL have different constitutions.
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“If there are 115 charges against Manchester City, then Man City must have put 115 defences, so that’s going to involve 100s and 1000s pieces of evidence," he told The Manchester Evening News. "If you take a look at the cases against Forest and Everton, which were relatively narrow and effectively one charge from the Premier League, there were tens of thousands of pieces of evidence submitted by the Premier League and the clubs during that particular hearing.
"Also, the charges against City are much more serious than those we saw, which resulted in points deductions for Everton and Forest. For City, it’s effectively an allegation of fraud, in that the Premier League alleges they received money from the owner and disguised it as sponsorship income.
"That’s a very serious offence. You have to have fairly overwhelming evidence of guilt because it’s a very significant allegation, and it’s taking a lot of time, as there are 3 people on the independent commission. They are not working together every day because they are incredibly successful in their own walks of life, so they don’t have a lot of time and might just be getting together just a few times a month because they’ve got existing work commitments.
"Therefore, it’s a very slow process. I suspect that the Premier League is regretting making 115 charges; they could have chosen the ones they felt they had the strongest case for, and on the back of that, we would have had a verdict by now.”
“If you take a look at the verdicts in the hearings against Everton and Forest, the one thing that became very clear was that if a football club has been involved in activities that, as a result have given them an advantage on the pitch, i.e from overspending or hiding costs, these were the cases that were proven by the commissions against those clubs.
"They were both given a points deduction. Now, the charges against Man City cover a nine-year period, rather than a single PSR calculation, and therefore they would have to be a significant multiple-point deduction, adding a zero or more, so 40-60 points. Could that be viable? Yes, it could. Could it be more? Absolutely.
"But because the Premier League and the EFL are independent of one another, there’s no way the Premier League can say they’re going to relegate Man City to League Two because they’ve got no power over what happens in the EFL.
"From the EFL point of view, having Man City in the Championship would be a huge asset to them, with a huge amount of interest. I suspect that, because of the way the English football system is set up with the three governing bodies (the FA, the Premier League and the EFL), the Premier League cannot impose a punishment that the EFL must take on. So it has to be a points deduction and if that results in relegation, then the EFL would be obliged to accept Man City into the Championship next season.”
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