What if heavily punishing Manchester City causes their ownership to stick two fingers up at the Premier League and walk away, wonders Ed Warner.
Let’s play fantasy football. But first the disclaimer: yes, Manchester City have their backs to a precipitous sporting and financial cliff. Yes, they are surrounded by the massed armies of Premier League lawyers and public opinion.
And yet the club’s leaders vow to fight on against a commission’s verdict that they repeatedly broke the competition’s rules for almost a decade. To be clear, City continue to deny any wrongdoing. Expect an appeal imminently.
“The whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation… We will now be relentless in our work. We will focus on the independent appeal process and also all other legal avenues available to us in order to win the case.”
Ferran Soriano, Man City chief executive
Right, park that. Now imagine that this appeal fails and Manchester City are sanctioned. Is it inevitable that City accept whatever punishment is meted out to it, or might their owners decide that, like Groucho Marx, they would not want to (re)join a club that would have them as a member.
Could this be the end of the Citizens within English football’s establishment? Might this instead prove the beginning of a franchised global super league?
Any redistribution of league and cup trophies won by Manchester City between 2009 and 2018 would have a symbolism that would likely appeal to those who have pursued the case against the club over the past seven or so years. However, the new substitute victors might find that their cups and medals ring hollow.
Olympic athletes speak of vindication when medals are stripped from drug cheats years after the event, but these new recipients uniformly regret missing their podium moment in a packed stadium. What price a Premier League triumph without the confetti guns?
Leaving silverware with City and their former players – large asterisks appended in the record books – might perversely feel like a rather exquisite punishment in itself. Forever condemned to be the butt of opposition taunts.
There is nothing hollow about hard cash, however. Manchester City are ultimately controlled by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan through his Abu Dhabi United Group.
Deep though his pockets might be, the financial ramifications of the independent commission’s findings could run into billions of pounds in compensation to those who believe they have been wronged. The number of people and entities affected could run into the many hundreds. Every payment, big or small, would inflict pain.
Only this week I met an executive from a lower-division club who believes that in an alternative universe he might have been a few grand better off had Manchester City operated differently – the result of a sliding doors FA Cup moment. Not enough for him to lose any sleep over – more a quirky anecdote to tell over a beer – but a reminder of the many, lengthy chain effects of the case.
Sporting penalties will be of greatest interest to most fans. Is one of the three relegation slots from this season’s Premier League to be earmarked for City, whether directly or via a massive points deduction?
Is there any mechanism whereby they could be forced down a number of steps in the English football pyramid? Would the EFL co-operate in that? Could it? Might the Premier League want points sanctions for future seasons, possibly condemning the club to a yo-yo existence between the top two divisions? This will be about the art of the possible.
While a points deduction this season is the obvious, straightforward sanction that could be imposed on Manchester City, it would need to be enormous to avoid creating a narrative in which the team became plucky strivers in the face of extreme adversity.
A 50-point deduction, say, would fall short of guaranteeing City’s relegation. Does the Premier League want a narrative of top flight survival in spite of all that the commission decided has gone on?
There are calls for Manchester City to be ejected from the Premier League. What does that mean? Banished for good? Or simply allotted one of this season’s relegation slots, although what then would happen to their remaining fixtures this season is unclear.
If the club’s appeal takes some weeks to be heard and then its verdict chewed over privately, any public pronouncement of its outcome could be delayed until season’s end. Not ideal, but the show would stay on the road and the cameras keep rolling, allowing the Premier League to fulfil its broadcast contracts.
Lose the appeal, however, and would City’s owners be prepared to endure the attendant opprobrium? I am not so sure that they would want to stick it out, as opposed to sticking two fingers up at English football.
Imagine, then, Manchester City being walked away from the English pyramid, its Etihad Stadium available for alternative football fixtures, other sports and entertainments. The club’s global fanbase would likely care far less than locals about domestic competition. What price might they pay to be part of a global football circus instead?
First call could be to the leaders of Real Madrid and Juventus, strongest proponents of the failed European Super League project. Then approach the likes of Inter Miami, Flamengo and Boca Juniors.
Start with an invitational tournament and dangle the prospect of an NFL-style closed franchise structure with riches to match. Just because the European Super League failed doesn’t mean the established football eco-system is inviolate.
Plan B? Approach Major League Soccer and apply for Manchester City to become its first overseas franchise, making the Etihad Stadium the football tourism destination of choice for a nation of Ted Lasso fans.
Any of which would fill pre-2008 City fans with anger and misery. We are though in such uncharted territory that any outcome should at this stage, however outlandish and apparently remote, be deemed possible.
My sliding doors moment
I’ve written before about the call I took from a leading sports headhunter – back in 2011 or 2012 I think it was – to sound out my interest in a Premier League CEO vacancy.
A big attraction, he told me, was that half the salary would be paid offshore – and so at a far lower tax rate – notionally for advisory services to the owners. Er, no thanks!
The charges against Manchester City include the allegation that they paid their then-manager Roberto Mancini extra for consultancy via an offshore company.
“Manchester City has not been found guilty, and the alleged double contract is not my concern. It’s their issue, not mine,” said Mancini this week.
Scarify time
There can be few things as mesmerisingly soporific as watching groundsmen start their painstaking work to prepare a cricket wicket for next season. At Sussex, ours went to work at Hove’s County Ground the day after the season ended.
With the sport so dependent on pitch quality – witness the continuing uncertainty around relegation in this year’s County Championship, with Leicestershire appealing a points deduction for a poor wicket – no day is too soon to start the work.
Away from the pitch, 2027 preparations are in full swing. Our playing squad is being finalised, with player ins and outs, a new head coach arrives next month, we are in the final stages of recruiting both a new chief executive and non-exec directors, and membership and sponsor renewals are underway.
It is fair to say that everyone at the club is energised, spurred in no small part by the men’s first team’s successful end to the season – three wins, two draws and just one defeat in the final block of matches to finish third in the County Championship in spite of a 12-point deduction imposed before the campaign began. A winning team in any sport is always an invaluable asset.
Ed Warner is chair of Sussex Cricket and GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com
