Manchester City to launch appeal as financial breach fallout grows

Manchester City are expected to press ahead with an ⁠appeal against ⁠findings that they breached Premier League financial rules by Friday’s deadline, opening a new chapter in a case that ⁠has already become one of the most significant in English football.

The club has consistently denied wrongdoing and indicated they will challenge an ⁠independent commission’s findings that they used “sham” commercial contracts as part of schemes to inflate revenue and understate costs by more than 900 million pounds ($1.19bn) over nearly a decade.

City have said they have a body of “irrefutable evidence” ‌that will clear the club’s name and are expected to argue that the government of Abu Dhabi – not the club’s owners – partly funded the sponsorship deals.

The Premier League’s new fast-track rules state that an appeal hearing must be held within 12 weeks of an appeal being lodged with a decision due within 30 days ⁠of the hearing concluding.

City are expected ⁠to argue the rules were not in place when they were originally charged in February 2023.

The breadth of the fallout facing Manchester City extends well beyond football sanctions.

On ⁠Thursday, the head of the Treasury Select Committee in the House of Commons asked Britain’s tax authority, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), what action it was ⁠taking in response to the Premier League’s findings.

Meg ⁠Hillier said she had written to HMRC Permanent Secretary JP Marks after the publication on Tuesday of the independent commission’s ruling that the club had committed “well over 100 ‌individual breaches of the Premier League rules across the course of many seasons”.

Sports lawyers have predicted years of further litigation as rival ‌clubs, ‌players and agents assess whether they may have grounds to pursue compensation claims connected to the case.