Oh Manchester, So Much To Answer For
At 2:41pm on September 25th the highly respected football journalist David Ornstein tweeted that Manchester City Football Club had been found guilty by an independent commission of 114 of 115 charges relating to financial transactions. That tweet has now been viewed over 100 million times. The football world seized upon this and tens of thousands of words of moralising and outrage have been in print and on the airwaves ever since.
The Premier League followed this up a few days later with a redacted summary of the commission’s report that was damning of the club. There were multiple references to ‘Sham Contracts’ and that the club had overstated its financial results by over £900 million in the period 2009-2018. Some witnesses put forward by the club gave evidence deemed ‘false’ and ‘untrue’, and therefore dishonest.
The reason why the charges were originally brought by the Premier League is that it has a set of cost control rules based on profitability. Profits are revenues less costs, and City had therefore been able to spend money on players and managers that would otherwise not have been achievable. Football is a talent-based industry, and to recruit the best talent means having the ability to pay the highest wages and transfer fees. This gave City a financial boost that contributed towards winning multiple domestic trophies.
The Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) allow a club to lose a maximum of £105 million over three years. The rules are complex, criticised by many for encouraging neither profitability nor sustainability, as well as creating a glass ceiling for clubs whose owners want to invest on the pitch.
City have rejected the commission report and have formally appealed against the judgement, the tariff for which has not yet been determined. In theory, the club could face unlimited fines, points deductions or even expulsion from the Premier League.
Manchester City play their home games at the Etihad Stadium, and the owners, Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) have spent large sums of money on stadium expansions and improvements, as well as the surrounding area of what has been an area of the city subject to a lot of social deprivation.
So far, all football, no politics, but now that changes. The Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 to July 2026 was Andy Burnham, who has subsequently taken another job somewhere down south (the one with the black door) away from the home of The Smiths, Oasis and The Fall.
Burnham was asked by the BBC’s Chris Mason at the Labour Conference about the City verdict and the possible repercussions for ADUG and Sheikh Mansour and his first reply was "Well, I would be really concerned to lose them. They've been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester. Obviously, the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.
"I can't intervene more in the process. It would be wrong for me to do that. It would be wrong, I think, to jump to a conclusion before having really studied all of the detail, but obviously it's ongoing, and because it's still contested by Manchester City, then I think it's right that I don't say much more."
Burnham subsequently rowed back on the comments, acknowledging that it is an internal issue of the Premier League, and that the Independent Football Regulator, created by statute by the present government, has to be both independent and seen to be that way too for it to have credibility.
By now the genie was out of the bottle, and Burnham’s opponents have seized upon his initial comments and used this to apply pressure and scrutiny, given his links to Manchester itself. Kemi Badenoch has demanded (it’s always demanded, never politely requested, isn’t it?) that the PM disclose all meetings with representatives of both the club and the Abu Dhabi government, and there is often a crossover between the two, during and after his time as Manchester mayor. Given Abu Dhabi’s extensive investment in the city, it is perfectly logical for senior officials of both local and national government to have meetings.
The nudge-nudge comments from those in the media who are anti-Labour intimate that Burnham may have tried to influence the outcome and the punishment of the club. This seems unlikely, given that the Premier League took years to put together a case and has incurred tens of millions of pounds of legal fees.
However, in the modern political world where facts trail a long way behind accusations and soundbites, Burnham still has some explaining to do to distance himself from the view held by some that he is compromised over his relations with Abu Dhabi. As an Evertonian, he is at least unlikely to be swayed by football affection.
Kieran Maguire is professor of football finance at the University of Liverpool. He co-wrote two State of The Game reports for DCMS and has appeared before a number of APPG's dealing with football financial issues. He presents the award-winning podcast The Price of Football with comedian Kevin Day, as well as authoring the bestselling textbook of the same name.
