Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 out of 115 financial breaches of the Premier League's rules, with the verdict shared on Tuesday afternoon. City, who have continually denied any wrongdoing, fired back with their own statement and have made public their intent to appeal the decision. However, City will have to overturn what has been deemed a nine-year 'sham' operation to inflate revenue and reduce costs by £900million, misstate accounts and conceal the club's true finances.
Comprehensive hearing and Project Longbow
The hearing stretched across 42 days, occurring between September and December 2024. It featured oral evidence from 27 factual and expert witnesses while millions of pages of documentation, expert analyses, and approximately 7,000 pages of word-for-word transcripts were examined throughout the proceedings.
In 2012, the year of City's maiden Premier League title triumph under Roberto Mancini, the club launched Project Longbow, a 'multi-strand project' devised to enhance revenues and cut losses. The panel's verdict stated that 'many of the strands of Project Longbow were genuine, legitimate attempts to achieve those aims. One was not'. This was the 'Fordham arrangement', where a third-party firm was utilised as a 'front' for the trading of player's image rights to conceal Abu Dhabi money that was injected into the club, eliminating an expense from the club's expenditure.
Secret funding and sponsorship fees
The commission discovered that City dreaded surpassing Chelsea's then-record annual deficit of £140m during the 2009-10 season - one year following Sheikh Mansour's takeover. It was 'against that background' that Project Longbow was conceived to mask the club's shareholder funding as commercial revenue.
The Premier League panel confirmed that City employed a 'Disguised Funding Scheme' between 2009 and 2018 to incorrectly declare £949.94m as commercial sponsorship revenue. Just £119.25m of that was verified to be legitimate base fee payments courtesy of Abu Dhabi sponsors. The remaining £830.69m was, the panel stated, direct funding supplied by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). Legally, it should have been recorded as equity contributions rather than sponsorship income.
This sparks further debate over whether City are a state-owned club and presents an immediate conundrum for the new Independent Football Regulator. There's also the 'fit and proper' owners test which will almost certainly need to be reassessed in the case of City. One penalty that has been suggested is compelling Sheikh Mansour to sell the club. The last owner to be forcibly ousted from the Premier League was Roman Abramovich at Chelsea in 2022.
Deceptions and dishonest witnesses
City's revenue exaggeration of £854.5m between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons exceeded the total revenues during that period of all but eight English clubs. Those were the other 'Big Six' teams alongside Everton, West Ham and Newcastle. The £854.5m in overstated revenue constituted 30 per cent of City's total revenue in that time. It's worth noting that Everton were docked eight points for breaching Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR) by £25m.
A key element of charge 1 (b) involved alleged covert or secret payments made to a redacted employee beyond his primary employment contract. The commission scrutinised contracts linked to Abu Dhabi-based entities to determine if the employee's total compensation was improperly concealed or excluded from any official filings.
One of the most startling aspects of the report revealed that City's witnesses provided testimony 'that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest'. Indeed, the roster of key witnesses, solicitors and other identities were blanked out in the commission's verdict.
Solitary triumph and final award
City were cleared of just one of the 115 allegations. That was charge 4 (b), a lesser accusation relating to collaborating with the Premier League regarding their financial matters.
In a case plagued by lengthy postponements and bogged down in legal wrangling, there was even a challenge from one of the two parties over when to publish the independent commission's verdict. The Premier League statement confirms that this occurred, before it could issue the 'final award' decision.
