United States head coach Mauricio Pochettino has said the reported guilty verdicts against Manchester City mark a “period of deceit” and has questioned where the Premier League's controls were while the rules were being broken.
Pochettino suggested the inconsistency in punishments handed out for previous financial breaches make it “very difficult” to know what a fair sanction for Manchester City would be. The USA manager raised the spectre of the points deductions suffered by Everton and Nottingham Forest when asked to discuss the reports City have been found guilty of all but one of 115 allegations put to them by the Premier League.
Everton and Forest precedents
Everton received a 10-point deduction that was reduced to six on appeal for their first breach and an additional two-point penalty for their second. Forest were handed a four-point deduction, and the lack of clarity over how each punishment related to the calculation of the other was one of several controversial elements of the cases.
Those deductions will hang over the independent commission tasked with considering the appropriate penalty for City, should the findings be upheld. The expectation among rivals will be the scale of the case would demand a reaction far in excess of the initial 10-point sanction first handed to Everton - one that stunned the world of football at the time.
Pochettino's verdict
Sharing his thoughts on the situation, Pochettino, whose Tottenham Hotspur side competed for silverware with City and Chelsea, who have since been fined over separate rule breaches relating to this period, said: “It's very difficult when out of 115 charges you are found guilty of 114 to know what the punishment should be to make it fair.
“Because there are other clubs like Nottingham Forest or Everton that broke rules and received different sanctions, whether point deductions or fines.
“It's a very difficult situation that causes astonishment given the magnitude of the verdict. And it's also fair to ask where the controls were for the rules to be broken like that. That's what catches my attention the most.”
Spurs disadvantage
Pochettino, who also managed Southampton and, later Chelsea, reflected on his battles to win silverware with Spurs during this period, a time when he felt his ability to spend in the transfer market was constrained by the club's efforts to build a new stadium.
In quotes reported by ESPN, he said: “That was a big disadvantage because we were fighting among the best teams and reaching a Champions League final [in 2019].
“Why were those controls so strict with us and not as much with others? That's why I say everything is very strange, and the problem is that everything gets clouded. If it's true that they broke 114 rules, we have lived through a period of deceit.
“No type of punishment will make it possible to repair what was done, and the Premier League's controls are severely damaged.”
