Former Liverpool striker Stan Collymore has called for Manchester City to be “expelled” to the National League if their appeal against 114 breaches of Premier League financial rules fails.
On Tuesday the Premier League published a decision that revealed City had been found guilty on the majority of their financial charges. The findings showed the club had artificially inflated their commercial revenue by £830m between 2009 and 2018.
Premier League findings and appeal
Chief executive Richard Masters said City had “systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade” and the 40-page redacted version of the decision refers to “sham” contracts set up at the Etihad in an effort to circumvent financial rules.
City confirmed on Friday they have lodged an appeal. Both the Independent Football Regulator and the Football Association have indicated they could become involved at some stage in a story that has become one of the biggest scandals in British football history.
Collymore’s proposed punishment
Collymore, who moved to Anfield for a British-record fee of £8.5m from Nottingham Forest in 1995, believes City need to be sent to the bottom of the football pyramid if the guilty verdict is upheld.
“I would exclude them from the Premier League for a period,” Collymore told Canadasportsbetting. “I would expel them from the EFL, which means they would have to start from the lowest National League. They would have to get promoted all the way back again.”
He added: “I would say that they would have to expel them, because if you just put them in the Championship, they are back in a year or two they will be back and that's not a punishment.”
Collymore argued that if the EFL kept City in the Championship, the Premier League should expel them for five years. “That obviously means that if they won the Championship five years in a row, they would still stay in the Championship. That would have a big financial consequence, and players like Haaland, Anderson, Enzo Fernandez, and others would stay there for five years.”
Financial restitution and trophies
On financial penalties, Collymore said: “I think it should be about giving back from the moment it started happening and here I am talking about all sponsorship revenue, Premier League prize money, television money.” He suggested a figure should be given to other teams that lost points, got into the Championship, or lost titles, sending a message that “it doesn't matter the name of the club, it matters what that club has done.”
He stressed the punishment should apply regardless of the club involved, saying: “If it was the club I supported or a club I played for, I would be saying the exact same thing. I would be saying the same thing if it was Aston Villa.”
Collymore, who made 81 appearances for Liverpool between 1995 and 1997, also said he would strip trophies from any club found guilty, including his own. “I would take all trophies of those clubs, including my own, both for that period and the period after as one leads to the other,” he said, adding that titles should be marked with an asterisk rather than awarded to other clubs.
