Former Premier League manager Gus Poyet believes there are still far too many unanswered questions surrounding Manchester City's guilty verdict. Earlier this week, it was confirmed that an independent commission had found the club guilty of all but one of the 115 charges against them.
The commission says City had arranged 'sham' sponsorship deals, filed misstated accounts and breached spending limits to 'artificially inflate the club's revenues, and reduce its costs, by more than £900 million' between 2009 to 2018. During that period, City won three Premier League titles, the FA Cup and three League Cups, including the 2014 League Cup against Poyet's Sunderland.
Poyet's reaction to the verdict
City have officially appealed the decision and maintain their innocence, but Poyet insists the guilty verdict leaves a sour taste in his mouth, even putting aside his cup final defeat 12 years ago.
'A big surprise for me is that they were found guilty of all the charges,' Poyet told Metro. 'I've never seen that in my life, but it's bad for football, that for sure. It's terrible for football.'
'And especially, I think it's bad for the Premier League and the FA in terms of control. Because for those of us who were on the other side, who tried to do everything correctly, it makes you feel like, what was going on? There was no control. From 2009 to now, nobody was controlling anything.'
Questions over timing and spending
Poyet also believes there are still more questions around City's finances that need to be addressed, particularly given the lavish spending towards the latter years of Pep Guardiola's tenure in charge.
'I think the timing is terrible,' he said via Ozoon. 'I think there are too many coincidences.'
'They asked Pep Guardiola a hundred times about this case, and the final verdict is not coming until he left? Not before? Is it a coincidence? I doubt it.'
'It looks to me that they're spending more from 2018 to now than before. So, like I said, I think there needs to be a clarification.'
Call for open discussion
Poyet called for more transparency, suggesting a public debate between representatives of the Premier League and Manchester City.
'It would be nice to have a kind of political debate on TV? It would be nice to have a representative from the Premier League and a representative from Man City to discuss things openly.'
'I'm not talking about numbers. I'm not talking about secrets. No, no, no. The issues, the why, how?' Poyet continued: 'Is there a law that if you own a company, you can sponsor your own team? Yes or no? How simple I put it to you.'
'Until we don't clarify those things for fans and for people of football that we don't understand legal things, we are not going to have the whole thing to make an opinion.'
