Manchester City's owners have been warned they could be forced to relinquish control of the club by football's new independent regulator. City were found guilty in September by an independent commission of all charges relating to Premier League financial rule breaches.
The Etihad outfit, which has lodged an appeal, was deemed to have artificially inflated its revenue by £900million through 'sham' contracts from the 2009/10 season to 2017/18. Now, in a further setback for City, David Kogan, Chair of the Independent Football Regulator, has revealed that the regulator possesses the 'absolute power' to remove the club's owners from the sport.
Regulator's powers outlined
Speaking on a special edition of The Rest Is Football podcast, Kogan told Gary Lineker and Alastair Campbell: "I am not going to get pushed into making any judgement on this until we've seen all of those questions being answered and then we will have to decide whether we're going to mount our own investigation and come to a conclusion on that and what we're going to do. And pre-empting that would be a colossal mistake."
When questioned about the regulator's potential involvement, Kogan clarified: "We would judge against the tests of ownership and senior directors and executives. We would judge the actions of those individuals. We're not there, we can't, unlike the Premier League, who obviously can take action against the club in terms of fines or points deduction or whatever it may be."
Power to force sale
Pushed by Lineker on what the regulator can do, Kogan revealed: "We look at the individuals. We will look at the individuals who've given evidence, we will look at the individuals involved with the club and we will take a judgement call."
Asked by Campbell if the regulator has the power to force City's owners to sell, Kogan, a British media executive, revealed: "We have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club if we believe that they run a club in a way that is neither fit, fair or done with propriety." And when pressed on what happens if they were to refuse, Kogan said: "No, no, no. We've got absolute power to do so."
Kogan has previously vowed to step down if any political interference occurs in potential IFR investigations into City, given concerns it could spark a diplomatic row between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates.
Neville calls for owner removal
His revelation follows Gary Neville's call for the Premier League to remove Manchester City's owners following their guilty verdict for financial breaches earlier this month. Speaking on Stick to Football, he said: "Manchester City will recover as a football club because Manchester City have been there longer than these owners, they'll be there long after them, and it's got an immense history.
"Points deductions, fines, transfer bans, removing the titles - not giving them to others, just removing the titles - it's significant punishments. The only punishment that would be fair would be have huge consequences - the biggest consequence - would be removing the owners. That is the only consequence if I was Manchester City that I would be worried about. And as a fan of Manchester City, if you wanted to keep the investment that you've currently got, that would be the one I'd be most concerned about."
Neville added: "However, if you're in football and you're thinking about consequence, what can be more serious than industrial-level financial doping that we've seen and they've been found guilty of? I'm not celebrating. I'm chilled. This is chilling. I support Manchester United, [Jamie Carragher] supports Liverpool, [Roy Keane and Ian Wright] played for Manchester United, Arsenal, [Jill Scott] played for City. This is chilling to listen to this. It's chilling."
He concluded: "The Italian game has suffered immeasurably over the last 25 years, maybe from after [Calciopoli]. You know, we've played Juventus, we've alluded to this before, we felt at the time that this wasn't right. And I'm not saying that's going to happen to the Premier League. But we always think we've got this enormous integrity, the Premier League, that we are the league that sets the standard and it's other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match fixing, referee scandals. This has now come into our country, this has now come into our league. This is the greatest export that we have in our country in the world. If you go around the world and talk about Liverpool, Manchester, Arsenal - people talk about the Premier League more than anything when you tell them where you're from in the world. And at the moment, we're being dragged through the mud."
