Manchester City's Etihad Stadium next to a cracked Premier League badge
Manchester City could find themselves demoted from the Premier League
A fresh claims that a number of Premier League clubs want Manchester City to be hit with both “retrospective punishments” and sanctions for the future for their countless rule breaches.
The Etihad outfit are caught up in the biggest storm the Premier League has ever seen after they were found guilty of breaching 114 counts of financial irregularities over nine years between 2009 and 2018 and having inflated their incomes by close to £900m through a series of ‘sham’ deals.
It is important to note, in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, that City continue to plead their innocence and have already lodged an appeal against the charges.
Indeed, we exclusively revealed last week, in conversation with a top sports lawyer, that the club could take the bid to clear their name all the way to the High Court.
However, a report from BBC Sport claims that there is a ‘consensus among a group of top-flight club executives that if City’s appeal is unsuccessful, the sanctions should make reparations for the period when they broke the rules, while also limiting their powers in future’.
The report adds that there is ‘also a feeling from at least four Premier League boardrooms that a “one-hit” points deduction resulting in relegation to the Championship would be an insufficient punishment given the severity of City’s wrongdoing’.
The BBC report also claims that there is ‘understood to be nuance in exactly what clubs consider a fitting penalty’ for City, with one senior club source saying they should be ‘stripped of their titles’, but that there was ‘no great rush among clubs to push for the redistribution of trophies, but rather to take honours away and leave them vacant’.
There is also a strong feeling that the credibility of the Premier League would be lost if City were allowed to keep the eight major trophies they won during the period they have been found guilty.
The report added that in terms of the timescale for sanctions in the future, there is a ‘concern among club executives’ that a ‘sanction applied just to one season’ would merely provide City with a “bump in the road”, given the ‘likelihood of them returning to the Premier League at the first time of asking’.
To that end, it’s reported that a number of Premier League figures believe any points deduction should be ‘split over multiple seasons’, while ‘transfer bans that stretch over a number of windows would also significantly hinder City’s ability to regain their top-flight status as quickly as possible’.
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Meanwhile, Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher believes City should be handed a punishment that not only befits their heinous financial misdeeds, but one that impacts the club for several years to come.
Speaking at the Legends of Football Awards, Carragher told Sky Sports News: “Now that we know that they’re guilty, yes, there’s an appeal, but now that they’ve got a big guilty verdict initially, now I don’t think anybody wants to wait.
“It has to be done this season, because Man City need to be affected for next season.
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“I know the word at the moment is sham; it’ll almost make the Premier League of this season, the title to be won would be a sham, if Man City went on to win that league with what we know has gone on.
“So it has to be done this season, and I think the punishment, whatever it should be, I don’t think it can be a one-off punishment for one season, because this has gone on for years and years, so I think the punishment should go on for years and years.”
TeamTalk