Manchester City fans waiting on a punishment for the Premier League charges have been told the delay is not because the people deciding it are “lazy”, and that the process is coming to an end.
That is the view of Emanuel Macedo de Medeiros, co-founder and global chief executive of the Sport Integrity Global Alliance (SIGA). Speaking to the Press Association, he said getting the decision right has to matter more than getting it out quickly.
It was confirmed back in September that Manchester City had been found guilty of nearly all of the charges brought against them. The independent panel found the club had intended to breach financial rules by inflating revenues or reducing costs by more than £900m, through a series of “sham” arrangements.
Why is the Man City punishment taking so long?
City have appealed the decision and continue to insist they are innocent. While that appeal runs, supporters have been left nervously waiting to find out what the sanction will be, and the length of the wait has not gone unnoticed elsewhere either.
Macedo de Medeiros accepts that, but he does not think anyone involved is dragging their feet. “I understand the fans’ frustration, and I understand also the fans’ anguish, especially those who follow and support Manchester City,” he said.
“This is not a pleasant situation for anybody, but the law is the law, and it must be served on its own time, without constraints. Being a lawyer, I know that justice sometimes is served slowly. That is not because those who are in charge of the procedures are lazy, or they neglect their duties. It’s because there cannot be room for doubt. There cannot be room for failure.”
He added: “There cannot be any breach of the constitutional rights that those who are being scrutinised or judged enjoy. But I think it’s fair to say that the process is coming to an end.”
What did the panel find?
The ruling found that Manchester City operated a “disguised funding scheme”. Companies from Abu Dhabi paid only a fraction of the sums recorded on the club’s books, and the balance was settled by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), the company through which Sheikh Mansour owns the club.
That scheme was found to have inflated revenue by more than £830m over nine seasons, from 2009-10 to 2017-18. City were also found to have overstated income from image rights by almost £74m and understated liabilities for staff contracts by almost £17m.
The Blues hit back hard. The club said the decision contained “clear material errors of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”, and chief executive Ferran Soriano told staff in a video that the panel had gone along with the Premier League’s “conspiracy theory”.
What punishment could City face?
Because of the number of charges and how unprecedented the case is, a long list of possible sanctions has been talked about: heavy points deductions, transfer bans, fines and even expulsion from the Premier League. Some have gone further than others, with one pundit predicting a 60-point deduction. Nothing has been confirmed yet.
Is the end finally in sight for Man City?
The most interesting line here is the last one. It is easy to read the wait as foot-dragging. Macedo de Medeiros sees it the other way round: a slow process is a careful one, and a careful one is harder to pick apart later.
For City fans that is cold comfort. Every week without a sanction is another week of guessing what the sanction will be. If he is right that the process is coming to an end, at least the guessing might not last much longer. Until then, the appeal stays live and City keep saying they did nothing wrong.
