Manchester City’s appeal against their guilty verdict in their battle with the Premier League will fail, their former financial adviser has said. The Premier League condemned City for ‘sham’ deals in an excoriating statement which confirmed they are guilty of the most severe financial rule breaches. City fiddled with their books for around £900million, repeatedly misleading the league about their financial situation, and now people are calling for the harshest response. City’s former financial adviser, Stefan Borson, said: ‘Absolutely scathing announcement from the Premier League. Shams, misleading auditors, conspiracy. All difficult to prove. Now proved, it is very difficult to unwind on appeal.’Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand posted some embarrassed face emojis on X and said: ‘The wording “sham”’. The Premier League have confirmed that Manchester City are guilty of the most serious financial rule breaches Former Man City financial adviser Stefan Borson says any appeal they make will failFormer Liverpool star Stan Collymore called for extreme sanctions, writing: ‘This now is the biggest football scandal in British football history. Nothing comes close. ‘Expulsion from the Prem and EFL a bare minimum, several billion in fines, Abu Dhabi struck off global football ownership, selling all clubs, an independent commission into all Premier League clubs’ financial conduct, and where applicable, criminal fraud charges.’Meanwhile, Piers Morgan wrote: ‘It’s official: The Premier League confirms Manchester City are the biggest cheats in British football history. ‘Punishment must hurt: Relegate them, strip them of their fraudulently won titles + dock them 25pts for first 5 seasons if/when they get back in the Premier League.’Popular football streamer Mark Goldbridge said: ‘So the Premier League announce City are guilty on all financial breach charges with nearly a billion put through the club wrongly. City come out and say they have evidence they are innocent. ‘Whatever happens from here, City aren’t ever shaking these allegations.’On Friday, Daily Mail Sport reported how City had been found guilty of a series of breaches over a nine-year, glittering period in its history, in a verdict which sent shockwaves through football and opened the door to huge penalties including possible expulsion. However, there had been no official comment from the Premier League on the findings of an independent panel who oversaw a hearing that concluded in December 2024.That has now dramatically changed. In a lengthy statement, the Premier League say City arranged ‘sham contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on “sham” agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs’. It also says the club falsely altered the financial picture at the Etihad to the tune of £900m. The club had agreed exorbitant sponsorship deals with a number of companies, but those sponsors only paid part of the fee. The rest was propped up by the Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club. Premier League CEO Richard Masters claimed that the commission’s verdict had ‘vindicated’ the league’s decision to pursue the charges
As the Premier League note, this allowed the City to ‘artificially inflate the club’s revenues’ and therefore spend more under Premier League rules. The higher the revenue a club records, the more they are permitted to spend. Moreover, further ‘sham’ deals, funded by ADUG, allowed the club to ‘record lower operating expenses than it actually incurred’.The Premier League say that revenues were inflated and costs reduced to the tune of £900m in an attempt to comply with spending rules. The result was that the club ‘filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators’.It added that the club was ‘significantly in breach of both the Premier League’s and UEFA’s spending limits’ during the time period in question, 2009-2018 when it won eight major trophies. Had City reported accurately ‘it would have been in breach of both the League’s and UEFA’s spending limits by a very substantial amount’.The panel also found that City committed multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and good faith in that it failed to assist the Premier League’s four-year investigation, triggered by the emergence of club emails obtained by a hacker. Indeed, City had ‘made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the PL investigation’.Richard Masters, Chief Executive of the Premier League, said: ‘The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period. It details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade.’It also vindicates the Premier League’s decision to pursue this case against Manchester City. While the process to date has been both long and difficult, the League has remained determined that the facts be established independently.’It is a key responsibility of the Premier League to ensure that the Rules, approved by the clubs themselves, are upheld to protect the integrity of the competition. It is paramount that the League remains competitive and fair for all clubs and for the fans. We take that role extremely seriously.’This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history. There are elements of the case that remain to be decided, including, importantly, what sanction must follow for these breaches. Now we have the Commission’s decision, we are committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process, to provide certainty for the League, our clubs and fans.’ Manchester City have insisted on their innocence throughout the saga (Pep Guardiola pictured with chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak)In a statement released a short time later, City said it was ‘disappointed and surprised’ and referred to the ‘opinion of the Premier League Commission’.It added: ‘The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case. The club will therefore be relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums.‘The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements uncompleted. Manchester City will now pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.‘The club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League Board and Executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence.‘The club is obviously restricted in what it can say further until all future proceedings are complete.’City have until Friday to appeal.Man City were first charged with the 115 breaches in February 2023. While that totemic number stuck, the figure – as they subsequently corrected – was actually 130.Of those, 54 were charges of ‘failure to provide accurate and up-to-date financial information’ while there were 14 charges of ‘failure to provide accurate financial reports for player and manager compensation’. Both sets related to alleged offences between 2009 and 2018 (2009-2018), an eight-year period which saw the club win four Premier League titles, the FA Cup, and three League Cup competitions. There were also five charges of ‘failure to comply with UEFA’s regulations, including Financial Fair Play Regulations’ and seven charges of breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability regulations (PSR) between 2015 and 2018. There were also 35 counts of failure to co-operate with Premier League investigations between 2018 and 2023. The hearing into the 130 breaches began last September at London’s International Dispute Resolution Centre, with the Premier League sparing no expense and enlisting KCs Adam Lewis and Andrew Hunter to take its case.READ MORE: OLIVER HOLT: Strip Man City of ALL eight of their Premier League titles and relegate them for their defrauding of Man United and Liverpool’s history. English football is broken irretrievably and will never be the same againREAD MORE: The ugly stories around Man City’s ‘warfare’ over the 115 charges: The army of lawyers, the brick through the window, the tracker on a car, tension, paranoia and journalists targeted for reporting the truth, as revealed by IAN HERBERT