Manchester City Football Club: Allegations of Financial Impropriety and a Looming Threat to the Club’s Standing in English Football
At 7 PM on 1 October 2026- a day before the deadline-Manchester City Football Club (FC) lodged an appeal against the findings of an Independent Commission which had found it guilty of serious breaches of the English Premier League’s financial rules and of a failure to cooperate with the League’s investigation of the club over a nine-season period between 2009 and 2018. In a statement, the club claimed to be “innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League” and promised to “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.” A new three-member panel is expected to deliver a verdict by 17 January 2027 on Manchester City FC’s appeal against what its CEO Ferran Soriano has described as the “Premier League’s conspiracy theory.”
The story begins in August 2008, when Manchester City FC was taken over by Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG) and came under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Etihad Airways, the Abu Dhabi airline and one of two flag carrier airlines of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), subsequently entered into a 10-year sponsorship agreement with Manchester City FC in 2011 under which it sponsored the club’s stadium (renamed the Etihad Stadium in July 2011), teamwear, and training centre.
Prior to 2009, Manchester City’s track record was somewhat uninspiring and its performance was sometimes described as “mediocre.” The club, which was founded in east Manchester in 1880, only returned to the Premier League in 2000, and then moved out of Maine Road to the City of Manchester Stadium in 2003.
Manchester City thrived under its new owners. The long wait for a trophy ended in 2011, when the club won the FA Cup after defeating Stoke 1-0 in the final. The following year, the ‘Blues’ won the League Championship for the first time in 44 years. The Capital One Cup and Premier League title followed in 2014, when the club won two trophies in one season for the first time. Under its Abu Dhabi-based owners, Manchester City went on to win a total of eight Premier League titles, four FA Cups, seven League Cups, and one Champions League. Under the managership of Pep Guardiola, a Catalan who had previously managed Barcelona, between 2016 and 2026 the club developed its hallmark possession-based style of football which was adopted by several domestic clubs.
It was, however, not a story of unalloyed success. Allegations of financial impropriety were to surface, which apparently gave the club an unfair advantage and led to competitive imbalance in the Premier League. In 2018, Rui Pinto, a Portuguese hacker and activist, leaked incriminating internal emails from Manchester City’s servers. These leaked documents, which revealed backdated contracts and spurious sponsorship deals, were published by the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The founder of Football Leaks later received a four-year suspended prison sentence in Portugal for illegal access to data and attempted extortion.
The Independent Commission appointed by the Premier League eventually found Manchester City guilty on 114 of an initial set of 115 charges, subsequently increased to 130. These charges include failure to provide accurate financial information related to “revenue (including sponsorship revenue), its related parties and its operating costs”, amounting to more than £900 million, and also full details of manager and player remuneration; breaches of UEFA Licensing and Financial Fair Play regulations and Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules; and failure to cooperate with the Premier League investigation. Money provided surreptitiously by Manchester City’s owners was disguised as fake commercial contracts, thereby inflating the club’s revenues and understating its expenditure. You are only allowed to spend what you have earned legitimately. The club has countered with the claim that the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Court (CPC), an independent government entity, had supported sponsors in the emirates experiencing cash flow problems rather than the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG)-the club’s owners.
The potential punishments for Manchester City FC include massive fines, a points deduction, transfer bans, relegation, and the loss of three Premier League titles from the 2009 to 2018 period. In the worst-possible scenario, the club could even be expelled from the Premier League and required to reapply to the EFL- with an uncertain outcome. In addition, 38 Premier League clubs could be compensated to a total of £527, 935, 464 in prize money, with Everton, Manchester United, and West Ham United each owed over £28 million each. The wider implications are more concerning, as investment by the UAE, of which Abu Dhabi is part, in the UK defence, life sciences, and technology sectors could be compromised. The current Manchester City chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, also happens to be chief executive of the Mubadala Investment Company, Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund.
A new set of financial rules -Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) and Sustainability and Systemic Resilience (SSR)- will replace the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) of the Premier League from the start of the 2026/27 season. Meanwhile, Manchester City’s future lies in the balance, and early indications are that public sympathy for the club’s fortunes is in short supply. The next steps are keenly awaited.
Ashis Banerjee