Same Words, Third Referee

A Bonus for Losing

Mara: In 2013, Manchester City lost a cup final to Wigan, and yet, according to the journalist Nick Harris, one of the club's sponsors still paid City a bonus for winning it.

Eli: A bonus for winning. The final ended one-nil to Wigan.

Mara: Harris wrote that in February 2024, in background notes for a talk to the Arsenal Supporters' Trust. He was describing City's accounts in the years after Sheikh Mansour, an Abu Dhabi royal, bought the club in 2008.

Eli: And those years are why we're here today. The Athletic, citing sources briefed on confidential proceedings, reported today that an independent commission has found City guilty on 114 of the Premier League's 115 charges.

Mara: A bonus for losing, and then a verdict, reportedly, eight years in the making.

Eli: It's Friday, September 25th, and today's angle is why Manchester City's money cases keep coming back.

Mara: Because this is the third referee to judge the same era. Europe's governing body, UEFA, tried twice: the 2014 case ended in a settlement, and a 2020 ban was later overturned on appeal, though a reduced fine stood. Those were UEFA proceedings under UEFA's rules. The Premier League case is a separate one, under different rules.

Eli: So the question is why the first two never delivered a verdict on the money that stuck, and whether the third, the league under chief executive Richard Masters, finally has. And then what still stands between a finding and a punishment.

A Deal, No Admission

Mara: Referee one was UEFA, and at least one reporter saw the collision coming. That sponsor bonus Harris describes was five million pounds, about 6.6 million dollars. And more than twelve years before those 2024 notes, he had written: "It is inevitable City will fail to meet the first FFP break-even target."

Eli: FFP being Financial Fair Play, UEFA's rules setting break-even targets for clubs.

Mara: As Harris tells it, he knew a number of senior people inside City and had a good professional relationship with them. And he says there was open acknowledgement, if not for reporting on the record, that City were pursuing a policy of "accelerated" investment.

Eli: Accelerated. Which is quite a word to set next to a break-even target.

Mara: So UEFA looked. It opened an investigation on 11 February 2014, and by 16 May the two sides had signed a settlement.

Eli: Three months. And the settlement spelled out that City did not admit breaching UEFA's regulations.

Mara: Harris says his sources included staff inside City who knew they'd been lucky to get away with a fine, and people with knowledge of the audit behind it.

Eli: And a leaked internal email from that same year, as later reported, recorded a preference from the club's chairman: spend 30 million on leading lawyers and litigate against UEFA for a decade, rather than accept a penalty.

Mara: A decade. That's a very specific planning horizon.

Eli: So referee one ended in a handshake. A deal, no admission, and everyone moves on.

Banned, Then Not

Mara: Until November 2018. Between the second and the sixteenth of that month, the German magazine Der Spiegel, the news agency Reuters and the French site Mediapart published a run of articles about City, from what became known as the Football Leaks.

Eli: And by May 2019 the case was headed to UEFA's adjudicators. City answered that the accusation of financial irregularities "remains entirely false," and that the referral "ignores a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence."

Mara: Hold on to that phrase.

Eli: It also called what it faced "a wholly unsatisfactory, curtailed, and hostile process."

Mara: Then February 2020. UEFA banned City from European competition for two seasons and fined the club 30 million euros, about 34 million dollars.

Eli: A real punishment, finally. City, facing a ban from Europe.

Mara: For about five months. In July 2020, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the main appeals tribunal in world sport, overturned the ban and cut the fine to 10 million euros, about 11 million dollars.

Eli: On Etihad, the central allegation that City disguised owner funding as sponsorship from the airline, the panel said it was "not comfortably satisfied."

Mara: And there was a second sponsor, Etisalat, the Abu Dhabi telecommunications company. UEFA's own rules give it five years to prosecute, and the court found that limit had run out on the Etisalat allegations.

Eli: So one allegation not proved to the required standard, and another thrown out on the clock.

Mara: The same court upheld UEFA's finding that City failed to cooperate. It called that a "severe breach," and said City should be "seriously reproached for obstructing the investigations."

Eli: Which isn't how it was remembered. In February 2023, Pep Guardiola, City's manager, said his club had been found "completely innocent."

Mara: The outlet Sporting News said that assertion "is not exactly true." The ban was gone, the obstruction finding stood.

Eli: And the money question itself never reached a clean end.

The League Digs In

Mara: Referee three is the independent commission hearing the league's case. Richard Masters, the Premier League's chief executive, put his principle this way before the 2025-26 season: "There is no happy alternative to enforcing the rules, it goes to the integrity of the competition - it goes ultimately to value - and that principle shouldn't be defrayed in any way by being too difficult, too complex, or too costly."

Eli: And it got costly early. By March 2019 the league had said publicly it was investigating. It then claimed in arbitration that its rules required City to hand over requested documents and information.

Mara: City fought that. It tried to set aside the arbitration award and have the arbitrators removed. In March 2021, England's High Court dismissed the bid.

Eli: And to be fair to City, the league called that challenge tactical, and the judge, Mrs Justice Moulder, said neither the tribunal nor her own earlier judgment had made any such finding.

Mara: Both sides opposed publishing her judgment. She decided the case for public scrutiny outweighed that.

Eli: Then 6 February 2023, after a four-year investigation. The league referred City to an independent commission on 115 charges.

Mara: All allegations, and they covered a lot: accurate financial information, payments to players and a manager, compliance with UEFA's rules and the league's own. Thirty-five were about failing to cooperate with the league's investigations, from December 2018 on.

Eli: City said it was surprised, and welcomed an independent commission to "impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position."

Mara: Word for word, the phrase it used against UEFA in 2019.

Eli: Guardiola's reaction: "My first thought is we're already being condemned."

Mara: So that's how it kept happening. A new referee, the same answer, and every step contested.

Eli: The hearing opened on 16 September 2024 at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London. Inside, Murray Rosen's panel sat in front of two large teams of lawyers.

Mara: Twelve weeks. It closed on 6 December. And in February 2025, Guardiola said the club expected the verdict "within one month."

Eli: One month.

Mara: As of mid-September this year, about 21 months after the hearing closed, nothing had been published, and a site tracking the charges had noted in July that there was no fixed deadline. Kieran Maguire, a football finance expert, pointed to the panel's day jobs: "They're also in demand in their own jobs so trying to get them around a table on a regular basis isn't necessarily easy."

Eli: Khaldoon Al Mubarak said in May: "I suppose the only thing I can say is we still don't have a ruling." The sports barrister Nick De Marco called it "a most incredible delay."

Mara: And Masters? "My frustration is irrelevant really, I just have to wait. Legal processes rarely take less time than you anticipated."

114 of 115

Eli: And then, today, The Athletic's report. Sources briefed on the confidential proceedings say the commission found City guilty on all but one of the 115 charges.

Mara: There's no published judgment yet, and no sanction has been set.

Eli: City answered carefully. A spokesperson said: "The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality."

Mara: And added: "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."

Eli: Eight years. Roughly the span from the Football Leaks to today.

Mara: City said its position is consistent with that February 2023 statement, the one with the irrefutable evidence. And the club is expected to appeal.

Eli: But look at what's different. UEFA's first attempt ended in a deal. Its second was undone on appeal. This referee, if the report holds, sat through the hearing, waited out the silence and reached findings.

Mara: One hundred and fourteen of them, against a club that has called its evidence irrefutable since 2019.

The Last Wall

Eli: So what could it cost? Under league rules, possible sanctions run from a reprimand or fines, through points deductions, to expulsion.

Mara: Expulsion is on the list, but experts cited in coverage of the case call it extremely remote. And Dragon Football, a site tracking the charges, notes the largest points deduction of the Premier League era so far is 10.

Eli: Then the trophy cabinet. The financial-information allegations cover nine years, 2009 to 2018, and City won the league three times in that stretch.

Mara: BBC Sport said clubs that believe they lost titles or cup chances could seek lost earnings if the league succeeds. There's a precedent in motion: Burnley won a compensation order against Everton for 35 million pounds, about 46 million dollars. Everton has appealed, calling the ruling "fundamentally flawed in both law and fact."

Eli: And the neighbors whose cases did reach an end: Everton's 10-point deduction became six on appeal, and Nottingham Forest lost four. BBC Sport noted those were single-charge cases with significantly less evidence.

Mara: So it isn't one case reopened. But most of what feels like twenty years of breaches is the same decade of accounts, roughly 2009 to 2018, judged by three referees, with every step contested. UEFA settled in 2014, with no admission. In 2020 the appeal court lifted the ban and cut the fine, on a time limit and an unmet standard of proof, while upholding the finding that City failed to cooperate.

Eli: Neither left a finding against City's accounts standing. The league took four years to charge. Then came a commission with no deadline. Now The Athletic reports it found against City on 114 of 115. The reasons still aren't public and no punishment is set. City is expected to appeal, and according to Sporting News that would go to a fresh league panel, with no route to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Mara: The matches are played on Saturdays. The judgments arrive a decade later. And the trophies are lifted in between.

Eli: Which makes Masters's line about rules never being "too costly" to enforce sound less like a slogan than a bill.

Mara: And leaves the question of what any rule is worth when the accused can contest every step.

Eli: It's worth taking a closer look at the Premier League's 115 charges against Manchester City.

Mara: And keep following Manchester City and the Premier League itself, so whatever comes next, you'll know how we got here.

Eli: That's it for today. I'm Eli.

Mara: And I'm Mara. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next time on Angle.