Former Manchester City chairman says leadership cannot credibly continue

A three-person independent commission held a 12-week hearing between September and December 2024, Sky Sports reported. In August 2026, Premier League chief executive Richard Masters told Sky News the process had “taken longer than expected”, but gave no update on when a decision would come. [6]

BBC Sport said it had been told City would appeal if found guilty. Under the procedure set out in the Premier League’s original referral, the commission’s final award will be published on the league’s website. [1] [2]

Update

The independent commission’s published decision sets out how it found Manchester City breached financial rules across nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18. It found that some sponsorship agreements were sham arrangements: the sponsors paid only part of the fees recorded by the club, while its then owner, Abu Dhabi United Group, funded the rest. The commission concluded that City submitted misstated accounts and concealed its true financial position from auditors and football regulators. [7] [8]

The findings also cover arrangements that allowed City to record lower operating expenses than it incurred. In one involving players’ image rights, the commission found that money recorded as operating income was an owner equity contribution, while payments made by the owner were liabilities of the club. It put income wrongly recorded instead of owner contributions at more than £830 million across the nine seasons. Separately, the Premier League said the schemes were intended to inflate reported revenue and reduce costs by more than £900 million; the figures describe different, overlapping measures. [7] [8]

The commission found that accurate accounts would have shown substantial breaches of Premier League and UEFA spending limits. Its decision also distinguishes the challenged arrangements from other, legitimate efforts to increase revenue, and it did not uphold every allegation that City failed to co-operate with the league’s investigation. [7] [8]

Manchester City maintains it is innocent and says it will pursue an appeal, for which the deadline is Friday 2 October. Any sanction will be decided at a separate hearing. [7] [9]

Update

Of the £949.94m recorded for the Abu Dhabi sponsorship agreements under scrutiny between 2009-10 and 2017-18, £119.25m came from sponsors and £830.69m from Manchester City’s owner, Abu Dhabi United Group, BBC Sport and Sky Sports report from the commission’s ruling. The commission found that the club had presented owner funding as sponsorship revenue. The figures concern the agreements examined, not all of City’s sponsorship income. [8][13][14]

Separately, the commission found that the Fordham image-rights agreements were a sham. It said £24.5m of owner funding had been recorded as operating income, while £49.414m had been left out of City’s operating expenses. It also said many other parts of the wider Project Longbow plan were legitimate. [8]

The commission heard 27 factual witnesses and said most were trying to give honest evidence. It found that evidence from a number of important witnesses called by City was false on key points, and that some had knowingly given untrue evidence. [8]

City denies the allegations, says the ruling contains material errors and intends to appeal. The Premier League says the appeal deadline is Friday 2 October and that sanctions will be considered at a separate hearing. [7][9]

Update

An independent Premier League commission has found that Manchester City wrongly recorded more than £830m in owner funding as income between 2009/10 and 2017/18. With sanctions still to be decided, BBC Sport senior journalist Daniel Austin has compared that figure with the roughly £1.2bn the club spent on players from summer 2009 to January 2018. [17] [8] [20]

BBC Sport’s table puts the owner-funded portion of the sponsorship income at £830.69m. The commission found that the money was paid by owner ADUG, rather than by the commercial sponsors named in the accounts. It also found that, once City’s figures were corrected, the club failed applicable UEFA break-even and Premier League profitability rules by substantial margins. The commission rejected a separate allegation concerning City’s duty to co-operate. [17] [8]

Writing on 30 September, Austin argued that City could not have recruited the same quantity and quality of players without the financial breaches. He suggested that lower spending might have changed whether players including Sergio Agüero, David Silva, Yaya Touré and Kevin De Bruyne joined. He acknowledged that nobody can know how those seasons would otherwise have unfolded. The sponsorship and transfer figures measure different things; subtracting one from the other would not produce a transfer budget. [17] [8] [19]

Manchester City says it is innocent and intends to challenge the decision, alleging errors of law and fact. The Premier League says a separate hearing will decide sanctions, and that the club has until 2 October to appeal the findings. [20] [9]

Update

Reuters reported on 30 September that David Bernstein, Manchester City’s chairman from 1998 to 2003, told talkSPORT the club’s present management could not ‘credibly continue’. He included the chief executive among the directors he said were responsible for running the club. Bernstein was speaking after an independent commission upheld all the financial-rule charges against City and most of the charges concerning its failure to co-operate with the Premier League’s investigation. [21] [20]

Bernstein argued that directors at a public company facing comparable findings would have to stand down or be suspended pending the outcome, whether or not there was an appeal. Separately, he said City should leave the Premier League if the charges stood and the club did not appeal or lost an appeal. [21]