Man City FFP: Verdict by end of season not ‘in any way realistic’ after ’80 point deduction’ prediction

Man City will struggle to hear the verdict over their 115 Premier League charges “by the end of the season” as it’s not “in any way realistic”, according to former Man City financial adviser Stefan Borson.

An independent commission is set to rule on the 115 charges facing Man City at some stage during the next 12 months, with The Times reporting earlier this month that the hearing could begin as early as mid-September.

Man City’s alleged breaches relate to rules requiring the reporting of accurate financial information, the submission of details of manager and player pay information within the relevant contracts, a club’s responsibility as a Premier League member to adhere to UEFA’s financial regulations and to the league’s own profitability and sustainability regulations.

The club are also alleged to have breached rules requiring them to co-operate and assist with the Premier League’s investigation into those breaches, which the league said began in December 2018.

Last week, a detailed report from The Athletic revealed the views of ‘owners and executives who work or have worked within the Premier League’ on Man City’s FFP situation.

One Premier League club executive was quoted as saying: “The collective view I’ve heard is that an appropriate sanction would have to be a points deduction so substantial — we are talking here between 70 and 80 points — that it guarantees City a season in the Championship.”

But former Man City financial adviser Borson reckons the Citizens will appeal any punishment given to them over their alleged breaches of the Premier League’s financial fair play rules, meaning the case could drag on.

Borson told Football Insider : “It’s very complicated because there is inevitably going to be an appeal if City lose.

“If the Premier League lose, I don’t know if there will be one, we’ll have to wait and see.

“But we’ll also have to see what the decision itself is because that will then dictate whether people think they have a viable case for an appeal.

“It could be the way that the decision is written makes that very difficult.

“But if you at look what happened with the Everton appeal, what Everton effectively did when they got the 10 points was they took the decision, which was let’s say 60 pages long, and hired pretty much the best commercial barrister in the country in Laurence Rabinowitz KC and effectively asked him to spend five days attacking every point that he could.

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“If we have a 200-page judgement or more in the City case, that process and the process around it is going to take some time.

“I think it’s unlikely that, if the decision comes out in March, that they can somehow get an appeal processed, heard and decided all by the end of the season.

“I just don’t think that is in any way realistic, unless the parties agree to some kind of expedited process.

“But that certainly won’t be happening now because nobody can pre-judge how it’s going to pan out, so I don’t think as we sit here now that they will have set up a timetable that goes all the way through in terms of an appeal and everything else.”