Man City FFP: Football finance expert predicts how many points City could lose; reveals verdict timeline

Football finance expert Kieran Maguire insists that Man City are facing a deduction between 60 and 100 points if they are found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules.

The Premier League champions are facing 115 charges that they broke the competition’s rules following a four-year investigation.

A long-awaited hearing into the allegations that could last up to 10 weeks is set to begin on Monday, with Man City potentially facing a hefty points deduction or even expulsion from the league if found guilty.

Javier Tebas, the president of Spain’s LaLiga and a longtime outspoken critic of Abu Dhabi-owned Man City’s financial model, has claimed a number of Premier League clubs want to see sanctions imposed.

Man City manager Guardiola, who rarely sees eye to eye with Tebas, feels his fellow Spaniard could be right on this point but, with the club denying any wrongdoing, he has urged them all to be patient and await the outcome.

He said: “Maybe he’s right. For the fact that the Premier League teams want us to be sanctioned, that is for sure.

“I agree with Tebas for the first time, and hopefully the last. I am pretty sure I agree with that.

“I know what people are looking for, I know what they are expecting – I know it because I have read it for many years – but I’ve said everyone is innocent until guilt is proven.

“That’s why I say to Mr Tebas and the Premier League teams wait for the independent panel.

“Justice is there in modern democratic countries, so wait for the decision. It’s not much more complicated than that.

“We believe that we have not done anything wrong, so we go to an independent panel and we are going to wait.”

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And now football finance writer Maguire insists that the points deduction would be severe enough to see them relegated if Man City are found guilty of all 115 charges.

Maguire told talkSPORT : “It can’t really be a financial punishment because that would make everybody think the whole thing was a waste of time.

“So if you look at the hearing for both Everton and Nottingham Forest, the commissions of both said ‘this was a minor breach of the rules’ now if the allegations against Manchester City are proven that surely has to be a major breach of the rules, effectively that the club misrepresented the money coming into the club.

“The club also has been accused of disguising payments to players and managers, effectively being paid by third parties offshore, being paid by Abu Dhabi for services provided by members of staff and that is also completely against the rules also one would think, although it could be that it’s within the Premier League rules.

“So we would have to be looking at a very significant points deduction. If all 115 charges are proven, then you’d have to imagine that the points deduction would be somewhere in the region of 60 to 100 points on the basis that they would want the club to have suffered enough to be heading out of the division.”

But Maguire warns it could take a long time before Man City fans and the rest of the Premier League hear the verdict in the FFP case.

Maguire said: “Whilst the hearing will finish in eight weeks, if you’ve got all that evidence to present to the commission they’re probably going to take three to four months.

“They’ve got to rule on all the 115 charges separately as to whether or not they believe Manchester City to be guilty, if they are guilty all of them then it’s got to be so severe that any club thinking of going down that route again will realise that it would be a very detrimental thing for that club’s future.”