FA warns of integrity implications as Manchester City lodges appeal against commission verdict
Manchester City submitted an appeal on Thursday evening against an independent commission’s guilty verdict on more than 100 charges of breaching financial rules, and the Football Association said the decision has "significant implications for the integrity of the game." The club said it has "a body of irrefutable evidence" it will present in the appeal.
The commission published its core decision on Tuesday this week and dismissed a key element of City’s defence as "untrue"; paragraph 77 of the judgment states: "We concluded that it was an ‘explanation’ that the club had concocted well after the event in an attempt to obscure and conceal the realities of the Disguised Funding Scheme." City’s current appeal reportedly rests on a claim that commercial contracts the commission judged to be part-funded by the club’s owner were in fact paid for by the Abu Dhabi government.
That account appears at odds with a 2015 submission Etihad Airways made to the United States department of commerce, transportation and state, in which the airline said: "The assertion that the Abu Dhabi government paid for Etihad’s sponsorship of English Premier League football club Manchester City is false." The submission added: "Etihad funded this sponsorship from its own liquidity."
The Etihad document also stated: "We are government-owned and have been since our founding. We are and have always been clear that we do not receive any subsidies from the Abu Dhabi government, and that we are financed through a combination of equity, shareholder and commercial loans. "Our shareholder [the Abu Dhabi government]’s equity and loans are not subsidies under any applicable definition; they are the means by which the Abu Dhabi government has sensibly invested in a successful business model." Etihad has been City’s principal shirt sponsor since 2009 and agreed a 10-year, £400m stadium naming-rights deal in 2011 that was later extended on improved terms in 2021.
City previously argued in a successful appeal to the court of arbitration for sport in 2020 that all sponsorship income was provided by commercial partners; the commission said this new explanation was fabricated after the events in question. In its core decision the commission also described elements of the funding arrangements as a "Disguised Funding Scheme." City maintains it can overturn the commission’s findings with the evidence it plans to present in the appeal.
The Football Association confirmed it has powers to take disciplinary action against Manchester City and individuals and said it "will take action where appropriate," while adding that it is "carefully considering the decision and its implications." The FA said it will wait until the appeal process has concluded—based on the Premier League’s rule book, by the end of January—before deciding whether to act, and noted that the names of individuals were redacted in the 40-page core judgment but that it could seek an unredacted version from the Premier League.
The FA said its usual procedure is to allow league disciplinary processes to finish before imposing its own sanctions and pointed to recent precedents: in July the FA fined Chelsea £10m and imposed a suspended two-window transfer ban after the club admitted 74 breaches of agent regulations, following a Premier League fine of £10.75m for the same offences four months earlier. The FA also noted it has separate powers to target individuals, though it did not do so in the Chelsea case because those involved were no longer working in football; it has previously charged individuals such as Southampton’s manager, Tonda Eckert, with misconduct in separate matters.
"As proceedings between the Premier League and Manchester City Football Club remain ongoing, we do not intend to comment further at this stage. We will, however, continue to monitor developments closely," the FA added, leaving the timing and scope of any future action contingent on the outcome of City’s appeal, which the association expects to be resolved by the end of January under the league rule book.