Man City verdict has 'implications for game's integrity' - FA

Manchester City were found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges against them

The independent commission’s verdict against Manchester City has “significant implications for the integrity of the game”, according to the Football Association.

In a statement, English football’s governing body added: “We are carefully considering the decision and its implications and will take action where appropriate.”

The FA’s statement comes after it was confirmed on Tuesday that City were found guilty of all charges relating to breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.

City have repeatedly denied guilt, and have until Friday to lodge an appeal.

“As proceedings between the Premier League and Manchester City Football Club remain ongoing, we do not intend to comment further at this stage,” the FA added.

“We will, however, continue to monitor developments closely.”

Sources told BBC Sport that City were expected to claim that key sponsorship deals were funded by the Abu Dhabi government, rather than the club’s owners, as part of an appeal.

Among the independent panel’s findings were that City arranged “sham contracts” with a number of commercial partners as part of a scheme to disguise secret funding of more than £830m.

The Premier League says City “systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade”.

The independent commission which studied the case found City “utilised devices” to “disguise the true extent of certain club liabilities”.

The findings have prompted the Treasury Committee, which is responsible for overseeing policies and administration of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), to ask whether the government department has requested the redacted documents contained within the commission’s report.

Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the cross-party group of MPs, said she would “welcome reassurance from HMRC that you are seized of the importance of these issues and the public interest in this case”.

The letter follows a report from the Tax Policy Associates which claims City failed to pay as much as £12m in unpaid tax because of a “sham” contract with former manager Roberto Mancini.

In addition to unpaid income tax and National Insurance, the report claims City could face a penalty charge that would take their liabilities to £24m.

City will claim as part of their appeal that key sponsorship deals were funded by the Abu Dhabi government, rather than the club’s owners.

Owners Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) - a private investment company belonging to United Arab Emirates vice-president and deputy prime minister Sheikh Mansour - are said to have topped up the value of commercial deals as part of a “disguised funding scheme” to the scale of £830.69m.

This, it was argued, enabled the club to appear to comply with Premier League and Uefa financial rules.

Premier League rules allow state-owned bodies to sponsor clubs.

City’s principal sponsor Etihad Airways has said it is considering legal action against the Premier League, claiming the release of the commission findings had “damaging implications… despite the airline not being named in the redacted published findings”.

The UAE’s state-owned national airline said it “categorically rejects any finding, conclusion or implication that suggests the airline has ever been involved in improper commercial arrangements”.

Etihad is owned by sovereign wealth fund L’Imad which is chaired by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the son of the UAE president.

Why Aston Villa are playing Sevilla for a trophy you haven't heard of

Aston Villa are playing for a trophy with special meaning

On Friday evening, Aston Villa will walk out at Sevilla’s Ramon Sanchez-Pizjuan stadium to compete for a piece of silverware that, outside of Spain, few supporters will have heard of, the Antonio Puerta Trophy.

It’s a friendly match held in memory of Sevilla academy graduate Antonio Puerta, who died in August 2007 at the age of 22.

Puerta suffered a cardiac arrest during a La Liga match against Getafe and, despite initially appearing to recover and walking to the dressing room, collapsed again and died three days later in hospital.

His death stunned Spanish football. He had been one of Sevilla’s own.

Puerta made his first-team debut during the 2003-04 season and went on to make 88 appearances for the club and one for Spain, in 2006.

He helped his team win five trophies in 15 months, including two consecutive Uefa Cups, now known as the Europa League.

A year after his death, Sevilla created a trophy in his honour and what began as a relatively modest pre-season fixture has become an annual part of the club’s calendar.

This year’s 15th edition of the Antonio Puerta Trophy is particularly interesting because Aston Villa are the first English club to be invited to play for it.

There is also an obvious connection between the two clubs.

Villa boss Unai Emery will return to the stadium where he enjoyed one of the most successful spells of his managerial career.

Emery managed Sevilla between 2013 and 2016, winning the Europa League three times in succession.

Sevilla have won 12 of the previous 14 editions of the trophy, with only Granada and Boca Juniors having managed to beat them in the fixture.

The early editions were all-Spanish affairs, with Sevilla taking on fellow La Liga clubs, before teams from outside the country began to be invited.

Boca Juniors became the first overseas opponent in 2016, followed by Roma, Schalke, Independiente del Valle, Al-Ittihad and Al-Qadsiah.

Villa’s Leon Goretzka has travelled to Sevilla after a knee injury so could be available to play.

Striker Brian Madjo is also available after being out since Villa’s 2-1 loss to Paris St-Germain in the Uefa Super Cup in August, while Taylor Harwood-Bellis will also look to get more minutes.

HMRC urged to scrutinise tax implications of Man City case

Manchester City were found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges against them

Findings from the Premier League’s case against Manchester City require scrutiny from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, the chair of a cross-party group of MPs has told the tax authority.

It was confirmed on Tuesday that an independent commission found City guilty of all charges relating to breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.

City have repeatedly denied guilt, and have signalled an intent to lodge an appeal by Friday.

The club were found to have artificially inflated revenue through “sham” sponsorship agreements with the help of their owners.

The independent commission which studied the case found City “utilised devices” to “disguise the true extent of certain club liabilities”.

The Treasury Committee, which is responsible for overseeing policies and administration of HMRC, has therefore asked whether the government department has requested the redacted documents contained within the commission’s report.

Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury Committee, said she would “welcome reassurance from HMRC that you are seized of the importance of these issues and the public interest in this case”.

The letter follows a report from the Tax Policy Associates which claims City failed to pay as much as £12m in unpaid tax because of a “sham” contract with former manager Roberto Mancini.

In addition to unpaid income tax and National Insurance, the report claims City could face a penalty charge that would take their liabilities to £24m.

Manchester City will claim as part of their appeal that key sponsorship deals were funded by the Abu Dhabi government, rather than the club’s owners.

Owners Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) - a private investment company belonging to United Arab Emirates vice-president and deputy prime minister Sheikh Mansour - are said to have topped up the value of commercial deals as part of a “disguised funding scheme” to the scale of £830.69m.

This, it was argued, enabled the club to appear to comply with Premier League and Uefa financial rules.

However, as first reported by the Daily Mail and Times, sources have told BBC Sport that City are expected to tell an appeal board that they have evidence showing the money directed to state-owned sponsors came from the Abu Dhabi government, rather than from ADUG.

Premier League rules allow state-owned bodies to sponsor clubs.

In its 40-page decision, the independent commission detailed how City had “denied there had ever been any disguised funding scheme of the type alleged by the Premier League. Its case was that [it] had misunderstood how Abu Dhabi sponsorship agreements had been funded… The reality was [the club contested] that Abu Dhabi sponsors had always been liable for all recorded sponsorship fees and all had in fact been paid to the club by Abu Dhabi sponsors from their own funds/resources.

“No part of any recorded sponsorship fee had been paid by ADUG or from using ADUG funds. Abu Dhabi sponsors had from time to time applied for financial assistance from the Abu Dhabi government toward their liability to pay the recorded sponsorship fees - such applications had been granted…”

The independent commission rejected this submission as “untrue”, saying: “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 argument is likely to lead to renewed debate over the extent to which City’s ownership is separate from the Abu Dhabi state, and over the ramifications of club ownership with state connections.

Mansour is a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi, and the brother of UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Since the takeover in 2008, City have insisted the club is a completely private enterprise, and not state-owned. However, some critics have questioned the distinction, with human rights campaigners claiming the ownership of City has been used to “sportswash” the UAE.

On Saturday, City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak referred to “irrefutable evidence” that he claimed supports the club’s claims of innocence. City have claimed the commission’s decision contained “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”.

It has emerged that Al Mubarak, who was appointed chairman of City following the takeover in 2008, is named as an Emirati diplomat on the UK government’s current directory of all foreign representatives.

Representatives of foreign states and their diplomatic staff “enjoy privileges and immunities under the Diplomatic Privileges Act (1964)”, giving diplomats immunity from prosecution under criminal, civil and administrative laws.

City’s principal sponsor Etihad Airways has said it is considering legal action against the Premier League, claiming the release of the commission findings had “damaging implications… despite the airline not being named in the redacted published findings”.

The UAE’s state-owned national airline said it “categorically rejects any finding, conclusion or implication that suggests the airline has ever been involved in improper commercial arrangements”.

Etihad is owned by sovereign wealth fund L’Imad which is chaired by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, the son of the UAE president.

Additional reporting from James Landale, diplomatic correspondent for BBC News.

£1.2bn on transfers with £830m inflated in accounts - Man City's 'asterisk era'

Outside Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium is a lustrous silver statue of Sergio Aguero - mouth agape in ecstasy, kit swirling over his head - depicting his goal celebration after securing the club’s first Premier League title.

It is the immortalisation of the most famous goal in English league football history, when City snatched the trophy away from Manchester United in the dying seconds of the 2011-12 season.

But what if the goal never happened? What if Aguero had never played for the club? What if City had opted to abide by football’s financial rules instead of purposefully breaking them through a “disguised funding scheme”?

The revelation that the club has been found guilty of the charges brought against it by the Premier League three and a half years ago has left football fans around the world questioning the legitimacy of City’s achievements between 2009 and 2018, when they were the most successful club in English football and cemented themselves among the global game’s elite.

Some fans are referring to it as the asterisk era, and there is a possibility City could be retroactively stripped of the honours they earned during the period, with some clubs seeking legal advice over potential financial compensation.

So how exactly did City’s “hugely overstated” income impact their actions in the transfer market, how key were the players who were brought in, and what does it all mean for both the past and the future?

Manchester City spent about £1.2bn on new players in the transfer windows between summer 2009 and January 2018.

In that time, the club won seven major trophies - three Premier Leagues, one FA Cup, and three EFL Cups - having previously gone without a significant honour since 1970.

The players they purchased during that time included some of the world’s best, in all areas of the pitch. Multiple were signed for figures in the tens of millions every summer and made a huge contribution to the club’s consistent success.

City did not only generate revenue from sponsorship funds in that time. And income is also spent on many things other than transfers, including player wages, utilities, insurance, infrastructure, marketing, foundations and more.

But the figures underline the fact that City would simply not have been able to purchase the quantity and quality of players they signed during their era of domination had they not been conducting what the commission described as a “concerted campaign to falsify” their financial accounts.

If City’s financial power had been slashed by the extra £830m the commission says they falsely added to their books, their transfer spend would surely have been massively reduced.

Chop the amount in half, say, and maybe they would only have brought in half the amount of players. Or the same amount, but heavily reduced in quality.

Which potentially means no Aguero, no David Silva, no Yaya Toure, no Kevin de Bruyne, or at least a significant reduction in the number or ability of the less glamorous players who were key cogs in the trophy-winning machine.

Would those successes have been achieved had the rule breaking not been going on in tandem? And what would the impact have been on all the other clubs who have played in the Premier League during that time?

Nobody will ever know. The seasons cannot be replayed. And so the outcomes exist in a kind of mixed reality where the world watched them happen, but isn’t sure if they’re really ‘real’.

The era provided the foundation for City’s ongoing success, too, meaning more trophies and TV income, and the chaos of the situation has also unleashed doubt about the present and future.

City have until Friday to mount an appeal. If that appeal is unsuccessful, then, at some point, the club will be given some sort of punishment.

Whether sanctions will retcon the past in any way is unknown.

And about moving forwards? Right now football fans, both of City and other clubs across the country, do not know whether the football they are watching is ‘real’ or not.

Are City actually top of the league and in a title challenge, or will they be docked points later in the season?

If they are linked with another team’s star player, could that transfer happen or will they be unable to make deals at some point?

Will they be in the Premier League next season or will they be expelled and will there need to be a quite significant rejigging of the pyramid to accommodate them somewhere else?

And then there are questions about what comes later down the line.

Is anybody else breaking rules right now, which fans will only find out about in the future?

Does the potential for years of results to be retroactively kiboshed undermine the Premier League’s popularity with fans, players and sponsors?

And can the action fans are watching week in, week out ever fully be trusted again?

The answers to those questions will determine the future of the biggest league in the world’s most popular game.

Former Man Utd defender Smalling signs for Porto

Former Manchester United and England defender Chris Smalling has signed for Portuguese league leaders Porto.

He has been without a club since leaving Saudi Pro League outfit Al-Fayha in the summer.

The 36-year-old was linked with a move to Rangers but that did not materialise.

Smalling has signed a contract until the end of the season with Porto, with the option for a further year.

Porto have won all seven league games this season and already have a five-point advantage over second-placed Benfica.

Francesco Farioli’s side were beaten at home by Manchester City in their opening Champions League game.

Smalling was keen to extend a 19-year professional career that began at non-league Maidstone, with the centre-back going on to play for Fulham, Manchester United - where he won five major trophies, including two Premier League titles - and Roma, where he won the Uefa Conference League under Jose Mourinho in 2022.

He also won 31 England caps.