- Manchester City’s 115 charges case remains unresolved
- Chelsea got away without any sporting sanctions in a similar endeavour
- Former City financial adviser hints at a similar outcome if stars align
Manchester City will face a punishment if they are found to have breached the Premier League’s financial regulations, but the club’s ex-financial adviser believes it might not be so bad after all.
Despite a Carabao Cup win this Sunday, Manchester City still have a cause for concern, as the club continue to await a verdict on their 115 charges investigation.
The Premier League have of course accused City of breaking the rules, allegedly across a number of seasons. Still, they continue to deny any wrongdoing on their part.
Verdicts against the likes of Everton and Nottingham Forest have likely given the League Cup winners a scare. However, their former financial adviser has pointed to a different case which was resolved in a more lenient manner.
Stefan Borson hopes Man City will receive a similar punishment to Chelsea
Ex-Man City financial adviser Stefan Borson has told Football Insider that the Citizens might get away with non-sporting sanctions alone.
“Let’s just say that they wait for the appeals until all of it’s done, and then they appeal everything. Of course, we don’t know if City are going to be found liable, and City deny it.,” Borson said.
“So, what would happen in the sanction hearing is when the parties pitch in what they think the sanctions should be, City are going to be saying, ‘Well, hang on a minute.”
“The precedent that you should be using and pointing to is not Everton and Nottingham Forest’. I mean, obviously, this depends on what the consequential impact is of City”, Borson continued.
However, he has also argued that if the club were found guilty, sporting sanctions might be the most probable outcome.
“Let’s say City breach and that therefore also means that they end up breaching PSR, then of course City can be squarely in the Everton and Nottingham Forest realms of sanction, so it’s going to be very hard for City to say, ‘Well, we should be treated differently from the PSR breach’.”
He added: “But in the way that those have been calculated, the situation now is pretty set for a PSR breach.”
Where does the Man City 115 charges case stand against the others?
Despite what City fans would want to believe, their team are pretty close to facing a Forest and Everton-style verdict rather than a Chelsea one.
One of the major differences in all four cases is the reporting of accusations – the Blues self-reported wrongdoings following the takeover from Roman Abramovich.
Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and Everton, on the other hand, were referred to by the Premier League themselves.
The Chelsea cases’ conclusion was that there was no scenario in which the club would have gone above the PSR maximum allowable loss, despite misreportings under Abramovich.
However, both the Toffees and the Reds were found guilty, and they were handed eight and four-point deductions respectively.
The form of City’s punishment rests on what they are found liable for. If the verdict is mixed, then a financial punishment could be all that follows. However, being found guilty for most of the allegations could result in serious sporting sanctions.
