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Manchester City has lodged a “comprehensive” appeal, the club confirmed on Friday, following the publication of a report by an independent commission detailing large-sclae financial rule-breaking by the Premier League giant.
“The club’s firm position,” read a short statement from City, “is that, on multiple grounds, the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe.”
City has protested its innocence throughout the long-running case, which dates back to 2018, and reached a milestone on Tuesday when the Premier League published a verdict saying the Abu Dhabi-controlled club was “guilty of all charges related to serious breaches” of the competition’s financial rules from 2009-18.
Officials said they would lodge an appeal and that was filed on Thursday evening, the club said, ahead of Friday’s deadline.
“The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case,” City said, using language from previous statements on the case.
According to the Premier League handbook, the chair of the three-person disciplinary commission that found against City now has to appoint a new appeal board.
That should consist of three people, one of whom “shall have held judicial office,” the league’s rules state.
The appeal board will then schedule a hearing that should finish within 12 weeks after the appeal is filed and cannot exceed five consecutive days.
City has yet to receive a punishment for the violations found. That will be addressed in a separate, confidential hearing with the commission and there has been no word whether sanctions can be imposed before the decision of the appeal is reached.
The Premier League has only said its intention is that the process is concluded “as soon as possible.”
According to the Premier League, potential sanctions against City could be a reprimand, a fine, a suspension, points deduction or, in the worst case, expulsion from the competition.
No team has ever been expelled from English football’s top flight.
City’s €975m rule-breaking using ‘sham’ commercial deals
City was found to have systematically broken the Premier League’s financial rules for nearly a decade in what the competition’s chief executive, Richard Masters, described as the most significant disciplinary case in the league’s history.
The investigatory panel found that City artificially inflated its revenue, using what the league has called “sham” commercial deals, by more than $1 billion (€975 million) from 2009-18 to circumvent financial fair-play rules that restricted rival clubs, and allowing City to buy some of the best players in the world.
That was the foundation of a long and unprecedented period of success in which City changed the landscape of the world’s most popular football league, with the northwest club winning eight league titles from 2012-24.
City committed almost all of the 115-plus violations, the commission found: 80 from 2009-18 for alleged financial misdeeds and another 35 from 2018-23 for allegedly not cooperating with the investigation.
Additional sources • AP