During February, Manchester City was in deep trouble. The club allegedly broke UEFA FFP (Union of European Football Associations Financial Fair Play) rules for nine seasons.This isn’t the first time Man City has been in trouble. In 2020, the club was given a two-year suspension from UEFA club competitions due to breaches of FFP regulations and club licensing. Luckily, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned the suspension. 

This time, the UEFA has caught Manchester City breaking rules from the 2009-10 season all the way to the 2017-2018. They’ve allegedly breached the financial rules over 100 times.  The club has four sets of breaches. Those breaches are assisting Premier League investigations, Profitability & Sustainability, Manager remuneration and Accuracy of financial information. 

The first set of breaches occurred during the 2009-2010 season until the 2013-2014 season. The set referred to manager remuneration. The club allegedly did not include the full details of City’s manager at the time, Robert Mancini’s pay. The second set of breaches relate to player remuneration in 2010-2011 to 2015-2016. Man City was accused of not including the full details of the players pay.

During the 2013-2014 season up until the 2017-2018, the club allegedly breached UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules, causing the third breach. 

Since Dec. 2018 to now,  Manchester City has broken the Premier League’s rule of co-operating and assisting Premier League with investigations. As a result, the fourth set of breaches was created. 

“The allegations are pretty suspicious because of how blurry they are. First off the league basically exposed their own corruption by adding additional charges that aren’t true. Then there’s charges literally for the grass being a couple millimeters too long on the field,” senior Amar Zukancic said. “ Then the financial ones are the big ones, but those were the same ones UEFA couldn’t charge us on.”

The club publicly stated that they were shocked by the issuing of the breaches. They’ve also welcomed the review of this situation by an independent commission.

The independent commission will be selected by the chair of the Premier League’s judicial panel, Murray Rosen KC. The commission will contain three members that can contain any of the 15 members of the judicial panel, as well as non-members. The commission will make a decision within a private hearing. They have the power to hand out fines, deduct points, strip titles and even relegate the club out of the Premier League. 

As soon as the judgment is made, Manchester City will be able to appeal the case, but it cannot go through the CAS. Depending on how the case goes, City could be saying goodbye to the Premier League.