Bernstein: Man City should be expelled from Premier League after guilty verdict
David Bernstein, who chaired Manchester City between 1998 and 2003, has called for the club to be thrown out of the Premier League following a guilty verdict on financial rule breaches.
An independent commission found that City arranged "sham" contracts with several commercial partners, artificially boosting revenues and cutting costs across nine seasons from 2009 to 2018. The arrangement hid the club's true financial position and allowed them to stay within Premier League and UEFA spending limits. City were also found guilty on most charges relating to their failure to cooperate with the league's investigation.
Possible punishments include relegation, a points deduction or a large fine. No sanction has been handed down yet, and the Abu Dhabi-backed club has said it will appeal.
Bernstein, however, argued that the club deserves the harshest penalty available. "It is damning beyond belief. My immediate thoughts are, should the board continue? Should the people involved be suspended immediately?" he told the BBC.
"Very, very serious. I think it's really terrible. There's a school of thought with lawyers that is deny, deny, deny, but this is a football club that is part of a league and the whole credibility of the league is at stake here," he said.
"The sanctions cannot just be financial, so it's got to be way beyond that. If the appeal fails, Manchester City cannot stay in the league, they have to suffer. And I say that as a supporter and a fan."
Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy described the findings as "incredibly serious" in comments to the BBC. "The Premier League report is incredibly stark. Manchester City have the right to appeal. This is causing a lot of concern for City fans and all fans of Premier League football," she said.
The commission found that City overstated income by more than £830 million ($1.09 billion) through a system the club called "Project Longbow". In a 40-page document, the Premier League described City's conduct as "extremely serious, significant, sustained and intentional or reckless breaches of rules critical to the proper and fair operation of the Premier League".
The document set out the scale of the commercial deals the commission repeatedly labelled "sham", involving several club sponsors. These formed part of a disguised funding scheme in which the companies were only required to pay a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees.
One company, "Fordham", was described by the commission as "in reality little more than a front" for the Abu Dhabi United Group Investment and Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club, allowing it to inject additional funds.
The commission said: "In 2012 the club launched what it termed Project Longbow. We accept the club's explanation that Project Longbow was a multi-strand project whose purpose was to explore how the club might boost its revenues and reduce its operating losses. Many of the strands of Project Longbow were genuine, legitimate attempts to achieve those aims. One was not. That was the Fordham Arrangement."
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