An appeal is expected as the club faces severe potential sanctions including massive point deductions or Premier League expulsion after an independent panel ruled on 115 financial charges
Page S2From§Eachthe supper edition — 26 September 2026
Manchester City chairman confident of innocence as panel weighs relegation or expulsion over 115 charges
Hot Mic Moment
Six clubs agreed to lock up the continent's television money for themselves, and it took forty-eight hours of coordinated pressure from UEFA, FIFA and the national federations to make every one of them withdraw. This reporter would like the political desk to explain why a threat to competitors moves the entire regulatory apparatus of European football in two days flat, while a threat to one club's own books gets a hearing schedule. Begging, not asking.
Gushis side
GUS: This reporter can confirm that Manchester City's chairman told the press Friday he remains fully confident of innocence as an independent Premier League panel rules on 115 separate financial charges against the club, charges that carry, if they stick, penalties from a points deduction up through outright expulsion from the league City has dominated since, this reporter recalls, the great 4-1 derby demolition of Manchester United in 2013.
GUS: Four months earlier that same season, this reporter reminds readers, Vincent Kompany's header put Manchester United top of the table with two games left to play, in a match billed at the time as the biggest in Premier League history.
GUS: City would go on, this reporter notes for the record, to win the league by ten clear points over Chelsea in May of 2022, capping a decade in which finishing outside the top four had apparently become a disciplinary matter of its own.
Trudyher side
December 9, 2012. Manchester United beat City 3-2, Robin van Persie scoring in stoppage time, and somebody in the stands put a coin into Rio Ferdinand. Wrong year, wrong winner, wrong score. Otherwise, clean sweep. (CBS Sports; Wikipedia)
Kompany played for City, hon. That header, April 30, 2012, put City top, not United, two games from the finish. Get the shirt color right before you get sentimental about it. (BBC)
Aston Villa, not Chelsea. May 22, 2022, City came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2 and finished on 93 points, one clear of Liverpool, not ten. Go take that nap you keep threatening. (The New York Times)
2021, not 2019 — April 20th. Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, City, United and Tottenham all pulled out after backlash from UEFA, FIFA, national football associations and fans; Manchester United's chief executive resigned days later. Two years off on a story from three years ago. (BBC Sport; Daily Express)
Nobody's phoning the political desk, sugar — you file sports. And the receipt already answered you: it took those same regulators forty-eight hours to kill the Super League, April 20, 2021, the same six clubs you just named. Go find the mushrooms, because a memory that can't hold a calendar has no business holding a broadcast contract.
“You skip your taxes once, they lock you up. A club racks up 115 financial charges and the guy in charge just tells the cameras he's sure it'll work out fine — because for him it usually does. The stakes here aren't a banner, they're whether the league that took your hometown club's season ticket money for twenty years still means anything if the answer to 115 counts is an appeal and a shrug.”
“Look, an independent panel found violations, sure, but "finding" isn't "conviction" — did I say conviction? Nobody said conviction. The chairman's confident because the process has years left to run, the club's invested more in this city than any government program you'd name, and frankly punishing success is its own kind of bias. That's not spin, that's just — okay, that one sounded like spin.”
The receipts
· Manchester United win the Manchester derby, defeating reigning league champions Manchester City by a score of 3–2 in the 2012–13 Premier League. Robin van Persie scores a last-minute goal and Rio Ferd from the morgue, 9 Dec 2012
· Manchester City win their second consecutive Premier League title, their fourth in 5 years, and their sixth overall on the final day of the season following a 3–2 comeback against Aston Villa. Manches from the morgue, 22 May 2022
· Following a massive negative backlash from UEFA, FIFA, national football associations and football fans alike, all six English Premier League clubs involved in the project – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpoo from the morgue, 20 Apr 2021
· In association football, Manchester City defeat Manchester United in what had been described as the biggest match in Premier League history. Vincent Kompany scores the winning goal to take City to the from the morgue, 30 Apr 2012
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.