Jamie Carragher believes Manchester City’s punishment for financial misconduct should last five years – and that their owners should be forced to sell the club.
The Liverpool legend wants to see the club hit with penalties for half a decade so that their highly paid stars are encouraged to move on.
Manchester City were blasted by the Premier League last month for making ‘sham’ agreements to manipulate their financial accounts to the tune of £900million over a nine-season period which saw them win eight trophies.
City insist they are innocent and are appealing the verdict, which found them guilty of 114 of 115 charges.
Carragher told The Overlap Fan Debate: ‘People talk about 80 points or 100 points, but that’s just over one season that gets you relegated and then you come back again.
‘And I think a few players would leave, but I think some of them would say, “I could put up with that for a year”. It also builds a connection with the supporters, it’ll be seen in a great light.
Jamie Carragher says Manchester City should be punished for five years so that their players are less likely to stick around
The Premier League have confirmed that Manchester City are guilty of the most serious financial rule breaches
‘But I think because this has gone on for so long, I do think the punishment should be over a number of years, three to five years and then players would move on.
‘But then you’ve got the financial aspect of how can they afford the wages of those players if they haven’t got Premier League money? If they’re having to pay all this money out and you can only spend the money that you’re bringing in. They’ll have to abide by it now.’
He added: ‘These owners, I said that straight away [that the owners should leave the club if found guilty], so I didn’t know how the owners could continue. How can you ever trust them if they’re found guilty of this? And the problem being is my worry for it is it won’t be a case of, if they lose the appeal, ‘Okay, yeah, we’ll get on, we’ll take our punishment.’
‘I think because of where they’re from, the power they have, the finances they have, they’ll never admit they were wrong in this, and they would always say we were wronged. This was a sham, the Premier League as such, or different people. And I think they’ll [the Manchester City owners] keep just dragging it on and I think it’ll just drag the game into the gutter.
‘And it almost needs sorting out for the game, but also for Manchester City, their support to move on from it. And I don’t think they’d ever be able to move on from it with those people.’
In 2022, Pep Guardiola said he would quit the club if he felt the club’s hierarchy had ever lied to him. The next year, he said he would not walk out on his deal, even if he was relegated to League One.
Guardiola always insisted he was ‘fully convinced’ that the club is innocent and said in May: ‘I trust them, I trust them. Because I spoke with them and I trust how they behave and how they did.’
But Carragher called into question whether Guardiola could ever have really believed his bosses, saying: ‘Pep, he’s involved in the commercial deals, but the fact that he’s involved with those people sort of four or five times a day, daily, I just struggle to think, would he really believe them fully, 100%, what they’re saying?
Premier League CEO Richard Masters claimed that the commission’s verdict had ‘vindicated’ the league’s decision to pursue the charges
‘After what comes out about Mancini and different things? I just didn’t know if that changed it.’
In September, Daily Mail Sport reported how City had been found guilty of 114 of 115 charges against them.
In a lengthy statement, the Premier League say City arranged ‘sham contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on “sham” agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club’s revenues and reduce its costs’.
It also says the club falsely altered the financial picture at the Etihad to the tune of £900m. The club had agreed exorbitant sponsorship deals with a number of companies, but those sponsors only paid part of the fee.
The rest was propped up by the Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG), which owned the club.
As the Premier League note, this allowed City to ‘artificially inflate the club’s revenues’ and therefore spend more under Premier League rules. The higher the revenue a club records, the more they are permitted to spend.
Moreover, further ‘sham’ deals, funded by ADUG, allowed the club to ‘record lower operating expenses than it actually incurred’.
The Premier League say that revenues were inflated and costs reduced to the tune of £900m in an attempt to comply with spending rules. The result was that the club ‘filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators’.
Roy Keane has claimed he would throw away his medals if he was a Manchester City player
It added that the club was ‘significantly in breach of both the Premier League’s and UEFA’s spending limits’ during the time period in question, 2009-2018 when it won eight major trophies.
Had City reported accurately ‘it would have been in breach of both the League’s and UEFA’s spending limits by a very substantial amount’.
The panel also found that City committed multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and good faith in that it failed to assist the Premier League’s four-year investigation, triggered by the emergence of club emails obtained by a hacker.
Indeed, City had ‘made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the PL investigation’.
Richard Masters, chief executive of the Premier League, said: ‘The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period. It details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade.
‘It also vindicates the Premier League’s decision to pursue this case against Manchester City. While the process to date has been both long and difficult, the League has remained determined that the facts be established independently.
‘It is a key responsibility of the Premier League to ensure that the Rules, approved by the clubs themselves, are upheld to protect the integrity of the competition. It is paramount that the League remains competitive and fair for all clubs and for the fans. We take that role extremely seriously.
‘This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history. There are elements of the case that remain to be decided, including, importantly, what sanction must follow for these breaches. Now we have the Commission’s decision, we are committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process, to provide certainty for the League, our clubs and fans.’
Manchester City have insisted on their innocence throughout the saga (Pep Guardiola pictured with chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak)
In a statement released a short time later, City said it was ‘disappointed and surprised’ and referred to the ‘opinion of the Premier League Commission’.
It added: ‘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. The club will therefore be relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums.
‘The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements uncompleted. Manchester City will now pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.
‘The club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League Board and Executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence.
‘The club is obviously restricted in what it can say further until all future proceedings are complete.’
City have until Friday to appeal.
Man City were first charged with the 115 breaches in February 2023. While that totemic number stuck, the figure – as they subsequently corrected – was actually 130.
Of those, 54 were charges of ‘failure to provide accurate and up-to-date financial information’ while there were 14 charges of ‘failure to provide accurate financial reports for player and manager compensation’.
Both sets related to alleged offences between 2009 and 2018 (2009-2018), an eight-year period which saw the club win four Premier League titles, the FA Cup, and three League Cup competitions.
There were also five charges of ‘failure to comply with UEFA’s regulations, including Financial Fair Play Regulations’ and seven charges of breaching the Premier League’s profit and sustainability regulations between 2015 and 2018.
There were also 35 counts of failure to co-operate with Premier League investigations between 2018 and 2023.
The hearing into the 130 breaches began last September at London’s International Dispute Resolution Centre, with the Premier League sparing no expense and enlisting KCs Adam Lewis and Andrew Hunter to take its case.
