Manchester City's "115": five things to look for as commission starts work this month
From a loose-lipped potential witness to football's activist hacker - everything you need to know about the case that could bring down the Premier League champions
The hearing by an independent disciplinary commission into Manchester City’s “115” case, or the 115 alleged breaches of Premier League rules, starts this month, according to a report in The Times in August. The case is expected to take 10 weeks, with a verdict in the first few months of 2025.
When charged in February last year (the Premier League’s list of charges is here), City released a statement saying they had a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” to support their claim of innocence.
Today I’ll recap how we got here, try to simplify the 115 charges and give some updates now the hearing is imminent. These include:
What one witness expected to be called by City has been telling acquaintances about his expectations of the outcome.
How two key witnesses mentioned in the CAS verdict in 2020 - which overturned a two-year Champions League ban for City - were denied access to information that might have sunk City, and how City could use the same strategy they used at CAS (non co-operation) to minimise damage again.
Why it seems inevitable City will be censured at the end of the independent commission’s deliberations, for some of the charges at least. Sanctions range from a slap on the wrist and / or a fine to the deduction of enough points to see them relegated. Nobody knows at this stage where in that range the ultimate punishment will fall. I don’t. The parties don’t. The lawyers don’t. Anyone telling you they know the outcome already is a bluffer.
How City believed back in 2014 they would face no punishment for Uefa FFP breaches, even though people they hired warned them they would. City protestations in the past about innocence haven’t always ended in innocence.
How Rui Pinto, the man behind Football Leaks, which landed City in trouble from 2018 onwards (their first FFP failure in 2014 was nothing to do with the Leaks) may yet have new grenades to lob into proceedings.
First, a review of the 115 charges.
Disguised funding or legitimate sponsors? 54 charges
It is alleged City failed to provide accurate financial information to the Premier League 54 times between 2009 and 2018. The Premier League alleges City made 54 breaches of rules requiring “provision by a member club to the Premier League, in the utmost good faith, of accurate financial information that gives a true and fair view of the club’s financial position, in particular with respect to its revenue (including sponsorship revenue), its related parties and its operating costs.”
In other words, City told the Premier League one thing about the value of sponsorships and where that money came from, when it fact it was not true. You can read 67 pages of emails that suggest all manner of shenanigans.
Alleged secret back-handers? 14 charges
It is alleged City failed to provide accurate details for player and manager payments on 14 occasions between 2009 and 2018. These 14 alleged breaches include breaches in relation to Roberto Mancini’s contracts (documents here), and alleged illicit payments to Yaya Toure (documents here).
You may already have read these documents. But if you haven’t, and using the Mancini case as just one example, he was hired to manage City in December 2009 on a three-and-a-half year deal on a basic salary of £1.45m per season that would rise by £200,000 per season from the first time City finished inside the top four.
Mancini would also get a bonus of between £1.5m and £4m depending on whether City finished 4th, 3rd, 2nd or 1st; and a bonus of between £1m and £3m for reaching stages in the Champions League between the quarter-finals and winning the tournament. There were all sorts of other bonuses, perks and expenses, and those are detailed on pages 2-4 of the PDF below.
Mancini’s contract to manage Manchester City is dated 19 December 2009. On the same date he signed a contract to provide coaching services for a minimum of four days a year with the Al Jazira club in Abu Dhabi (where the chairman is Sheikh Mansour, owner of City), also in a three-and-a-half year deal, for £1.75m a year.
It has always been stressed by Manchester City that Sheikh Mansour (below, right, at the 2023 Champions League final) owns City in a personal capacity and that City are definitely not owned or controlled by the state of UAE. Sheikh Mansour loves Manchester City so much that he has seen them play twice in his 16 years as the owner, once in 2010 and once in 2023.
Mancini’s contract with Al Jazira was at pains to stress it should be kept secret, saying: “Neither you, your company nor the club shall, without the prior written consent of the other, disclose the existence or terms of these Heads [of agreement], to any third party.”
Both the City contract and the Al Jazira contract were signed by the same person on behalf of City. You can see the signatures for yourself in the PDF. Email trails (also in the PDF) appear to provide clear evidence that City executives were instrumental in paying Mancini for his Al Jazira “work”, whatever that actually was.
The email below, for example, sent in July 2012 from City’s then chief financial officer, Graham Wallace, to City’s then head of finance, Andrew Widdowson, asked Widdowson to “do the usual” and “remit funds” to ADUG (City’s parent company) and arrange for that to be sent to Al Jazira so they could pay a company, IIS, which was effectively owned by Mancini, for Mancini’s work at Al Jazira.
The implication could not be clearer: that City were paying Mancini £1.45m per yer plus bonuses from the football club, and another £1.75m per year via an entity that wouldn’t be on City’s books.
In other words, City as a club could pretend they were paying Mancini “only” £1.45m a year plus bonuses, and not the other £1.75m a year. The allegation is that this was yet another way they were cooking the books.
Other charges: 5, 7 and 35 across three categories
Five of the 115 charges relate to City’s alleged failure to comply with Uefa's rules around Financial Fair Play (FFP) from 2013 to 2018. We know City failed to comply with FFP because of their 2014 punishment but we don’t know the specifics of these five charges.
Seven of the 115 charges are for alleged breaches of the Premier League's PSR rules between 2015 and 2018. Again, we don’t know the details but assume the Premier League investigation into City between late 2018 and February 2023 uncovered information hitherto unknown.
Finally, 35 of the 115 charges relate to City’s alleged failure to co-operate with the Premier League investigation into their conduct between December 2018 and February 2023. We know they failed to co-operate because there was a damning High Court court judgement saying so as long ago as July 2021.
That judgement concluded: “It is surprising, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made after two and a half years — during which, it may be noted, the club has twice been crowned as Premier League champions.”
With that, we’ll move on to the insights mentioned in the bullet points above.