This article was first published in December 2025
It’s more than 11 years since Manchester City first accepted a major UEFA punishment for financial cheating, or “cooking their books”, for artificially inflating their income and artificially reducing their costs. This is how The Guardian reported it at the time, and how the BBC reported it. City accepted an initial fine of €60m and various transfer limits and wage cuts.
It was more than five years ago that City were then banned for two years from the Champions League for other financial cheating (The Times report here; ESPN here; BBC here; New York Times here), before having that sanction overturned, and escaping with a fine of “only” €10m for not co-operating with any of the investigations into their behaviour.
It is more than eight years since the Premier League opened an investigation into 115 charges (and more) of alleged financial cheating by City, and amost three years since City were charged with 115 (and more) breaches of financial rules.
And it’s been more than a year since the completion of a 10-week hearing when City presented what they said was a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” to support their claim of innocence, and we are still yet to have a verdict.
If you are interested in detail then it’s probably worth reading this piece from November last year which came with lots of downloadable documents that supported the claims that City did in fact make the extraordinary sums alleged in Football Leaks documents (as below) from sponsorship deals with Abu Dhabi entities. Those allegations and documents are available in full via that piece.
If you want more general background into City’s alleged financial cheating over more than a decade then I suggest you briefly look here and here.
But today’s piece is something different. It’s a story of how Manchester City have set out to intimidate and effectively bully reporters (specifically me in this case) who have consistently produced investigative journalism since 2014 that has asked questions about their dubious financial practices.
More specifically, today’s piece looks at a single newspaper article from 2023 (by me, for the Mail on Sunday) - which, on the face of it, was relatively innocuous - which asked questions about the financial advantages that a multi-club organisation (MCO) such as the the City Football Group (wiki page here, their own page here) might gain from being an MCO.
The rest of today’s piece includes:
My initial email to Man City in May 2023, asking basic questions about transfers of players between CFG entities. I had already extensively researched this but wanted City / CFG to give me guidance if I was wrong, or correct me when open source information was erroneous. This should give you an insight into how responsible and diligent reporters behave, fact-checking and asking questions about stories before we publish.
The initial threatening response from City, which wasn’t from the club but from a law firm, sent to my bosses and effectively trying to get me sacked for asking questions (!!), without answering my questions.
A second letter from a law firm on behalf of City, after we published the article in question, basically saying it was total rubbish, but actually providing information that showed my initial research was solid.
My response to the Mail on Sunday’s lawyers, explaining how I had gone to great lengths to get accurate information for the article, and how City had declined to answer any questions about the subject, pre-publication. I also told the MoS lawyers that City would NOT want us to publish the “accurate” information they gave us, because they were obtuse and just trying to get me sacked. “That would be weird,” one of my paper’s senior lawyers told me. And guess what? When asked by the MoS lawyers if we could use the club’s own figures to update the article online, City refused! No further action happened and my original article about Manchester City “gaming the system” remains unchanged on the Mail website. City simply wanted to intimidate me and persuade my bosses I needed to be sacked.
Investigation into CFG transfers and MCO business
I had been asked by my editors at the Mail on Sunday to suggest a number of potential features for the sports pages in early Spring 2023. I produced a list of topical subjects, from doping in swimming and athletics to governance issues in British football to athlete abuse inquiries to problematic ownership issues in global football, not least around multi-club ownership (MCO) groups.
I was asked to look at the MCO feature, as long as it was specific and UK-oriented, and given that CFG were the largest MCO in the world, with Manchester City as their “mother ship” I started delving into their policy of stockpiling young players from around the world, rarely giving them any minutes on the pitch, and then trading them onwards, often to related parties within the CFG group.
The research was lengthy (many weeks) and meticulous and involved speaking to dozens of people from agents and club executives and “brokering” officials at various FAs, as well as reading contemporary reports on numerous club websites and local media (in multiple languages).
It seemed there was a viable argument that City were “gaming the system” under new FIFA rules designed to prevent the stockpiling of players, and before I wrote my piece, I sent the following email (below) to City’s head of comms, Simon Heggie.
Simon didn’t reply. City stopped replying to any of my questions about eight years ago, because I persistently asked about their alleged financial cheating.
There was an exception in 2020 when my home address was published on Twitter and a Man City forum, inciting City fans to attack me and my family; the police got involved, and the City forum in question briefly suspended the fan who had published my home address and incited people to attack me.
I got a 2-minute phone call from City’s then head of media, Vicky Kloss, saying she was sorry this had happened (Vicky is long gone from City) and later some letters from City’s legal department saying they couldn’t control their fans’ behaviour (maybe I’ll publish those another day).
Anyway, Vicky’s successor Simon didn’t reply to my MCO questions in 2023 and instead I got this legal letter.
The Mail on Sunday lawyers felt it was flimsy, and bullshit, and intimidatory, with the main intention being to bully them into not letting my piece be published. The article was published.
City’s lawyers responded by sending another legal letter, effectively confirming that much of the detail in my piece was really close to the reality but saying it was wrong. That letter is here:
I wrote a memo to my paper’s lawyers with my thoughts on this.
The Mail on Sunday lawyers told me that we should amend our online piece to reflect that we now had the real and accurate numbers for the transfer deals, which in any case were really close to the numbers City were saying were true.
I told the lawyers that City were so obtuse, they wouldn’t want us to do that. And … guess what … City said we couldn’t report the “corrections” they had sent us.
And that was that. My piece ran, without amendments, and remains online as orginally written.
It’s hard to conclude that Man City’s actions in this case were anything other than an attempt to get me shut down, or sacked.
If you are an avid football fan and follow any credible football reporters or investigative reporters who have covered City, on social media, ask them about their own experiences of interactions with the club.
Can anyone actually download the documents? It just keeps telling me to sign in to view it when I'm already logged in
I was not a reader of the Mail on Sunday so this is new to me, powerful words and all credit to you