Pep Guardiola has declared that every side in the Premier League wants Manchester City to lose their fight against 115 alleged rule breaches but insisted his club were innocent ‘until guilt is proven’.
Responding to comments from La Liga president Javier Tebas that most top-flight English clubs want City punished by the independent commission, which opens on Monday, Guardiola said: ‘Maybe he’s right.
‘All the Premier League teams want us to be sanctioned that is for sure. I agree with Tebas for the first time, and hopefully the last. But justice is there in a modern democracy — so wait for the decision.
‘We believe that we have not done anything wrong. We go to an independent panel and we are going to wait. Good.’
The City boss said his players had not discussed the case, which relates to alleged breaches of top-flight financial rules between 2009 and 2018.
Pep Guardiola has declared every side in the Premier League wants Man City to be punished
The trial into City’s 115 alleged rule breaches is expected to get underway on Monday
Javier Tebas claimed the majority of Premier League clubs think City should be sanctioned
‘No, we are not lawyers,’ he said. ‘Erling (Haaland) is not a lawyer, so we didn’t talk about it. I’m happy it starts on Monday and I know there will be more rumours about the sentences.’
In an anonymous conference room at an undisclosed location, the most significant legal case football has ever known is about to get under way, with Manchester City’s credibility as the outstanding side of this era at stake.
The process will be shrouded in unprecedented secrecy. It took a courtroom challenge from Mail Sport simply to allow us to report that the Premier League had taken a legal route to force City to give them evidence, as part of their investigation.
Our barrister, Jude Bunting KC, won that argument, after going up against Lord Pannick KC, who will lead City’s defence team when the case begins on Monday.
But behind closed doors, for an expected 10 weeks, City will strenuously deny charges that they swerved financial fair play rules to spend more than they were entitled to on players who helped turn them into the Premier League’s dominant force.
City, bidding for a fifth-successive title, are defending their case at an independent inquiry
The League’s case, being considered by an independent disciplinary commission, is expected to centre on claims that City’s Abu Dhabi owners funnelled cash into the club, some of it disguised as sponsorship revenue, to create a healthy financial picture and enable a level of spending which would not fall foul of FFP.
No fewer than 54 of the 115 claimed rule breaches relate to City’s alleged failure to provide accurate financial information about the club’s revenues.
Much of the evidence may be pulled from a cache of emails brought to light by the so-called Football Leaks website, run by a Portuguese self-taught computer mastermind Rui Pinto, which was published by German magazine Der Spiegel in 2018.
It is quite likely that Pinto’s own credibility and reputation will be at the nub of the argument Lord Pannick puts to the commission.
For some, the Portuguese is a controversial figure, currently at a safe house for his own protection, because of revelations which extend far beyond City. City say he is nothing less than a hacker, but he is a real danger to them now. His revelations were central to a UEFA investigation into the club, which saw them suspended from European competition for two years.
Much of the evidence against City may be pulled from a cache of emails brought to light by the so-called Football Leaks
That decision was overturned in 2020 by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which ruled that some of the alleged offences occurred too far in the past to pass UEFA’S five-year cut-off for bringing charges.
The clock will not help City this time. There is no ‘time bar’ on the evidence the Premier League will bring. But they strongly believe they can win the case and emerge from the shadow which has been hanging over them since they were charged, two years ago.