It has been a week since media reports began circulating that an independent commission had found Manchester City in breach of the Premier League’s financial rules.
The so-called “115” case against the club had finally reached some form of conclusion, or so many people thought.
In the absence of any immediate confirmation of the decision from the Premier League - its website featured statements last Friday regarding an EFL partnership and a declaration about Fifa, but nothing about the commission’s findings - Manchester City made their own statement.
"The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality. As such Manchester City FC’s position remains consistent with the club’s statement of February 2023,” it said last week.
“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."
In the earlier February 2023 statement referred to above, City had expressed surprise at the Premier League’s actions in bringing its case against them and welcomed the opportunity to present a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” to support its position.
The club signed off that earlier note by saying it looked forward to putting the matter to rest “once and for all”.
We now know that it will have to do so via an appeal, which it lodged on Thursday.
Last Friday night’s reporting of the commission’s decision triggered a torrent of speculative takes as to what punishment might be meted out on the club and lit a bonfire on social media. The fire and noise have not abated since.
So much for the right of appeal or the "ongoing nature" of the process, the partisan court of football opinion had already made up its mind in wanting City to be driven into the ground.
Addressing the mood, City’s Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak wrote a letter to supporters, which was published on Saturday.
“The Premier League process still has a long way to run, and our confidence and intent in proving the club’s innocence is just as strong as when this began", he said.
“While some people have been quick to reach their own conclusions, and there is so much noise swirling around us, nothing has changed. We have faced challenges together before and have prevailed.”
The Premier League eventually confirmed last week’s media reports on Tuesday evening, issuing a 1,500-word statement that included several paragraphs of quotes from Richard Masters, its Chief Executive, and a link to a 40-page PDF of the independent commission’s heavily redacted decision document, which makes liberal references to appendices that have not so far been published.
Masters said: “The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period."
City said they were "disappointed and surprised" by the commission's verdict and that they were "innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League".
The club said it will pursue an appeal “on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”.
The outrage continues online, begging the "where does football go from here?" question posed by commentator Peter Drury moments after Sergio Aguero scored to claim Manchester City’s first Premier League title in 2012.
Both sides - the Premier League and the club - as well as the broader football world will want the matter resolved. The process has taken too long to date, perhaps prompting the “unsafe” comment by the club earlier this week.
There is no guarantee whatsoever that there will be a quick conclusion to this ongoing process. It would be hard to imagine there will be, given the requirements for a new board to hear the appeal.
The decision document, even in its heavily redacted form, provides some answers as to which direction this might go from here.
City will almost certainly argue that what the independent commission termed as so-called "disguised funding schemes", which sit at the core of the case, were nothing of the sort. The club's Chief Executive Officer Ferran Soriano indicated as much in a video message to staff and players this week that has been widely circulated online.
The decision document provides details of the funding model for recorded sponsorship fees that the club put in place. The commission "rejected that explanation" as untrue, without providing a full reason for why they did so in the publicly available PDF.
Etihad Airways, one of City’s sponsors, felt moved to comment on the commission’s findings on Wednesday evening.
The airline, which has been a commercial partner and sponsor of the club since 2009, said that it "categorically rejects any finding, conclusion or implication that suggests the airline has ever been involved in improper commercial arrangements".
It said it was "never given the opportunity by the Premier League to be represented, to provide relevant information, or to ensure the accuracy and fairness of information relied upon in reaching conclusions that may now be interpreted as reflecting adversely on the airline".
The airline also said it would "seek the relevant legal counsel on the options and recourse available to protect its interests".
The derogatory terminology used by the commission and the Premier League to describe sponsorship agreements between the club and its commercial partners in Abu Dhabi are unpleasant and dismissive words to read and may help explain the upset evident above.
The emotional and commercial arguments against the initial decision are manifold. Prime Minister Andy Burnham sought to make one of those this week, too, describing the City Football Group as “a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester. Obviously, the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.
“I do actually thank the CFG and the wider ownership for the money that they didn't just put into the Etihad and the campus around it, but also into the city,” he said.
The regeneration work City have done in the years under the current owners is undeniable and should provide pause for those who play the old ‘fit and proper' card when discussing what good stewardship of a club looks like. None of that will matter to the appeals commission, however.
That regeneration work was most obvious on the pitch. In retrospect, it seems obvious that one of City’s offences was to make trophy winning a repetitive task and to disrupt the elite hierarchy of English football in the process. But again, that is not under consideration, nor should it be.
That, of course, is also a biased observation. For disclosure, I am not impartial, being both a City fan for more than 50 years and an Abu Dhabi resident for close to 20 years.
Regardless of individual bias, however, the appeals process must be allowed to run its course and reach a fair-minded and impartial conclusion. Everyone should want that.
