Jamie Carragher demands multi-year punishment for Man City after guilty verdict
Manchester City should face a multi-year punishment for their financial misdemeanours, according to former Liverpool defender and Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher.
An independent commission found City guilty of breaking Premier League rules in a strongly-worded report released last week, which the club have appealed against.
The commission found the club had inflated revenue by more than £830million across a nine-season period between 2009-10 and 2017-18. Carragher believes the sanctions should reflect that scale if the appeal fails.
Speaking on The Overlap Fan Debate with Sky Bet, the 48-year-old said: “If the people talk about (a penalty of) 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 players, a few of them would leave, but I think some of them would say, ‘I could put up with that for a year’.
“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.”
City are back in action this weekend with a Premier League fixture against Liverpool on Sunday, a club arguably their biggest rivals for titles over the last decade and a half.
A hostile atmosphere awaits Enzo Maresca’s side at Anfield, and former City defender and manager Stuart Pearce feels the Italian needs to try to use that in his favour.
“The opposition, they’ll be rolling their sleeves up,” Pearce said. “The atmosphere in the stadiums is going to be red hot. It’s unbelievable it happens to be Liverpool this weekend. It’s going to be electric.
“So it’s going to stimulate everybody else against City, and it’s got to stimulate City against everyone else.”
City have won all five of their Premier League matches so far this season, leaving them three points ahead of defending champions Arsenal at the top of the table. However, they struggled at Anfield under Pep Guardiola, and could have their work cut out this weekend against a Liverpool side that is yet to lose under Andoni Iraola after he replaced Arne Slot in the summer.
