"Major obstacles and forged documents": legal expert demolishes Manchester City's dream of an appeal
An impossible task in London
English football has just been shaken to its foundations. A historic ruling convicted Manchester City on all charges relating to breaches of financial rules between the 2009-2010 and 2017-2018 seasons, finding the club created "sham contracts" to inflate sponsorship deals by the staggering sum of 830 million pounds sterling. Now the Sky Blues face a task leading lawyers in Britain have described as "impossible".
City insist they are "innocent of the charges" and claim to hold "compelling evidence" that the ruling "contains clear fundamental errors, legal, in principle and factual". Legal experts see it differently. The appeal route, they say, is strewn with obstacles.
The appeal is no easy lifeline
Writing a startling legal analysis for "BBC Sport", James Severn, a member of the London Solicitors Litigation Association (LSLA) and a partner at Penningtons Manches Cooper, stated that the appeal "is not simply an opportunity for a new panel to overturn the ruling".
Severn spelled out the strict legal rule: "Manchester City will have to identify a fundamental error in law, principle or fact, or a serious procedural injustice, that materially affected the commission's decision. The appeal board has wide powers to allow or dismiss the appeal, or to amend the decision, but the club must prove that the available evidence was misinterpreted."
The Abu Dhabi government card: a double-edged sword
City's defence in the appeal revolves around one fundamental point. The government of the United Arab Emirates made the payments in its capacity as a shareholder in the sponsoring companies, so the sponsorship sums were legitimate and the owners never topped them up.
That argument runs into a major obstacle: Etihad Airways. One of the club's main sponsors and the focus of the case, the airline declared in court documents as part of an American investigation in New York in 2015 that the Abu Dhabi government did not pay for its sponsorship of the club.
City insist this does not cover the full context of the case, and that the government documents fully support their position. Severn comments: "Bank statements, government records and contemporaneous payment documents could constitute strong evidence if they establish a clear audit trail showing that the money came from the Abu Dhabi government and not from the owners. However, if this evidence was already available to the commission, which nevertheless concluded that the arrangements were sham, the club will face great difficulty in proving that this conclusion was fundamentally wrong."
Etihad Airways' statement: not enough
Then it got more complicated. Etihad Airways issued a statement before City's appeal was confirmed, saying it had never been given "an opportunity by the Premier League to represent itself, or to provide relevant information".
Severn responded firmly: "Etihad Airways' complaint does not, in itself, establish the existence of a procedural flaw. Etihad Airways was not the respondent party, and it is unlikely to have an independent right to participate, and it is likely that such evidence would have been available to either party to obtain and submit."
The "chaos and noise" plan
Central to City's defence will be a challenge to the commission's heavy reliance on the emails leaked from "Football Leaks".
Severn said: "If City can prove that the commission fundamentally misunderstood the emails, or did not take their correct context, that could amount to a fundamental error of fact. But City's difficulty lies in the fact that the commission heard extensive evidence from witnesses and documents, and nevertheless reached serious conclusions about sham arrangements and disguised funding."
Kieran Maguire, a professor of football finance at the University of Liverpool, was harsher. He said the commission found that "documents were falsified to fit the crime", and that it must have concluded that "the evidence and the credibility of the witnesses presented by City were weak".
Maguire does see a narrow path to survival, via an approach he described as "chaotic and noisy". That means casting doubt on everything relating to the commission's own procedures rather than focusing on the evidence, including the fact that its members were chosen by the Premier League clubs and not by City.
Severn stressed that the senior retired judges on the commission "have spent their professional lives interpreting complex facts". His conclusion: "it is impossible to assess City's chances of winning the appeal reliably, but it will not be easy".
Premier League regulations stipulate that the appeal be considered within 12 weeks, which takes it to Christmas Eve. Severn warned that "given the scale and complexity of the proceedings, the final outcome may not be known for some time".
