Photo: Buonasera, "A plane from the ETIHAD Airways (UAE) in the blue paint of the football club Manchester City" / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped and lightened.
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By Steve Moore
Manchester City have appealed against the independent commission’s findings of financial misconduct. The club says the decision contains material errors of law, principle and fact, and maintains that evidence supports its innocence. Its owners must also consider what happens if that challenge fails.
Sheikh Mansour and City’s executives face a possible further test: the Independent Football Regulator says it can assess the suitability of owners, directors and executives in light of league findings. A voluntary sale is another option, although the reporting examined here identifies no decision to sell.
Mansour controls the majority shareholding in City Football Group, Manchester City’s parent group. CFG identifies that shareholder as Newton Investment and Development LLC, wholly owned by Mansour. A decision about his football investment would have wider consequences for Abu Dhabi, but it would not by itself determine the future of every Emirati investment in Britain.
What City can argue
The Athletic’s analysis of 2 October identifies a central dispute: who funded the sponsorship payments. City says the Abu Dhabi government, not the owner, funded the sponsorship payments. The commission rejected that explanation. City must now persuade the appeal board that the original decision was wrong.
The Premier League permits sponsorship by state-owned bodies; the dispute concerns whether City disguised owner funding and produced misleading accounts. The BBC identifies evidence City would need to address: in a 2015 submission to the US government, Etihad said it funded its City sponsorship from its own liquidity and denied that Abu Dhabi’s government had paid for it. Etihad rejects any implication that it entered improper commercial arrangements.
The Athletic examines other possible challenges: whether the commission applied the legal meaning of “sham” correctly, and whether the Premier League can enforce obligations concerning UEFA, European football’s governing body. Success on a narrower point would not necessarily dispose of the wider accounting findings.
These are reported arguments and legal analysis. This piece did not include City’s full appeal submission.
The appeal generally reviews the existing evidence. Fresh evidence needs permission: it must have been unavailable and unobtainable with reasonable diligence for the original hearing.
What Christmas Eve means
City lodged the appeal on 1 October. Under the standard timetable, the hearing must conclude within 84 days, making 24 December the deadline. A decision with written reasons is then due within 30 days; a hearing ending on Christmas Eve would put that date at 23 January 2027.
The appeal board can vary or disapply that timetable. Christmas Eve is the standard hearing-completion deadline, subject to those powers, rather than an announced verdict date.
The Premier League says it will address sanctions separately at a further commission hearing. The BBC reports that precedent points towards penalties following the appeal decision, though this is not guaranteed. ESPN’s more recent account, published on 8 October, says sources expect the sanctions process to run alongside the appeal. It provides no official sanctions timetable, and City could also appeal the eventual punishment.
The commission can impose an unlimited fine or deduct points, and can recommend expulsion. Expulsion would not automatically place City in a particular lower division: they would have to apply to join the English Football League. Neither a points total nor a league destination has been announced in the reporting reviewed here.
Could the owners stay?
In June, chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak said there was “no intention to sell”. As Adam Crafton records in his 5 October Athletic column, Khaldoon described City as a jewel the owners would keep. That statement predates the findings.
Staying after an unsuccessful appeal would mean complying with the final decisions and trying to restore confidence in the club’s management. The owners would have to judge whether they could achieve that while continuing to run City.
Khaldoon’s future is a separate question. In his 8 October Daily Mail profile, Ian Herbert argues that Khaldoon’s wider responsibilities in Abu Dhabi make his dismissal unlikely even if City lose the appeal. Herbert reports that no decision has been announced about his position or the club’s ownership.
The regulator’s suitability powers create further uncertainty for those running City. Its statement says it will await developments in the ongoing proceedings; it announces no finding against an individual and no order to sell. The Premier League appeal and any suitability assessment are separate processes.
The case for leaving
Abu Dhabi specialist Christopher Davidson expects the owners to pursue the appeal, then seek an exit if it fails. Speaking to Rob Draper for his 8 October Guardian profile, Davidson says people in Abu Dhabi have told him a sale would follow; those contacts are unnamed. He argues that leaving would limit further reputational damage and the risk of the owners being declared unfit.
Davidson makes a similar argument in Crafton’s piece. Both articles rely on the same expert for that prediction, and neither reports an announced sale decision.
A sale might limit the owners’ future exposure to the controversy, but the findings themselves would still stand or fall through the appeal process. Staying would give them the opportunity to rebuild trust, at the cost of continued scrutiny. These competing reasons make the decision's private deliberations unknown.
Davidson doubts that a football dispute would prompt a wholesale retreat from British investment. He points to different decision-makers and interests across Abu Dhabi, whose investments extend beyond Khaldoon’s responsibilities.
Why Manchester makes the decision harder
The Mill’s 3 October investigation documents how closely Manchester’s council guarded its relationship with City. Notes from a March 2018 council meeting record an official saying: “You don’t criticise the council’s relationship with the football club.” Development manager Gillian Boyle confirmed that she wrote the notes. The reporters had not seen the resignation letter discussed at that meeting.
Its follow-up describes an expired land agreement that gave Mansour’s company first refusal on a substantial area of east Manchester. It also reports former council leader Richard Leese defending Abu Dhabi as a partner that delivered on its promises.
Crafton describes fears that Britain’s wider relationship with the UAE could influence the response. His reporting leaves the question of investment pressure unresolved and offers no evidence of government intervention to secure a softer sanction.
Mansour’s decision would affect a relationship built beyond the stadium. The council’s interest in keeping that relationship and the football authorities’ duty to apply their rules could pull in different directions. Neither the regeneration record nor the political anxiety settles the questions before the appeal board.
City have chosen to contest the findings. The owners can pursue that challenge while weighing whether to stay, but the eventual penalty and any separate suitability proceedings would shape what staying requires. A sale remains a possible response to defeat, not an outcome the reporting has established so far.
Acknowledgements
This piece draws on Adam Crafton’s 5 October column, Rob Draper’s 8 October profile, Ian Herbert’s 8 October profile, The Athletic’s appeal analysis, and The Mill’s investigation and follow-up. We checked the procedural account against the Premier League handbook, plus reporting from BBC Sport and the Observer, and the regulator’s statement.
The account of the separate sanctions hearing also draws on the Premier League’s statement and ESPN’s 8 October explainer. We checked ownership details against City Football Group’s corporate account.