03/10/2026

SPORTS SATURDAY | OCT 3, 2026

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Neville says EPL ‘dragged through the mud’

Ű BY JAMIE GARDNER

single discussion. My honest opinion is I’ve got no reason not to trust Khaldoon. “What he said is enough for me. I loved how he spoke. I loved the letter because that was from someone who cared about the club. “If Man City are found guilty, which I don’t think they are because of what Khaldoon said, then there’s conversa tions to be had. “But right now I’m very confident and very, very calm. I’m very proud of what I’ve achieved and what I did with Manchester City and what we achieved as a team. And that doesn’t change. That doesn’t change until you tell me. “I did what I did. I

the independent commission’s guilty verdict, insisting the letter gave him all the reassurance he needed. The letter’s central message was that the club’s confidence in proving their innocence remained as strong as it had been at the outset of proceedings, with the Premier League process still having, in his words, “a long way to run”. Speaking to BBC Sport on the verdict and Khaldoon’s open letter to support ers, Hart said: “I’ve heard everyone else go down every single rabbit hole, every

“The club can only heal and recover from the shame of their guilt once the custodians recognise they have failed in their duty and sell up. “There is no way to sugar-coat this. The scale of the institutional cheating and lack of co-operation in the investi gation means the position of all City executives involved is untenable. “Fighting on will only prolong the agony of supporters who wrongly believe their pleas of innocence.” Meanwhile former Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart expressed full con fidence in chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak’s public statement on

coming to our League. This is the greate st export that we have in our country. At the moment we’re being dragged through the mud.” Neville labelled the phrase “irrefuta ble evidence”as“bizarre”, adding:“It was a bit Trump-esque, wasn’t it?” Carragher insisted there can be no future at the club for senior executives connected to the issue. Writing in the Daily Telegraph , Carragher stated: “Manchester City are at the end of their Abu Dhabi era.

FORMER Manchester United fullback Gary Neville believes the standing of English football has taken a severe blow following Manchester City being found guilty of financial breaches, claiming the Premier League has been “dragged through the mud”. An independent panel convicted City across all counts concerning finan cial regulations, determining that the club “clearly intended to circumvent” rules over nine campaigns, primarily by masking direct owner financial contri butions as commercial sponsorship income. Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher has urged owner Sheikh Mansour to sell the club, while Neville argued that the fallout compromises the reputation of the entire division. “To listen to this, it is chilling,” he remarked on the Stick To Football pod cast. “We always think that we’ve got an enormous integrity, the Premier League, that we are the sort of League

single worm hole, every

lined up 11 vs 11 and had it out on the pitch. I won some games, lost some games, drew some games, and I shook hands and I walked off. “I know what I did, I

that sets the standard, and that it’s other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match-fixing, referee scandals. “This is now coming to our count r y . This is n o w

know what we did, and I know how it happened. It didn’t feel like we were scheming or plotting.” – The Independent/ Agencies

Former Man United rightback GARY NEVILLE

Former Liverpool defender JAMIE CARRAGHER

Punishment must fit the crime Staggering scale of Man City’s rule-breaking leaves Premier League with only one option

Ű BY MIGUEL DELANEY

football leaks of 2018. Here it was all is written down. Except, the only language more strident was that in the club’s own statement. City re-iterated their innocence and again referred to “a comprehensive body of irrefuta ble evidence”. “The club will therefore be relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory legal forums”. It went on that City “will now pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”. Previous statements were meanwhile elabo rated on, as there was a reference to how they “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”. It’s clear to read between the lines there. They intend on turning this legal cold war into open conflict. Chief executive Ferran Soriano, whose own role at the club is surely at risk pending the out come, delivered a three-minute video to staff stating that “the whole Premier League case against us is based on a single false accusation” and that “every other false charge that has been thrown at us comes from that simple, central and completely false accusation.” Soriano also described the “Premier League’s conspiracy theory”. This is where we are. It’s why it’s actually hard to see how games

the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators”, with City accused of being “significantly in breach of both the Premier League’s and Uefa’s spending limits”. Although the decision doesn’t use the words, the details mirror Uefa’s previous description of “a sophisticated, thoughtful and fundamental attempt to circumvent or violate” the rules. The actual words used were still far more damning than even some of City’s most vocal critics – as well as sources that worked on previ ous cases – expected. As one source with knowledge of that previ ous Uefa case says, “it exposes them for exactly who they are and what they did”. Consequently, it now looks worse than what had been one of football’s biggest corruption scandals, Italy’s Calciopoli. This isn’t about interpretation of phone calls. It is hard figures on pages. It amounts to the biggest scandal in club football history – a complete revisionism of the most dominant champions the Premier League has ever seen, the blackening of the name of a club, while also going to geopolitical levels. The observations on the course of the pro ceedings detail that both parties relied on evi dence from experts in the fields of “Abu Dhabi politics and governance”. Even the Premier League statement accom panying the decision, seemed to betray an atti tude that they were finally fed up with this. Executives at rival clubs had strong suspi cions that City were “cheating” long before the

can even be played in anything like a proper football atmosphere. Opposition fans up and down the country are just going to have banners declaring “sham”. Many will be furious at the amount they invested, for a competition that was made – yes – a mockery of. Perhaps even a “sham”, given City’s success. That is why points deductions don’t feel suf ficient. The scale of the impact in the other direction has been far too great. Expulsion would require a special shareholder vote, and a vote of 15, but feeling is currently running that high. As regards their potential success in an appeals process, that is open to question. The scope under the remit of the rules is limited. The widespread belief in football is that they will attack the process, as with the strategy against Uefa. One big difference is that this is described as a “rock solid” process. They may go to the High Court. But that delay would be even more damaging for the context of their games. It could become a diplo matic incident. As one geopolitical expert says: “The one thing that Gulf autocracies like Abu Dhabi won’t accept is embarrassment or shame.” But will they use up political capital to preserve City when so much else is at stake? This is the level we’re talking about. And yet this decision went to levels that no one expected. It is football’s worst ever scandal. It warrants a punishment to fit. – The Independent

A FTER the most hard-hitting language possible, the Premier League’s inde pendent commission has set up the most hard-hitting sanctions. There is surely little choice but to expel Manchester City from the competition. The conclusions are so profoundly damning that it even raises the question of whether opposition clubs could or would want to play with them. Worse, the new Independent Football Regulator has an even bigger decision than to whether to expel. The question will be now whether to exercise their statutory power to force a sale. The new body made considerable noise about their ability to remove “rogue owners” around the difficulties of Sheffield Wednesday and Morecambe. The details in the Premier League’s decision of the eight-year City case, published on Wednesday, go way beyond such a description. The word “sham” was used eight times over 40 pages, in reference to sponsorship, image rights and other arrangements that inflated revenue and reduced costs by more than £900 million (RM4.9b). One conclusion was “that certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest”. The Premier League itself went on to say “the club filed mis-stated accounts and concealed