Man City’s defence leaves you wondering: is that it?
Man City’s defence leaves you wondering: is that it?
Sam WallaceFri, October 2, 2026 at 6:03 AM UTC
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Andy Burnham developed a close business relationship with City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak during his time as mayor of Greater Manchester - Getty Images/Paul Ellis
An explanation arrived at “very late in the day” and one that the independent commission hearing Manchester City’s case considered to have been created “to obscure and conceal” the reality of how the club’s ownership gave money to sponsors to cheat the Premier League’s rules.
All in all, not a successful strategy but the club will be playing it again with their appeal in its epic case against the Premier League. City’s argument will be that the vast fees at the heart of this cheating case – the “sham contracts” worth £830m – were not money backchannelled into the club by the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) via inflated commercial deals. Instead, they were top-ups provided by the Abu Dhabi government in order that the Abu Dhabi brands and companies could meet the liabilities for purportedly legitimate commercial deals agreed with City. Deals agreed at levels, the club’s counsel appears to have argued, that these would-be sponsors seemingly could not afford to pay.
Quite why so many commercial entities would agree deals with a Premier League club – and not a very successful one in the early days of the process – that those companies could not afford, is not clear. From the 40-page decision document released by the Premier League on behalf of the commission that heard the case, it is not even stated whether the Abu Dhabi government was repaid that money. We may have to wait until we see the substantial appendices to the case, as well as the removal of certain redactions, before that is established.
As for the argument itself, one has to ask: is that really it? This painful process, the biggest legal case in the history of British sport, will approach its fourth anniversary with City’s counsel replaying an argument that the commission found utterly implausible. When confronted with the Abu Dhabi government top-up argument, the commission concluded that it was fiction. One that was created by [names redacted] on the instruction of [other names redacted], for reassuring the sponsors and concealing the true source of the payment. As an argument it was a total bust. Not only that, but an explanation that came suspiciously late in the day, according to one unredacted footnote.
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It also says something about the nature of City’s ownership that has been denied consistently and tenaciously from the very start of the Abu Dhabi regime. That being the acquisition of City was a private investment on the part of a private individual – Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed. The Emirati prince, brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates, was at pains to point that out in his letter to supporters in September 2008. It has been maintained ever since: City are not a nation-state-owned club.
Yet this is a non-nation-state-owned club which can expect state-support for commercial partners seeking simply to fulfil contracts. Perhaps someone should add those sort of unspecified state loans as a prohibited item in an amendment to the Premier League associated-party transaction rules. It was only recently that City had plenty to say about clubs that took interest-free loans from their owners.
There have, in the 24 hours since Prime Minister Andy Burnham laid out his unexpected defence of the good character of ADUG, been more than one suggestion that City’s stated position as a club not owned by a nation-state could be crumbling. Not only that, but a general sense that an issue that was previously around the edges of Britain’s relationship with the UAE might now have become the central theme of the relationship between the two countries, and one of the most pressing diplomatic issues for the British Government. The temperature is rising. How long before Donald Trump says something about it?
No one doubts that this is awkward for a government desperate for growth and a new Prime Minister trying to establish his competency to lead. The evidence that has accumulated over three and a half years in this case has been vast. A 42-day hearing, 7,000 pages of transcribed testimony, millions of documents involved in disclosure. All of it now seems to come down to the argument from City’s counsel that all those millions of pages did not, in fact, reveal in some detail a scheme to backchannel money from City’s owners to various sponsors and back to City again. Instead, what those three legal minds on the commission were in fact looking at was something completely different.
This was just about cash-flow. This was just a simple UAE government loan programme to support sponsors who had agreed contracts with City that were so expensive that they could not afford to pay them. It was a veritable Marshall Plan for Etihad Airways or Etisalat or the Abu Dhabi tourist board. If it feels hard to believe then you would not be alone. The commission did not buy it either.
Source: “AOL Money”
