Premier League: City might win appeal but will not win public opinion 

So do Manchester City have the fight, and more importantly, the right to take on the judgement against them?

The Premier League’s announcement last week that City had been found guilty on most of the financial charges against them took many by surprise for the vehemence of its language. The independent commission declared that the club had entered into a series of “sham” and “concocted” deals to introduce undeclared funds into the business and build the club outside the rules.

Such was the severity of the verdict, it demanded an equally forceful response from City. At first glance, they appeared confident they had the answers to overturn it.

Appeal

Last Friday, City confirmed they had launched an appeal. The club that has built a dynasty over nearly two decades, winning eight Premier League titles along the way, said: “The club’s firm position is that, on multiple grounds, the opinion [of the independent commission] contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe.

“The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case.” “Irrefutable evidence” is strong language and reflects the confidence within City’s ownership that the verdict can be overturned. But as the week has progressed, the strength of that evidence has increasingly come into question.

We are not legal experts, and arguments over every point of law will be fought every bit as fiercely as points on the field. Nevertheless, it is worth examining City’s main arguments against the commission’s findings and will they stand up to scrutiny.

Arguments

The central pillar of their defence, at first glance, looks shaky.

City argue that much of the disputed sponsorship money came from the Abu Dhabi government and its entities rather than personally from the club’s ownership and therefore represented legitimate commercial arrangements.

But the potential conflict of interest is obvious. City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan is a senior member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and deputy prime minister within the UAE government. Separating the legitimate sponsorship provided by Etihad Airways from additional funding alleged to have come from the Abu Dhabi government, as though the two had no connection to one another or to City’s ownership, could prove difficult.

Another plank of City’s defence concerns the leaked emails obtained by Portuguese hacker Rui Pinto and published by German magazine Der Spiegel. City contend they were illegally obtained, taken out of context and used to support “false assumptions”.

The commission, however, has already considered the emails and their significance. City must now convince an appeal panel that conclusions drawn from them, including allegations over the true source of sponsorship funding and other payments, were wrong.

City have also attacked the commission’s use of the word “sham”, arguing that such language prejudices public perception of the transactions and potentially the appeal process.

That feels like a considerably weaker line of attack. Ultimately, the substance of the transactions matters more than the language used to describe them.

City have further complained about the length of time taken to reach a judgement and argued that any breaches resulted from the complexity of the rules rather than bad faith.

The delay was frustrating for all football fans, but elongated by City obstructions to investigators and so seems an irrelevant defence. As for complex rules, ignorance is also not a defence, and it is not like the club doesn’t have access to top financial and legal advice here.

Opinion

Those arguments will now be picked apart during the eight weeks of appeal.

City may yet succeed in overturning some or all of the findings against them. But whatever happens in the legal battle, winning the argument in the court of public opinion could prove considerably harder.

The first demonstration of that may come at Anfield on Sunday afternoon, where the supporters of the club that could reasonably feel suffered the most during City’s era of ‘dominance’ are unlikely to leave anyone in doubt about their verdict.