Micah Richards gave up pretending he was fine. Sat alongside Roy Keane on a Sky Sports panel this weekend, the former Manchester City right-back stopped mid-sentence, his voice cracking, as the conversation turned to the independent commission ruling that his old club had cheated its way through nine Premier League seasons.
“I feel let down by the fact that it’s dragged on for so long,” he told viewers. “Make it easier for the fans.”
That was the line that cut through. For a pundit paid to argue for a living, it was unusually quiet.
‘My integrity is being questioned’
Richards came through the City academy as a teenager and spent a decade as a first-team player, winning the Premier League title in 2012 before injuries forced him out of the club. On air, he kept returning to that stretch of his life.
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“I’d do anything for this club, but my integrity is being questioned,” he said. “I’m in a difficult position. I’ve given everything for this club, I’ve literally got one knee because of this club.”
He described the position he and other former players now find themselves in as impossible to reconcile.
“You’ve got two sides, one saying there’s charges, the other saying there is irrefutable evidence. It just leaves me and fans so devastated.”
What the commission actually found
An independent commission, convened under Premier League rules and reporting on 29 September 2026, found Manchester City guilty of 114 of the 115 charges brought against the club in February 2023. The breaches cover nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18.
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Central to the findings was the use of what the panel called “sham” sponsorship arrangements, in which contracts stated one figure while the actual money reaching the club came, in part, from the owners. The commission put the inflated revenues and reduced costs at roughly £900 million across the period.
City said it was “disappointed and surprised” by the ruling and insisted it holds a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” supporting its innocence. The club lodged its appeal on 1 October 2026, telling the independent Appeal Board the opinion contains “clear material errors” of law, principle and fact. A sanctions hearing has not been scheduled.
Keane: the players did nothing wrong
Keane was in no mood to let the moment pass. He pushed back on the idea that pundits should hold their fire while the appeal plays out.
“Well, they’ve been found guilty of it,” Keane said when Richards raised the appeal. “It’s not personal, it’s just against the club. What about all the other teams that are going out there and being honest?”
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He then turned directly to his colleague.
“They are the people who have let City down. Not the players or supporters, far from it.”
The exchange gave Richards a kind of permission he visibly needed. For much of the segment he kept trying to balance his loyalty to the dressing room with the words sitting in the commission’s report, and Keane’s framing drew a line between the two.
‘It’ll galvanise the players’
Even in the middle of his emotional response, Richards reached for the dressing-room reflex.
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“In terms of Man City, it’ll galvanise the players,” he said. “We’ve all been in dressing rooms where there is outside noise, you all come together.”
City have continued to play through the saga, and the appeal process will keep the final sporting consequence, points, titles, or something heavier, hanging over the club for months yet. The Appeal Board hearing is held in private, and the Premier League has said the outcome will only be made public when permitted. No date for that hearing, or for a sanctions hearing in the event the appeal fails, has been announced.
