Manchester City have appealed the ruling. That has not slowed anyone else.
David Kogan, chair of the Independent Football Regulator established under the Football Governance Act 2025, has put the club’s ownership on notice. His position is simple: if City are ultimately judged to have been run improperly, the body he leads can step in over the Premier League’s head.
“We have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club if we believe that they run a club in a way that is neither fit, fair or done with propriety,” Kogan told GiveMeSport.
Asked whether an owner could refuse, he replied: “No, no, no. We’ve got absolute power to do so.”
Kogan has not opened his own file on City. He wants the appeal process to run first, telling GiveMeSport he would not be pushed into any judgement until the outstanding questions had been answered.
A £55m taxpayer loan in the spotlight
A second line of scrutiny has opened in the city itself. The overview and scrutiny committee of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority is examining a £55m taxpayer-backed loan handed in 2017 to three property companies ultimately controlled by Abu Dhabi United Group, Sheikh Mansour’s investment vehicle and the owner of Manchester City.
The money went through the Greater Manchester Housing Investment Loan Fund to Manchester Life, a joint venture set up in 2014 to build around 6,000 homes across east Manchester. The two meetings that approved the loans were chaired by the then mayor, Andy Burnham.
John Leech, the Liberal Democrat opposition leader on Manchester city council and now chair of the scrutiny committee, is leading the review.
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“We just want to be clear that there is a transparent rather than an opaque process,” Leech said.
The combined authority has stressed that all three loans were repaid in full with interest.
UK audit watchdog moves in
A third body has quietly moved on the club. The Financial Reporting Council, Britain’s audit regulator, took over consideration of accounting irregularities at the club from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales on 30 September, a day after the Premier League verdict was published.
No formal FRC investigation has been opened. In a letter to the Labour MP Liam Byrne, the council said it was weighing whether the commission’s findings give it grounds to launch one. Any inquiry would also examine the conduct of City’s auditor, BDO.
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What the commission actually found
The commission’s verdict was published on 29 September and covered the 2009-10 to 2017-18 seasons. City were found to have arranged “sham” contracts with commercial partners that misrepresented their true terms, with Abu Dhabi United Group topping up sponsorship payments off the books. The commission concluded that the arrangements inflated the club’s revenues by more than £900m ($1.2bn) over the near-decade in question.
12 weeks to overturn the verdict
City lodged their appeal on 1 October, calling the commission’s opinion “unsafe” and saying it contained “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact.” A fresh three-person appeal board, selected by Sir Gary Hickinbottom, chair of the Premier League’s judicial panel, must hear the case within 12 weeks of that date and over no more than five consecutive days. Its decision is final.
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