Neville details ‘only fair punishment’ for Man City after Premier League ‘dragged through the mud’

Gary Neville has explained what he believes would be the “only fair punishment” for Manchester City.

The Premier League has now confirmed that an independent panel has found City guilty on all charges related to breaches of their financial regulations over a nine-year period.

It was found that City had arranged “sham” contracts with commercial partners to inflate revenues and reduce costs to the tune of over £900m.

City maintain their innocence and are expected to appeal the ruling as we wait to learn the Premier League punishment and just how much they will have to pay their rivals in damages. It could all be over by January.

Etihad Airways have piled further pressure on the Premier League, threatening legal action over the ‘damaging implications’ of the commission’s findings, while making a telling blunder in their 307-word statement.

Expulsion is one of several punishments available to the independent commission, but 15 of the 20 Premier League clubs would have to vote in favour of such a punishment for it to be carried out, meaning City could get off scot-free.

Neville believes the only “fair” punishment would be for the independent regulator to remove the club’s owners.

“Manchester City will recover as a football club because Manchester City have been there longer than these owners, they’ll be there long after them, and it’s got an immense history,” Neville said.

“Points deductions, fines, transfer bans, removing the titles – not giving them to others, just removing the titles – it’s significant punishments. The only punishment that would be fair would be have huge consequences – the biggest consequence – would be removing the owners.

“That is the only consequence if I was Manchester City that I would be worried about. And as a fan of Manchester City, if you wanted to keep the investment that you’ve currently got, that would be the one I’d be most concerned about.

“However, if you’re in football and you’re thinking about consequence, what can be more serious than industrial-level financial doping that we’ve seen and they’ve been found guilty of? I’m not celebrating.

“I’m chilled. This is chilling. I support Manchester United, [Jamie Carragher] supports Liverpool, [Roy Keane and Ian Wright] played for Manchester United, Arsenal, [Jill Scott] played for City.

“This is chilling to listen to this. It’s chilling. The Italian game has suffered immeasurably over the last 25 years, maybe from after [Calciopoli]. You know, we’ve played Juventus, we’ve alluded to this before, we felt at the time that this wasn’t right.

“And I’m not saying that’s going to happen to the Premier League. But we always think we’ve got this enormous integrity, the Premier League, that we are the league that sets the standard and it’s other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match fixing, referee scandals.

“This has now come into our country, this has now come into our league. This is the greatest export that we have in our country in the world.

“If you go around the world and talk about Liverpool, Manchester, Arsenal – people talk about the Premier League more than anything when you tell them where you’re from in the world. And at the moment, we’re being dragged through the mud.”

‘Trump-esque’ Man City

City are planning to appeal the verdict after claiming the commission’s decision ‘contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe’.

City said ‘a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all (the club’s) positions’.

Neville described the ‘irrefutable evidence’ remark as “bizarre”, adding: “It was a bit Trump-esque, wasn’t it?”