Andy Gray believes Manchester City deserve a ‘huge’ points deduction and sees no other outcome than a guilty plea in the Premier League’s upcoming court case. The reigning champions and winners of five of the last six top-flight titles will return to court later this year for a long-awaited legal battle.
City are now entering their second full season since being charged by the Premier League for more than 100 financial breaches over a decade, which saw them come to dominate English football. Despite other, and very different, monetary cases being opened and closed in 2023/24 alone, City have yet to see their own monstrous situation fully addressed.
But ahead of Saturday’s home game against Ipswich, Pep Guardiola gave his thoughts on the matter. “I’m happy that it starts quickly and hopefully it’s over quickly, for the sake of all of us, especially the club, but also other Premier League clubs and all the people who don’t wait for the punishment,” he said.
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“I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that the independent panel – and I say again, independent panel – announces as soon as possible what happened and that we accept it as we have always done.” Guardiola has been regularly questioned about the charges and their potential impact, but has continued to downplay their impact on his players.
“No, we’ve been talking about it for three or four years,” he added. “We know it’s going to happen, we accept it and focus on our matches.”
City are now closer to clarity than ever, and former Manchester United and Arsenal defender Mikael Silvestre can see only one outcome. “He knows what’s coming,” the Frenchman said on beIN Sport. “The points deduction. ‘Once we have the points deduction, we can start the season,’ that was my feeling.”
Gray and beIN host Richard Keys revisited the topic and then went into more detail about their feelings on the subject. Here, MEN Sports has everything the couple said.
Andy Gray: They’re starting ‘soon’, do we have a date yet?
Richard Sleutels: It’s coming soon.
AG: Early next year.
RC: Next year it will be January.
AG: That’s what I mean, so next year, January, we’ll get some sort of answers from the independent tribunal. Yeah, it’s a very different time. They’ve ignored it, sort of.
We haven’t heard anything from Guardiola about finding a solution to keep everyone happy and it’s high time we do that. It’s the first time I’ve heard him say those words about it.
What’s going to happen? I think so, but I don’t know, I think it’s going to be something like a points deduction, a huge one.
RC: That is, if he is found guilty.
AG: They will be found guilty. There are no 115 charges and they will be innocent of all charges.
RC: Well, they may be guilty of a number of minor charges, rather than the more important ones.
AG: I think we both know that, well, without the independent tribunal, they wouldn’t be charging them if there wasn’t evidence surrounding them that suggested they might be guilty. So okay, they may be innocent of all 115, but we should have known that years ago.
RC: So why do we think they’ve been on the run for so long? They’ve been hiding, and now they’re all excited to come out.
I said on behalf of the Manchester City fans that this should have happened a long time ago because everything that has been won in that period is subject to change until this matter is resolved.
AG: But is that going to affect them? Whatever the ruling is, and in this case Richard you know more than I do about the legality of all this, is anything going to happen in this ruling that will change what they’ve already won?
RC: Certainly, if there is a judgement that casts a shadow of doubt on the way the football club has been run during a period of success that they have had, then as far as I am concerned it is. Everything that they have won during that time has to be questioned, it has to be.
I agree with you, the realist in me, I don’t believe in this. [sic] skeptics, I think we are more realists or cynics. Realism is the word, I look at it and conclude that someone somewhere has kind of steered him.
It is better to solve it as soon as possible, that is for sure. Don’t you think, what is gained, if they are found guilty, of not running the club properly during that period…
AG: Yes, but only if it can be established that whatever they are found guilty of affects a title they have won in the past seven years.
RC: That must have been the case.
AG: Well, I don’t know. I think it’s a big step for the Premier League and an independent tribunal to come out of this and say…
RC: I don’t get your line of thinking. How can they come out of this and think it’s not?
AG: This is what I told you. If they find them guilty of what, who knows, 115 charges…
RC: Financial irregularities.
AG: It would be easy for everyone, the Premier League, the courts, to make this go away if they said, ‘Okay, we finally get you on a certain number of charges, we’re going to deduct 40 points from you this season. They’re still in the Premier League even if they deduct 40 points from you this season, right, they’re still in the Premier League even if they deduct 40 points.
I don’t think they will win the league, but they will stay in the league because they are good enough to do that and stay in the league.
RC: Agreed. If that was the case and they were found guilty of irregularities from the period of unprecedented success, then we must conclude that this would not have happened if the club had not been run in that way during that period.
AG: I think it would prove that, yeah. Do you really think, knowing what you know, knowing that the people who are doing this, judging this…
RC: It’s an independent panel, Andy.
AG: Yeah, okay. Do you really believe that they’re going to turn around and say, ‘We’re going to take away three or four titles.’
RC: No, no, no. I get it. I agree with you now. I don’t think they’ll take the league titles away from them, but I think those of us who watch football would look at what they’ve won very differently if they were found guilty of irregularities during that period.
AG: That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think they’re going to take the title away from them, so what can they do? They can take points off them now, they can fine them. Fine them? Who cares. They can fine them as much as they want, Manchester City don’t care, they can pay for it out of their own pockets.
All I see is a huge point deduction and a huge fine.
RC: Well, bring it on, as Guardiola says, then we won’t talk about it anymore.