Manchester City have taken the next step in their legal fight with the Premier League after confirming they have appealed against the guilty ruling over breaches of the league\u2019s financial rules.<\/p>\n
An appeal had been anticipated, and City have now made that move official with a statement that strongly rejected the original decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cManchester City Football Club can confirm that at 7 p.m. on Thursday Oct.1, 2026 the Club lodged its comprehensive Appeal against the opinion of the Premier League Commission, in relation to the Premier League disciplinary matter,\u201d the statement read.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Club\u2019s firm position is that, on multiple grounds, the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to respect due process and are necessarily restricted in what we can say further until all proceedings are complete.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the centre of the dispute is the funding of several sponsorship agreements. The independent commission concluded that a number of those deals were primarily financed by the Abu Dhabi government, of which owner Sheikh Mansour is a member, rather than by the companies involved in the contracts.<\/p>\n
According to Sky Sports News , City intend to argue that the money came directly from Abu Dhabi officials and had nothing to do with Sheikh Mansour. The club\u2019s position is that sponsors sought financial support from the Abu Dhabi government to meet their obligations to City, not from Sheikh Mansour\u2019s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG).<\/p>\n
The Premier League said that funding was from ADUG and therefore linked to Sheikh Mansour, whose investment in the club is limited by the league\u2019s rules. The commission dismissed that explanation, ruling: \u201cIt was an explanation that the club had concocted well after the event in an attempt to conceal the realities of the Disguised Funding Scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case may also draw further interest from the English Football Association, which said on Friday it is waiting for a final verdict before deciding whether to act.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manchester City have lodged an appeal after the Premier League Commission\u2019s guilty ruling against them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[238],"tags":[1836,182],"class_list":["post-21161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-city","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}