CITY’S BEST RESULT OF SEASON55
JUST about the only dark cloud still hovering over the Etihad is the imminent arrival of the bill from their legal team after the successful appeal against UEFA’s ban.
Everything else at the club, from the immediate future of manager Pep Guardiola, star names, finances and reputation has emerged gleaming bright.
Indeed, the only thing that can top yesterday would be the prospect of UEFA’s suits, rictus grins in place, handing over their most cherished trophy in Lisbon next month.
Of course, the decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport to uphold City’s appeal against a two-year European ban was a huge result.
Quite possibly the biggest result for the club since winning the title last year.
But it is still worth going through the positives.
The club have been saved from what they believe would have been a disproportionate punishment in football’s wilderness for financial improprieties which they strongly deny ever took place.
It has saved them an estimated £200million in potential lost revenue between now and the summer of 2022.
And it has set them up to press ahead with a summer rebuild of Guardiola’s squad which was unable to cope with the relentless beating hammered out by Liverpool as they surrendered their Premier League crown.
City sources stressed that transfer plans for the summer were already in place but added that yesterday’s ruling would undoubtedly have a “positive impact”.
Banishment from the Champions League would have limited their options and ramped up fees and wages.
The same source stressed yesterday that plans have been in place for months in keeping with the club’s usual processes – thought to be a replacement for Leroy Sane, right, and two defensive additions.
They can now act on them with certainty. It was a piqued UEFA who appeared keen to try to leave as much of a shadow over City as they could by stressing that “many of the alleged breaches were timebarred” and fell outside their own fiveyear time period.
Yet the club were confident that, even had those alleged breaches happened within the past five years, they would still have won.
City will have to pay an £8.9m fine (reduced from an initial £27m) for their lack of cooperation with UEFA’s initial investigation over the hacked emails but that is a trifling amount for them. There is still the matter of the Premier League investigation launched in March last year into sponsorship revenues which surfaced in the hacked emails as well as alleged irregular payments to Jadon Sancho’s agent in 2014.
But having beaten off investigations from FIFA regarding allegedly breaching rules on the international transfer of under-18s in 2019, and the FA who found no evidence of banned payments to Sancho’s agent, and now UEFA, confidence is high at City that there will be no further sanction. “We will just deal with it in the same way as we have dealt with this: methodically, and hope we prevail,” said the source.
With the Premier League asking many of the questions which have already been answered it looks like the coast is clear and the immediate and long-term future bright.
Win stops £200m loss, seals Pep’s future and paves way for rebuild