Where is the outcry over City charges?

WITH Everton deducted 10 points for failing to act with ‘utmost good faith’ and the world moving on, let’s reflect on the lengths to which Manchester City and their Abu Dhabi owners have gone to string out an investigation into the way they allegedly inflated the size of state-financed sponsorship deals.

The club provided a 79-word response to the Premier League’s announcement that they were charging them with 115 breaches of their rules. Then claimed they had provided ‘extensive engagement’ and a ‘vast amount of detailed materials’ to those investigating. So impossible has it been to extract the necessary documents, the League were forced to go to court last year and launch an arbitration process to get them. City employed barristers to challenge that process, arguing the arbitrators would be biased against them. A judge ruled against them. City employed barristers to challenge this publisher’s right to report that judge’s conclusions and its right to be in court when a decision of publication was being made — even though we had undertaken not to publish anything from it. The judge ruled against them.

It was Lord Justice Males, in that case brought by Associated Newspapers, who saw through City’s backsliding, in a case then heading towards its third year. ‘It is surprising, and a matter of legitimate public concern, that so little progress has been made after two and a half years — during which, it may be noted, the club has twice been crowned Premier League champions,’ the judge said. Amid the hand-wringing and pontificating about Everton, where is the indignation about City and Abu Dhabi?