Man City Guilty of £830m Sham Contract Scheme — SkimNews
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- Manchester City were found guilty by an independent commission of arranging "sham contracts" with commercial partners to disguise secret funding of more than £830m between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.
- City were convicted on all charges related to breaches of financial rules and all but one charge of failing to co-operate with the investigation; the club continues to deny wrongdoing and has until 2 October to submit an appeal.
- Micah Richards, a former City defender and member of the 2011-12 title-winning squad, said he felt "absolutely devastated" by the "damning" reports, recounting that his childhood host family — supporters of the club for 60-odd years — rang him in tears seeking answers.
- Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said the club remains confident of proving its innocence, while CEO Ferran Soriano told staff and players in a video message that "irrefutable evidence" had been "ignored" by the commission.
- Jamie Carragher called the club's response "gaslighting," said City's titles should be stripped from the record, and argued Liverpool were "robbed" of the 2013-14 Premier League — the closest Steven Gerrard's side ever came to winning the title, finishing two points behind City.
Why it matters: City won three Premier League titles during the period covered by the verdict, and Carragher explicitly called for those titles to be revoked — directly reshaping how Liverpool's Gerrard-era near-misses are remembered. With the club's 2 October appeal deadline now set and the ownership publicly denying guilt, the legitimacy of an entire era of City's silverware now sits in formal dispute, not just public opinion.
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