Man City FFP: City set for High Court battle with PL after guilty verdict and chances of success revealed | OneFootball

Manchester City are said to be set for a High Court battle with the Premier League to prove their innocence after the guilty FFP verdict.

On Tuesday evening, the Premier League confirmed that Man City have been found guilty on almost all of their FFP charges. 

The Athletic’s David Ornstein first reported that Man City had lost by being found guilty on 114 of their 115 charges for their alleged wrongdoing between 2009 and 2018.

The Premier League’s statement was particularly damning, as they accused Man City of producing ‘sham’ deals to get past financial regulations and hide around £900m in revenue.

However, Man City have insisted on their innocence and have said that they will appeal the initial verdict, with leading sports lawyer Dan Chapman informing our colleagues at TEAMtalk that they could take their battle with the Premier League to the High Court.

“Given the statements by City via Soriano, I think it is reasonable to conclude that City will look to challenge the Independent Commission’s decision – whether that be the liability decision or the ultimate sanction decision, in the High Courts,” Chapman told TEAMtalk.

Chapman has also revealed how Man City could use the courts to challenge the arbitration decision. He added: “The starting point is that Premier League clubs have agreed, via their rules, to use only the agreed arbitration process for disputes such as this.

“The most likely route, which we can perhaps detect from the statements released by City so far, is what is known as a s68 challenge – which broadly means that it is alleged that the arbitration decision was based on serious procedural irregularity which caused substantial injustice.”

However, Chapman also noted that the bar needs to be “exceptionally high” for this to happen. He continued: “The bar is exceptionally high; it is not enough to show there have been some mere procedural errors or that City think the Commission did a very poor job of understanding the mass of evidence.”

And some possible good news for Man City is that there is already evidence of a successful challenge using this method, though Chapman also noted that the case involving Fleetwood Town and AFC Fylde was a “notable exception”.

“The main reason for that outcome was that after the arbitration hearing it had been proven that the arbitrator had corresponded with the FA about the scope and content of its rules, without telling the parties or letting them make submissions on the issues at hand,” Chapman said.

He added:  “Fleetwood is a notable exception; successful challenges in the civil courts against arbitration awards are extremely rare, outside of sports cases too.”

“It is hard to envisage how a High Court challenge could be successful…”

However, Chapman has explained that Man City are unlikely to be successful.

Chapman said: “Given that the Manchester City arbitration was held over such a long period of time with such extensive and able legal representation involved, and having read the detail of the Core Decision’s findings, it is difficult to envisage how a High Court challenge could be successful.”

He added: “The statements we are seeing so far from City do little to suggest they have any time for such negativity, or some might say realism, and I think we can expect that, amongst all other options available to them to appeal the Independent Commission’s decision on liability and in time sanction, an attempted challenge to the High Court is now inevitable.”