27/09/2026

Ownership Matters: Football Must Put Integrity Before Wealth

In recent days, MUST has been asked by a number of media organisations and others to set out our view following reports that Manchester City have been found guilty of the overwhelming majority – reportedly 114 out of 115 – of the Premier League charges brought against them.

Manchester City continue to deny wrongdoing and are expected to appeal. They are entitled to do so. But if these findings are upheld, this cannot be dismissed as an accounting error or an accidental breach of complex rules. It would amount to industrialised cheating on an unprecedented scale.

For years MUST has argued that ownership matters in football.

At Manchester United we have seen one form of bad ownership: the Glazers loading the Club with enormous debt while extracting hundreds of millions of pounds through dividends, interest and associated costs.

At the other extreme are owners who use enormous external wealth to financially dope their clubs and cheat rules designed to protect fair competition.

Neither represents proper stewardship of institutions which belong at the heart of their communities.

If the findings against Manchester City are upheld, the punishment must fit the crime and act as a genuine deterrent to any owner considering the same route.

Stripping titles or other retrospective sanctions may form part of that, but the more important question is what happens next.

Manchester City has been transformed during this period into one of the most powerful clubs in world football. If industrial-scale cheating helped create that advantage, one season outside the Premier League would plainly leave much of that benefit intact.

The punishment therefore has to remove the advantage gained, not simply impose a temporary inconvenience.

There is also a fundamental question of ownership and trust.

Manchester City’s owners continue to insist the Club has done nothing wrong despite the findings reportedly reached by an independent commission and the compelling documentary evidence which has been in the public domain for years.

If those findings survive appeal, football must ask whether the same ownership which presided over industrialised cheating can still be regarded as fit to own and control a football club.

If trust cannot be restored while that ownership remains in place, expulsion from the football pyramid unless and until there is a change of ownership should be among the sanctions considered.

Football clubs are not ordinary businesses. They are cultural institutions and community assets. Owners who exploit them and extract their wealth are not appropriate custodians. Nor are owners who financially dope them and cheat the rules.

Football should tolerate neither. This should be a reset moment to review the ownership of our clubs and the first step is to start to restore trust.