James Severn Explains What Manchester City Must Prove to Win Their Appeal

• Lawyer James Severn told BBC Sport that Manchester City face a difficult road in their appeal against a guilty verdict on Premier League financial rules.
• City were found guilty on all charges covering the 2009-10 to 2017-18 seasons, including creating “sham contracts” to inflate sponsorship deals by £830m.
• Football finance expert Kieran Maguire says City’s lawyers could try a “mess and noise” approach aimed at the Commission’s process rather than its evidence.

The Argument City Will Take to the Appeal Board

Manchester City have a steep climb ahead if they want the guilty verdict overturned, according to a leading lawyer. James Severn, a member of the London Solicitor Litigation Association and a partner at Penningtons Manches Cooper, told BBC Sport the club face major obstacles in their appeal.

City were found guilty of all charges linked to breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. The Commission found they created “sham contracts” to inflate sponsorship deals by £830m. The club say they are “innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League” and that they hold “irrefutable evidence” the ruling “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”.

In the appeal, City will argue that the payments came from the United Arab Emirates government as a shareholder of the sponsors, and that the Commission’s judgement contains inconsistencies. On that reading, the sponsorship amounts were legitimate and were not topped up by the owners.

Severn said the appeal is “not simply an opportunity to invite a new panel” to reverse the decision. “City will need to identify a material error of law, principle or fact, or serious procedural unfairness, which materially affected the Commission’s decision,” he said.

The Etihad Evidence Problem

Etihad Airways, one of City’s principal sponsors and central to the case, had previously stated that the Abu Dhabi government had not paid for its sponsorship of the club. That statement came in court documents as part of a US investigation in New York in 2015. City will say it lacks the full context and does not prove they were inconsistent with the evidence.

The club insist government documents fully support their case. Severn pointed out the catch. “The bank statements, government records and contemporaneous payment documents could be powerful evidence if they establish a clear audit trail showing the disputed funds came from the Abu Dhabi government rather than the owners,” he said. If those papers were already in front of the Commission, they might not help much on appeal.

“However, if that evidence was already before the Commission, which nevertheless concluded that the arrangements were a sham, City will face an uphill struggle to demonstrate the finding was materially wrong,” Severn added.

Shortly before City’s appeal was confirmed, Etihad issued its own statement. The airline said it had never been “given the opportunity by the Premier League to be represented” in the case. Severn said the complaint “does not, of itself, establish procedural unfairness”.

“Etihad was not the respondent and is unlikely to have had an independent right to participate in the proceedings,” Severn said. “It is likely to have been open to either party to obtain and present such evidence to the Commission.”

Kieran Maguire on the “Mess and Noise” Route

City could also argue a material factual error, with a key part of their defence being that the Commission relied too heavily on emails obtained through the Football Leaks files. Severn said the club would need to show the Commission misunderstood the emails or failed to read them in their proper context. The difficulty, he said, is that the Commission heard extensive witness and documentary evidence and still reached findings of sham arrangements and disguised owner funding. The panel was made up of retired senior judges and leading barristers who have spent their careers sifting complicated facts.

Kieran Maguire, professor of football finance at the University of Liverpool, told BBC Sport the Commission found “the documents were retrofitted to fit the crime”. He said the panel must have decided the evidence and the credibility of City’s witnesses were poor.

Maguire said City could attack the Commission itself if they can prove it was a flawed construct, with members picked by the Premier League rather than by City. “But that seems remote,” he said. He still believes “there is a route”.

City have brought in Mark Howard KC to advise on the appeal, while Etihad Airways has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel. Maguire said that, given the lawyers recruited, City might go down what has been described to him as a “mess and noise” approach. That would mean trying to discredit everything about the Commission’s process rather than the evidence presented.

“I’ve seen the documents that Abu Dhabi presented to the New York case. I’m not a lawyer, but from an accounting point of view, they can be seen in more than one way,” Maguire said.

How Long Until a Final Answer?

There is understood to be a prescribed 12-week process for the appeal, but David Kogan, chair of the Independent Football Regulator, said in October that he expects the hearing to take place around the middle or end of January. Severn said that, given the scale and complexity of the case, a final outcome could take a long time to arrive. He called it “impossible to assess reliably” whether City will win, and added that “doing so will not be easy”.