Holloway demands Man City be stripped of titles and dropped to non-league over financial breaches

Former Blackpool and current Swindon Town manager Ian Holloway has called for Manchester City to be stripped of their titles, expelled from the Premier League and EFL, and demoted to non-league football following the club’s guilty verdict on 114 breaches of Premier League financial rules.

Speaking ahead of Swindon’s League Two home fixture against Crewe Alexandra on Saturday, Holloway delivered a passionate six-minute address in which he accused City of ‘seriously denting football’ and claimed the club were ‘still lying now’ amid their ongoing appeal. City deny the charges and have appealed the verdict.

Holloway, 63, managed Blackpool in the Premier League during the 2010/11 season — part of the nine-year period in which City were found to have broken the rules. Asked whether he felt ‘robbed’ that season, he did not hold back.

“In that whole season, I felt robbed,” Holloway said. “My team played so well against Man City. We scored three perfectly good goals. We had one disallowed for being offside, and they scored two. One was not a foul, and the other one was offside. The referee sent me a letter saying we cost you nine points this year.”

Holloway was clear that he does not believe former City manager Pep Guardiola was personally implicated in the breaches, but he reserved his sharpest criticism for the club’s ownership. “The game worldwide is being ruined by people who are rich, who think they can do God knows what they want to it,” he said. “They have seriously dented football and I think it’s harmed it, and I would absolutely hammer ten bells out of the whole lot of them because they knew what they were doing.”

Holloway argued that football belongs to everyone regardless of wealth, and used the occasion to reflect on watching his granddaughters play the game at grassroots level — a reminder, he said, of why he still loves the sport despite what he sees as its corruption at the highest level.

His call for City to be relegated to at least the National League — the fifth tier of English football — goes further than most public figures have been willing to state. The case remains one of the most consequential in Premier League history, with the independent commission’s full findings still being digested across the game.