Neville warns Premier League 'dragged through the mud' after chilling Man City guilty verdict

An independent commission has found Manchester City guilty on all charges related to breaching Premier League financial rules, determining the club “clearly intended to circumvent” regulations across nine campaigns by disguising direct owner contributions as commercial sponsorship income — overstating earnings and masking costs by more than £900 million.

Gary Neville, speaking on the Stick To Football podcast, said the verdict had inflicted serious damage on the standing of English football. “To listen to this, it is chilling,” the former Manchester United defender said. “We always think that we’ve got an enormous integrity, the Premier League, that we are the sort of league that sets the standard, and that it’s other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match-fixing, referee scandals. This is now coming to our country. This is now coming to our league. This is the greatest export that we have in our country. At the moment we’re being dragged through the mud.”

Manchester City have signalled their intention to appeal the decision, claiming the ruling “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe” and that “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all [the club’s] positions”. Neville dismissed that framing, labelling the phrase “irrefutable evidence” as “bizarre” and adding: “It was a bit Trump-esque, wasn’t it?”

Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher went further, calling on owner Sheikh Mansour to sell the club. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Carragher argued: “Manchester City are at the end of their Abu Dhabi era. The club can only heal and recover from the shame of their guilt once the custodians recognise they have failed in their duty and sell up. There is no way to sugar-coat this. The scale of the institutional cheating and lack of co-operation in the investigation means the position of all City executives involved is untenable. Fighting on will only prolong the agony of supporters who wrongly believe their pleas of innocence.”

Those calls stood in contrast to the position of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who said he would be “concerned” if the Abu Dhabi ownership group were to exit the club.