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Burnham ‘really concerned’ if Man City owners sell up after rule breaches

Author Ahmad Ali Estimated read time 5 min read
Burnham 'really concerned' if Man City owners sell up after rule breaches
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Verified: Burnham became PM on 20 July 2026, and the comments are real (BBC interview with Chris Mason, 30 Sep). Note the £900m figure circulating in wires is revenue inflation *plus* cost reduction — the revenue finding alone is £830.69m, which I’ve framed accurately.

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Andy Burnham has said he would be “really concerned” if Manchester City’s Abu Dhabi owners sold the club, two days after an independent Premier League commission found City guilty of deliberately circumventing the competition’s financial rules across nine seasons.

Speaking to BBC political editor Chris Mason, the prime minister — Greater Manchester’s mayor from 2017 until he resigned the role in June to contest the Makerfield by-election — said: “I would be really concerned to lose them. They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester and obviously the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.”

The commission, which published its findings on 29 September, upheld all but one of the 115 charges brought by the Premier League. It concluded City “clearly intended to circumvent” the rules by using “sham” commercial contracts to inflate revenue by £830.69m between 2009-10 and 2017-18 while also understating costs — a combined distortion of the club’s accounts of more than £900m. Image rights income was overstated by around £74m and staff contract liabilities understated by roughly £17m, with the panel describing a disguised funding scheme routed through companies linked to the club’s Abu Dhabi ownership. The one charge not upheld concerned a specific allegation of failure to co-operate with the investigation.

A prime minister with a constituency interest

Burnham’s position is unusually complicated. Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group bought City in 2008, and the investment that followed reshaped more than the football club: the Etihad Campus transformed a stretch of east Manchester left derelict after the 2002 Commonwealth Games, and Manchester Life, a joint venture between the owners and Manchester City Council, built thousands of apartments in Ancoats and New Islington during Burnham’s time in the mayoralty.

That partnership is what he was defending. It is also why he declined to say whether the sanctions should be severe. “I have to keep my distance from it,” he said. “It would be wrong for me to do anything else.”

City, whose chief executive Ferran Soriano has consistently denied wrongdoing, maintain their innocence and have signalled they will appeal. The club had until 2 October to lodge formal notice. A separate sanctions hearing has yet to take place, so no punishment has been set.

Why Everton is the reference point

Burnham is an Everton supporter, and he reached for his own club’s experience rather than City’s when explaining why he would not pass judgement.

“I remember people proclaiming Everton guilty at the time and with hindsight I think more people would say that wasn’t fair,” he said, adding that it “would be wrong of me to leap to one side given the experience that I’d had before becoming prime minister.”

Everton were docked 10 points in November 2023 for breaching profitability and sustainability rules across the three-year period ending in 2021-22 — a £19.5m overspend, a fraction of the sums in the City case. The penalty was cut to six points on appeal in February 2024. Burnham, then mayor, accused the Premier League of “regulatory malpractice” and argued the deduction should be declared null and void.

The comparison cuts both ways, and that is the political problem. If a club that overspent by £19.5m lost six points, the question of proportionality now runs in the opposite direction.

What happens next

The sanctions hearing is where the case is decided in practice. The commission has a wide menu available to it:

  • a fine, potentially the largest in English football history
  • a points deduction, applied to the current season
  • a transfer embargo
  • expulsion from the Premier League
  • stripping of the three titles City won inside the charge period — 2011-12, 2013-14 and 2017-18

Running alongside it is a newer actor. David Kogan, chair of the Independent Football Regulator, said the commission’s decision “raises serious issues” and confirmed the IFR can assess the suitability of owners and executives once proceedings conclude. In the most extreme circumstances the regulator can require board changes or move against a club’s operating licence — the statutory lever that did not exist when Everton were charged.

That is the scenario behind Burnham’s answer. The sanction City fear most may not be a points deduction imposed by football’s own machinery, but a regulator deciding their owners are no longer fit to hold the club — and owners who conclude, before it gets that far, that the project is no longer worth defending.

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