Gary Neville names 'only fair' punishment for Man City after 'chilling' charges verdict

· Mirror

Manchester City have been found guilty of breaches of the Premier League's financial rules, with Gary Neville claiming there's only one 'fair punishment'

Gary Neville has called for the Premier League to remove Manchester City's owners as a result of being found guilty of financial breaches. The English top flight released a damning statement this week, confirming that the club had been ruled to have breached financial charges they were slapped with back in 2023.

Fans, pundits and Premier League clubs now await the punishment that City will be handed as a result of their infractions, while the Greater Manchester-based team are expected to appeal the decision from an independent panel. They have until Friday, October 2 to do so.

While there have been suggestions that City could be stripped of their titles won between 2009 and 2018 - the nine-year period when the alleged infractions are claimed to have taken place - others have called for the club to be expelled from the Premier League. There has also been speculation that the Cityzens could be lumped with a points deduction, hefty fines or transfer embargoes.

However, Manchester United legend, Neville, believes that the best course of action is to bar City's current ownership from competing in the Premier League. Speaking on the most-recent instalment of Stick to Football, he explained:

> "Manchester City will recover as a football club because Manchester City have been there longer than these owners, they'll be there long after them and it's got an immense history. > > "Points deductions, fines, transfer bans, removing the titles - not giving them to others, just removing the titles - it's significant punishments. The only punishment that would be fair would be have huge consequences - the biggest consequence - would be removing the owners. > > "That is the only consequence if I was Manchester City that I would be worried about. And as a fan of Manchester City, if you wanted to keep the investment that you've currently got, that would be the one I'd be most concerned about. > > "However, if you're in football and you're thinking about consequence, what can be more serious than industrial-level financial doping that we've seen and they've been found guilty of? I'm not celebrating.

> "I'm chilled. This is chilling. I support Manchester United, [Jamie Carragher] supports Liverpool, [Roy Keane and Ian Wright] played for Manchester United, Arsenal, [Jill Scott] played for City. > > "This is chilling to listen to this. It's chilling. The Italian game has suffered immeasurably over the last 25 years, maybe from after [Calciopoli]. You know, we've played Juventus, we've alluded to this before, we felt at the time that this wasn't right. > > "And I'm not saying that's going to happen to the Premier League. But we always think we've got this enormous integrity, the Premier League, that we are the league that sets the standard and it's other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match fixing, referee scandals. > > "This has now come into our country, this has now come into our league. This is the greatest export that we have in our country in the world. > > "If you go around the world and talk about Liverpool, Manchester, Arsenal - people talk about the Premier League more than anything when you tell them where you're from in the world. And at the moment, we're being dragged through the mud."

It comes as Carragher has told Manchester City owners that they must sell the club in the wake of their guilty verdict. For the Daily Telegraph, he wrote:

> "Manchester City are 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 wrong believe their pleas of innocence."

City are expected to appeal the independent panel's decision, considering that the club have consistently claimed their innocence throughout the ongoing saga. They have until Friday, October 2 to do so.

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