Man City cough up £30MILLION on lawyers to fight Premier League’s 115 charges – more than star defender’s wages
MANCHESTER CITY have spent over £30million on lawyers to fight the Premier League’s 115 charges.
The latest accounts for parent company City Football Group shows that City had splashed a running total of £30,596,000 on legal fees in the war against PL chiefs over alleged rule breaches by the end of the 2023-24 campaign.
That was an increase of nearly £10.7m on the figure from 12 months before – or £205,000 per week.
The staggering sum is equivalent to what Josko Gvardiol, one of City’s top 10 earning players last season, was paid.
CFG said in documents filed at Companies House that the £30,596,000 was “due to expenses incurred by City Football Group Limited on behalf of Newton Investment and Management”.
NIM is the Abu Dhabi-based company through which Sheikh Mansour owns his majority stake in CFG, which in turn owns City and a number of other clubs worldwide.
SunSport understands that this money is the running total of City’s legal costs in their war against the Prem chief.
And the bill for this season is set to be the highest yet.
The main disciplinary case between the Premier League and the club was heard between September and December, with the three-person independent panel set to deliver their verdict in the coming weeks.
Respected lawyer Lord Pannick KC was hired by the club in February last year to lead their legal team as they looked to clear their name.
BEST ONLINE CASINOS – TOP SITES IN THE UK
Lord Pannick reportedly charges around £5,000 an hour for his services.
By splashing out such huge sums City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan is only making good on his alleged vow when City were fighting previous financial charges brought by Uefa.
In 2020, al-Nahyan was reported to have said he would said”“rather spend £30million on the 50 best lawyers” and sue Uefa “for the next 10 years” than accept their punishment.
His remark came after the club were banned from the Champions League for two years and hit with a £25million fine, after being found of falsely inflating their sponsorship revenues when submitting accounts.
The ban was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) a few months later and the fine was reduced to £8.9million for their “disregard” of the principle of cooperation in investigations.
City deny wrongdoing over the 115 charges, but could face severe punishments if the allegations are proven.
Last month City won a separate legal battle with the Premier League over “unlawful” financial rules.
An 18-page tribunal verdict ruled the Prem’s sponsorship regulations on Associated Party Transactions – which ran from December 2021 to November 2024 – were unlawful in their entirety.
The Premier League recently warned its clubs that it spent more than £45million on legal bills last season, due to various disputes over its financial regulations.