Four Premier League Clubs ‘Seeking’ Compensation if Man City Are Found Guilty

Four of Manchester City’s biggest Premier League rivals have reportedly reserved the right to seek compensation if Pep Guardiola and his entourage are found guilty of breaching the 115 financial rules set by figures of the English top flight.

The club’s ‘Trial of the Century’ – which relates to charges between 2009 and 2018 – began on 16 September and is believed to be nearing a resolution with early 2025 being set as a release of a final verdict. Guardiola believes that fellow sides in the top flight are hoping that City are punished.

In a stance that has been maintained to this day, the Etihad Stadium-based outfit were ‘surprised’ by the charges’ and have a ‘body of irrefutable evidence’ to bolster their defence against the Premier League.

While proceedings are continuing at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London, the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur are all preparing for the outcome that City are found to be guilty of their 115 charges.

According to Martyn Ziegler of The Times, the aforementioned quartet of Premier League outfits have taken the formal step of ‘lodging legal notices’ via arbitration in order to reserve their respective rights to seek compensation should City be found guilty.

While all four clubs, whose compensation could total hundreds of millions of pounds, have declined to comment on the matter, it is believed that Todd Boehly-owned Chelsea have not lodged a legal notice relating to compensation.

As explained in depth by The Times’ report, should Guardiola’s men be found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial regulations, fellow clubs in the top tier would be able to claim for loss of income by virtue of missing out on the league title, qualification for the Champions League or other European competitions over the course of several campaigns.

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According to the report, all four clubs were ‘advised by lawyers’ that there was a potential six-year statute of limitations period – starting from 5 November 2018 when the documents were first published by German publication Der Spiegel.

Despite 2009 being marked as the start of City’s alleged rule-breaching, the six-year period for legal claims – included in the 1980 Limitation Act – means that said claims can be lodged when details of the alleged breaches were first revealed to the public eye.

Clubs – who have also been advised that waiting until the outcome of the hearing could risk any compensation claim being deemed to be out of time – are unable to sue one another through the courts under Premier League rules, but they can do so through arbitration under Rule X.