Manchester City Ownership Under Scrutiny as Football Regulator Warns of Forced Sale Powers
Manchester City’s legal and regulatory problems have moved into a more serious phase. According to the Mail, the chair of the Independent Football Regulator has made it clear that the body has the authority to force a sale of the club if it concludes the owners have failed the standards required under the law. That is not background noise. That is the regulator stating, in plain language, that ownership itself could come under review.
The key point here is simple. The Independent Football Regulator, created last year and operating under the 2025 Football Governance Act, can do more than issue warnings. It can remove owners, suspend licences and revoke them if the wrongdoing is serious enough. In Manchester City’s case, that matters because the Premier League case has already delivered a damaging first verdict, even if the appeals process is still to come.
City were found guilty last month on most of the charges brought against them over alleged financial wrongdoing. The ruling said the club disguised payments worth £900 million over a nine-year period and described a number of arrangements as sham deals. The findings also stated that sponsorship values were artificially inflated and that money from Abu Dhabi ownership was fed into the club through disguised payments to get around Premier League spending controls. City have appealed, and that appeal is central to what happens next.
David Kogan, the regulator’s chair, did not dance around the scale of the powers available. “We have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club if we believe that they run a club in a way that is neither fit, fair or done with propriety,” he said. When asked whether an owner could simply refuse, his answer was direct, “No, we’ve got absolute power to do so.”
Independent Football Regulator Steps Into Focus
This is where the story becomes bigger than Manchester City alone. English football has never really had a regulator with this sort of reach. The Premier League can charge and punish clubs under its own rules. The Independent Football Regulator sits above that, looking at whether individuals are suitable to own and run clubs at all. That means the conversation can shift from points deductions and fines to governance, control and long-term stewardship.
Kogan was careful not to get ahead of the process. He pointed out there are still major unknowns, particularly the sanctions from the Premier League case and the fact that the published findings were redacted. In other words, the public has seen only part of the picture. The unredacted material, and the evidence behind it, could shape whether the regulator opens its own investigation into those involved.
He made that caution explicit. “There are two further elements that might come up before the appeal that we don’t know,” Kogan said. He added, “I am not going to get pushed into making any judgement on this until we’ve seen all of those questions being answered and then we will have to decide whether we’re going to mount our own investigation and come to a conclusion on that and what we’re going to do. And pre-empting that would be a colossal mistake.”
Manchester City Appeal Keeps Outcome Open
So where does that leave Manchester City? In a very uncomfortable place. The club have every right to appeal and, until that process is complete, the final sporting and regulatory consequences remain unsettled. But the existence of an appeal does not erase the findings already made. It simply delays the full consequences and leaves open the possibility of more layers of scrutiny.
There is also an obvious political dimension, even if nobody involved wants to say that too loudly. Prime Minister Andy Burnham has already indicated he would be worried to lose Abu Dhabi ownership from the Premier League, while the UAE government has reportedly warned that billions of pounds in funding could be pulled over the ruling. That raises the temperature, but it should not alter the principle. Either there is one set of rules and one standard of ownership, or there is not.
Political Pressure Claim Will Be Tested
Kogan insists the regulator has not been leaned on. He says there has been no political pressure on this issue or any other, and he has repeated that he would resign immediately if that changed. That is a strong line to take, and he needed to take it. A regulator without independence is window dressing.
The difficult part comes next. If the appeal confirms the most serious findings, the Independent Football Regulator will have to show whether its powers are real or merely theoretical. Manchester City, the Premier League and the regulator are now tied together in a test case for the future of football governance in England. The forced sale threat may never be used. But the fact it is now openly on the table tells you how serious this has become.
Our View
This is exactly the kind of story that leaves a bad taste, whatever side of the legal argument anyone sits on. There is frustration because the club has spent years building a modern powerhouse on the pitch, only for the conversation to keep returning to accounting, ownership and credibility. That is exhausting. Supporters want to talk about football, not redacted rulings, sham deals and whether a regulator can force a sale.
There is also genuine anxiety in this. If the regulator is serious, then this could go far beyond a points penalty or a financial punishment. Ownership instability changes everything. It affects planning, recruitment, commercial confidence and how the club is seen around the world. That is before getting into what rival fans will do with it.
The appeal now feels absolutely crucial, not just for legal reasons but for the club’s identity. If City can overturn key findings, then the regulator’s threat stays hypothetical. If they cannot, this becomes a long, bruising battle over who controls the club and what legitimacy looks like in modern football. Nobody who cares about City should pretend that is a small matter. It is massive, and the uncertainty is the worst part of all.
