Man City guilty: Gary Neville names only ‘fair punishment’ after 114 charges verdict

By Oliver Thomas | 01 Oct 2026 12:50, Last updated: 01 Oct 2026 12:52

Former Manchester United defender Gary Neville believes that the Premier League should remove Manchester City’s owners, after the club was found guilty of 114 of the 115 financial rule breaches levied against them.

The Premier League released a damning document earlier this week confirming that Man City have been found guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the league’s financial rules and the majority of charges in relation to its failure to co-operate with the league's investigation.

City have been accused of using "sham" contracts to disguise more than £900m in secret funding and falsely inflate revenues between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 campaigns.

Premier League CEO, Richard Masters, has said that the findings show that Man City "systematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade."

However, Man City continuously insist that they are “innocent” and there is “irrefutable evidence” to clear their name.

The eight-time Premier League champions, owned by the Abu Dhabi United Group, intend to submit an appeal before the deadline on Friday, October 2.

It remains to been seen what sanctions Man City will receive, with huge fines, transfer bans, points deductions, stripping of titles and even expulsion all mooted.

However, Neville has called for the Premier League to bar Man City's current ownership from competing in the Premier League, a punishment Citizens supporters should be “concerned” about.

Speaking on the Stick to Football Podcast, Neville said: "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 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."

This comes after fellow pundit and former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher revealed he is in favour of stripping Man City of their titles which were “robbed” from other clubs.

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