Gary Neville has called for Manchester City’s current owners to be removed from the Premier League following the club’s guilty verdict in their long-running financial case.
An independent commission found City guilty of 114 of the 115 charges brought against them, with the Premier League confirming the findings earlier this week.
The sanctions have yet to be decided, with a points deduction, fines, a transfer ban, stripping of titles and even expulsion from the Premier League among the potential outcomes that have been discussed.
Neville believes none of those punishments would go far enough and instead argued that removing the club’s current ownership would represent the strongest available consequence.
Speaking on the latest episode of Stick to Football, the former Manchester United captain 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 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.”
Neville compares City case with Italian football crisis
The former United defender said he was concerned about the potential impact of the case on the reputation of the Premier League, particularly given how the competition is viewed around the world.
He referenced the damage caused by scandals in Italian football over the past quarter of a century, including the fallout from Calciopoli, which resulted in Juventus being relegated from Serie A in 2006.
“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.”
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