Manchester City‘s legal fight with the Premier League has the potential to “spiral out of control”, a former top club executive has warned.
Christian Purslow, a former Liverpool managing director and Aston Villa chief executive, who also held a senior role at Chelsea, said the case could begin a chain of events that would be “appalling for the game”.
City have been found guilty of the vast majority of 115 charges brought forward by the Premier League.
The club were accused of a wide range of rule breaches which centred around claims that they inflated sponsorship revenue from connected companies and made other “off the books” payments to circumvent football’s financial rules.
Premier League clubs are seeking legal advice about compensation relating to the charges, while BBC Sport has been told that City will appeal.
Sanctions on the club are yet to be announced, but repercussions could include a points deduction, expulsion from the Premier League or a huge fine.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, Purslow appeared alongside football law expert Paul Gilroy KC, who described the case as a “seismic moment for world football”.
Purslow said: “It’s a sort of ‘where does this end?’ because if you look at every single season – the nine seasons which we now know Manchester City breached rules – then all of their 19 Premier League rivals in that season, to differing extents, suffered easy-to-compute loss. Whether it was a place in the Premier League – every place was worth £3m.
“Teams that came fifth who didn’t make the Champions League maybe lost tens of millions of pounds – and of course teams that were relegated. Let’s say the team that finished 18th would’ve finished 17th if Manchester City weren’t there. And they, of course, suffered huge loss.
“If you add all those claims up, over nine years, and that’s just in the Premier League, you can see that the potential here for this to spiral out of control is huge.
“I really hope that common sense prevails here and that there is a comprehensive solution between the authorities and Manchester City that looks at all these issues and tries to draw a line in the sand.
“Because a never-ending waterfall of legal claims and uncertainties for another four or five years would be absolutely appalling for the game.”
Gilroy added that, so far, four clubs have put in protective claims “reserving the right to claim compensation if City are found guilty”.
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