Pep Guardiola has already warned Manchester City what…

Pep Guardiola has already warned Manchester City what will happen if allegations are true

Pep Guardiola's faith in Manchester City looks could be tested to the limit after the Premier League charged the current champions with a raft of alleged financial regulation breaches.

Abu Dhabi-owned City have won four of the last five Premier League titles and recently topped the Deloitte Football Money League for the second year running with an annual revenue of £619million.

But on Monday, the Premier League issued a statement confirming that the Sky Blues had been referred to an independent commission for alleged breaches of financial regulations, dating back to the 2009/10 campaign onwards.

If proven, there could be serious implications for the club which could range from heavy fines, to points deductions and even 'expulsion' from the top flight.

City were hit with a ban from European competition by UEFA in February 2020 for FFP breaches before having it overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in July of the same year.

First-team boss Guardiola issued a defence of the club at the time, citing his trust in the outfit, but made it clear that if he had been lied to in any way it would lead to his immediate departure from the role he has held since 2016.

As per the Manchester Evening News, he said: “I am the spokesman for this club and every few days I’m here [in a press conference]. Every single word I said in all my press conferences, even if people don’t believe me, is because I truly, truly believe it. Why did I defend the club and the people? It’s because I work with them.

“When they are accused of something I ask them ‘tell me about that’, they explain and I believe them. I said to them ‘if you lie to me, the day after I am not here’. I will be out and I will not be your friend anymore.

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“I put my faith in you because I believe you 100% from day one and I defend the club because of that. When you put something here [sponsor on a shirt] it’s overpaid, but other [clubs] the money comes from the USA but the money is correct, even if it’s higher. We have to deal with that, we have to fight with that."

Although City's appeal to the CAS in July 2020 successfully overturned UEFA's ruling, City had requested that their imposed ban was delayed while the case was taken to court. It resulted in nine Premier League clubs writing to the CAS opposing the stay of execution request.

Those nine clubs reportedly were Arsenal, Burnley, Chelsea, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle, Tottenham and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Guardiola did not forget who they were.

He said: "What CAS said means a lot to all of us, in the end, it breaks all the suspicions. I cannot forget nine teams in the Premier League who want to sack Manchester City from the league and the European competitions, these nine teams push and I know here [in my head] who they are. I like when CAS said at that moment we did it properly.

“It’s a situation in 2012 or 2013, I was still in Barcelona, most of the people running that are not here now, but of course, I would not like it, what I like is to represent a club who do things properly [and] well, it’s not about winning the Champions League and the Premier League, we want to do well for our people and our fans."

Guardiola stood tall in his defence of Manchester City's last brush with football's law-makers and regulators, but he will now have to do it all over again in the face of huge scrutiny from not just the Premier League but the on-looking football world.

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