Manchester City chief executive Ferran Soriano has delivered a “defiant” message to other club executives about the club being found guilty of a majority of the Premier League charges it faced, BBC Sport has been told.
Soriano was speaking at a board meeting of European Football Clubs — the body formerly known as the ECA — in Copenhagen, held before its general assembly on Tuesday. He is said to have vowed to fight the charges and to have stressed that the process still has a long way to run, restating the position set out by City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak in a letter to fans on Saturday.
The case against City concerned a wide range of alleged rule breaches, centring on claims that the club inflated sponsorship revenue from connected companies and made other “off the books” payments in order to circumvent financial regulations.
On Friday, it was announced that City had been found guilty of the vast majority of the 115 charges brought against them.