Andy Burnham has said he would be “really concerned” if Manchester City’s owners decided to sell the club after it was found guilty of Premier League financial rule breaches.
Speaking to the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason on Wednesday, the prime minister said the situation was “contested by Manchester City” and praised the club’s owners since 2008 — led by Sheikh Mansour, the United Arab Emirates deputy prime minister and a member of its royal family — for their investment in Manchester. “I would be really concerned to lose them,” he said. “They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester and obviously the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.”
An independent commission found the club had breached the majority of the Premier League financial rules they were accused of breaking, a verdict City are expected to appeal. The club continue to deny any wrongdoing and have until 2 October to submit an appeal.
Among the panel’s findings were that City arranged “sham contracts” with a number of commercial partners as part of a scheme to disguise secret funding of more than £830m. The Premier League said City “systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade”. A sanctions hearing — which could take months to convene — will decide the punishment, and City can appeal both the guilty verdicts and any sanction. The possible penalties range from a huge fine, a points deduction or ejection from the Premier League, to being stripped of the eight trophies won during the affected period.
The case has also drawn a response from the Independent Football Regulator, set up by the government in 2025, which said it had raised “serious issues”. The regulator suggested it would explore options — including whether to strip the owners of their licence to own the club — once the disciplinary process was completed.
Burnham, who served as mayor of Greater Manchester until June, also thanked the City Football Group and the wider ownership for the money invested not only in the Etihad Stadium and the campus around it but in the city itself. He said he was “of course” confident that his own interactions with City’s owners while he was mayor would stand up to scrutiny.
He spoke from Hill Dickinson Stadium, the home of Everton, the club he supports. Everton were charged and deducted 10 points for more minor breaches in November 2023, a punishment reduced to six on appeal, and Burnham said he had fought for them because he still holds the view that they were not fairly treated in that process. Drawing a comparison with City’s current predicament, he said people had proclaimed Everton guilty at the time, and that with hindsight more would say the way it was handled was not fair. “So it would be wrong of me to leap to one side given the experience that I’d had before becoming prime minister,” he added.
Burnham described it as “frustrating when people rush to judgement”, and accepted there was “a lot at stake” for City fans, the club and Manchester itself, but said it would be wrong for him to intervene.
Manchester City said in a statement that they were “both disappointed and surprised by the opinion of the Premier League Commission” and maintained their innocence of all the accusations made. The findings have prompted widespread shock in football, both at their scale and at the strength of the Premier League’s comments about the club’s actions, with some fans and pundits questioning how the owners can carry on if rules were deliberately breached over the course of nine years.