Man City has been charged with breaking the Financial Fair Play rules around 100 times over a nine-year period.
No one knows yet if they are guilty or not, and no one knows what kind of punishment they will get if they are found guilty.
But we asked two former Premier League stars, John Barnes and Paul Parker, regarding the investigation and what their opinion is about it.
It has to be investigated very quickly
“I read that it can take four years to find out if Manchester City are guilty or not, which is outrageous. You can’t leave that hanging around for that long, so they have to investigate it way quicker than that”, says Paul Parker and continues:
“Now, they opened up the investigation so they have to follow up with a decision. This is about people’s life and family because it will not only affect the players who have secured their bag, it will also affect every single staff member from top to bottom in the hierarchy.”
“I just want this done and dusted so we can focus on football again. The players need to know as soon as possible, so they can plan what to do with their career.”
“An embarrassment for our country”
Parker says that he doesn’t know what kind of punishment Man City should get but he makes it very clear that he thinks it is an embarrassment for the country and he also has a suggestion on how it can be avoided in the future.
“But this is, without a shadow of a doubt, an embarrassment for our country. A few years ago we would never expect this to happen in our country and I’m devastated even though I try to focus on what I’m good at – analyzing football.”
“I don’t know what the right punishment would be as I´m not a lawyer. I’m not sure that a point deduction is worth that much but that’s not up to me to decide.”
“But what we should do in the future is to employ even more people for a company which could investigate this every single day. First of all, that would create work for more people in our country but it could also be a good way to avoid these things in the future.”
John Barnes suggests the players to stay at Man City
John Barnes is a bit more reluctant when it comes to criticising Man City and he sees no reasons why the players or Pep Guardiola would want to leave the club, even if they are going to get punished with point deduction and in that way will miss out on playing in the Champions League.
“Whether there are sanctions or fines we don’t know. What we do know is that they’re a fantastic football team.”
“When those players and the manager head to a game there’s nothing stopping them from putting on performances. If it’s a lifetime worth of punishments then some players may look to move on but that’s unlikely.”
“It’s a fantastic side with great players and a great manager. Why would they want to leave Man City? I know football is different and times have changed but when I came to Liverpool, they were going to be out of Europe for five years and that didn’t stop me from coming to Liverpool.”
