'Everyone knew': Marsch demands relegation for Manchester City after cheating verdict

Former Leeds United manager Jesse Marsch has called for Manchester City to be relegated from the Premier League, declaring that the club's financial wrongdoing was an open secret throughout English football. In an interview with The Guardian, the Canada head coach responded to an independent commission verdict that found City guilty of 114 of 115 financial breaches. The damning 40-page ruling, published on Tuesday, concluded that the club had disguised payments worth 900 million pounds over a nine-year period peppered with "sham" deals, artificially inflating sponsorship agreements and pumping money into the club from its Abu Dhabi owners to swerve Premier League spending rules. The findings covered the period between 2009 and 2018. City confirmed on Friday that it has lodged an appeal to overturn the verdict. "I think Man City should be punished severely. I think they should have to go down," Marsch said. "And by the way, everyone knew about it. Everyone knew." Marsch, who managed Leeds in 2022 and 2023, said the inconsistencies were visible even during his own time in the Premier League. Recalling the summer transfer window of 2022, he noted that Leeds and City were the only two clubs that claimed to have made money that summer. For Leeds, he said, it was true: they had sold Raphinha and Kalvin Phillips, the latter to City for 45 million pounds, while their ownership "didn't have deep pockets". City's claims were another matter. "When they said they got Erling Haaland for 52 million pounds, it's like: 'Yeah, OK, sure!' So, I knew there were inconsistencies in it, but what can you do? You just put your arms in the air and go, 'this is football.'" Relegation is among the sanctions available to the Premier League if the appeal fails and the verdict stands. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has suggested both a fine and a points deduction are the likelier outcome, citing the precedents of Nottingham Forest, Everton and Leicester City, all of which received points deductions for breaches of profitability and sustainability rules. Marsch's intervention strikes at the heart of the case's uncomfortable implication: that City's misconduct did not end in 2018, and that the trophies collected since may rest on the same rotten foundations. Whether the punishment fits the most damning financial verdict in Premier League history will define the league's credibility for a generation.