David Kogan says the Independent Football Regulator has “absolute power” to force Manchester City’s owners to sell if the club is ultimately found to have run improperly, adding a fresh layer to the Manchester City Premier League rules breach saga while the appeal remains unresolved.
The City case is already one of the most serious governance disputes in English football. An independent commission found that over a nine-season period the club set up “sham” commercial arrangements to inflate revenues or reduce costs by more than £900m. City were later found guilty by the commission of circumventing Premier League rules, and they have lodged an appeal against that verdict.
Kogan, who chairs the Independent Football Regulator, was clear about the scale of the regulator’s possible powers if the facts eventually justify intervention.
“We have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club if we believe that they run a club in a way that is neither fit, fair or done with propriety,” he said.
And when asked whether that could extend to forcing a sale, he gave an even stronger answer: “No, no, no. We’ve got absolute power to do so.”
Why the regulator’s language matters
The significance here is not that any action has been taken already. It has not. The appeal is still ongoing, so no regulatory step has followed the commission’s findings at this stage.
But Kogan’s choice of words matters because it shows the scale of the Independent Football Regulator’s reach if Manchester City are eventually found to have been run improperly. In the background, the Financial Reporting Council assumed “regulatory consideration” of the matter on 30 September, meaning the case is now being examined on more than one front.
That does not mean a forced sale is imminent. Kogan was also careful not to jump ahead of the process.
“I am not going to get pushed into making any judgement on this until we’ve seen all of those questions being answered,” he said. “Then we will have to decide whether we’re going to mount our own investigation and come to a conclusion on that and what we’re going to do. And pre-empting that would be a colossal mistake.”
What Manchester City are facing now
For Manchester City, the immediate issue is still the appeal. The club has already rejected the commission’s findings, saying the decision “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.”
That appeal process is the key reason no punishment or regulatory intervention has yet been imposed. Until that is resolved, the case remains in legal and football limbo.
Even so, Kogan’s remarks underline the possible scale of the consequences if the final outcome goes against City. With ownership linked to Abu Dhabi United Group and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the case now sits at the intersection of sporting discipline, ownership scrutiny and regulatory power.
For now, the only certainty is that the issue is far from settled. Manchester City are still contesting the original verdict, and until that appeal is decided, the prospect of any further action remains exactly that — a prospect.
