The ownership at Man City have been warned that they could be forced to sell the club by football’s new independent regulator.

Man City were found guilty of 114 of their 115 charges brought against them by the Premier League after being accused of breaching their financial fair play rules.

The Citizens deny any wrongdoing and have appealed the verdict – but that has not stopped speculation as to how severe the punishment could be for breaking the rules.

Some of the potential punishments include being expelled from the Premier League or a huge points deduction that would almost guarantee relegation.

However, if the verdict stands after appeal, some don’t think expulsion or relegation would be enough with calls for the Man City owners to be removed.

Speaking to Gary Lineker and Alastair Campbell on The Rest Is Football podcast, David Kogan, Chair of the Independent Football Regulator, insists that they “have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club”.

Kogan said: “I am not going to get pushed into making any judgement on this until we’ve seen all of those questions being answered and 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,”

When asked what role the new regulator could play in the process, Kogan replied: “We would judge against the tests of ownership and senior directors and executives. We would judge the actions of those individuals.

“We’re not there, we can’t, unlike the Premier League, who obviously can take action against the club in terms of fines or points deduction or whatever it may be.”

When pushed further by Lineker on what they can do, Kogan explained: “We look at the individuals. We will look at the individuals who’ve given evidence, we will look at the individuals involved with the club and we will take a judgement call.”

When quizzed by Campbell about the ability of the regulator to force Man City’s owners to sell, Kogan said: “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.”

On whether they could refuse, Kogan said: “No, no, no. We’ve got absolute power to do so.”

The only punishment Man City ‘would be worried about’ – Neville

Man Utd legend Gary Neville thinks the most appropriate punishment for Man City would be for the owners to lose control of the club.

Neville said on The Overlap: “Manchester City will recover as a football club because Manchester City have been there longer than these owners, they’ll be there long after them, and it’s got an immense history.

“Points deductions, fines, transfer bans, removing the titles – not giving them to others, just removing the titles – it’s significant punishments. The only punishment that would be fair would be have huge consequences – the biggest consequence – would be removing the owners.

“That is the only consequence if I was Manchester City that I would be worried about. And as a fan of Manchester City, if you wanted to keep the investment that you’ve currently got, that would be the one I’d be most concerned about.

“However, if you’re in football and you’re thinking about consequence, what can be more serious than industrial-level financial doping that we’ve seen and they’ve been found guilty of? I’m not celebrating.

“I’m chilled. This is chilling. I support Manchester United, [Jamie Carragher] supports Liverpool, [Roy Keane and Ian Wright] played for Manchester United, Arsenal, [Jill Scott] played for City.

“This is chilling to listen to this. It’s chilling. The Italian game has suffered immeasurably over the last 25 years, maybe from after [Calciopoli]. You know, we’ve played Juventus, we’ve alluded to this before, we felt at the time that this wasn’t right.

“And I’m not saying that’s going to happen to the Premier League. But we always think we’ve got this enormous integrity, the Premier League, that we are the league that sets the standard and it’s other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match fixing, referee scandals.

“This has now come into our country, this has now come into our league. This is the greatest export that we have in our country in the world.

“If you go around the world and talk about Liverpool, Manchester, Arsenal – people talk about the Premier League more than anything when you tell them where you’re from in the world. And at the moment, we’re being dragged through the mud.”