The Independent Football Regulator will probe the Premier League giants' owners to see if they are 'fit', 'fair' and run the club 'with propriety' - and could order them to sell up

The owners of cash cheats Manchester City could be booted out of the club by football's new independent regulator. And they are facing a second investigation into their flouting of financial rules.

An independent commission found the club guilty of 114 of 115 charges levelled against them by the Premier League in September. City, who have appealed against the verdict, artificially inflated their revenue by £900million via 'sham' contracts from the 2009/10 season to 2017/18. If their appeal fails, City could face being expelled from the Premier League and stripped of their honours won during that time.

David Kogan, chairman of the Independent Football Regulator, said his organisation had "absolute power" to say if the hierarchy can remain in place after the club was adjudged to have breached financial rules over nine years. He told a special edition of The Rest Is Football podcast with Gary Lineker that his investigators "will look at the individuals involved with the club" and will "take a judgement call".

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“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.

Asked by co-host Alistair Campbell - the former Labour spin doctor - if the owners could refuse, Kogan replied: “No no no. We’ve got absolute power to do so.”

The bombshell would come on top of any punishment the Premier League planned to hit the club with. As the Daily Star told earlier this week that is reportedly such a giant points deduction City would be relegated into the Championship. The club would then get another one the following season - losing so many points it would be unlikely to be able to return to the top flight straight away.

But the possible expulsion of its United Arab Emirates owners could have the most long-lasting impact on City’s fortunes.

They would be forced to sell just like Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich had to flog Chelsea following Vladimir Putin ’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

The oligarch sold up after the UK Government froze his assets in the UK and he was disqualified as a club director by the Premier League. Earlier this year Chelsea was fined £10.75m for making undisclosed payments to agents, non-licensed intermediaries and others - including players - between 2011 and 2018 under Abramovich’s stewardship.

Manchester City are awaiting punishment following an independent panel’s judgement that they breached funding rules by arranging ‘sham’ contracts to secretly pump almost £1bn into its coffers. City have appealed and Kogan told England legend Lineker and Campbell he was ‘not going to get pushed into making any judgement’ until all questions had been ‘answered’.

“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,” he said. “Pre-empting that would be a colossal mistake."

Asked what role the regulator would take he 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.”

Lineker asked: "What can you do?"

“We look at the individuals,” said Kogan. “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.”

City’s owner is Abu Dhabi Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan who is also vice president of the United Arab Emirates. The club’s chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak has come under scrutiny over two hospitality dinners he had with then-Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham - now Prime Minister - which were not mentioned by the local authority. Greater Manchester Combined Authority lent £55m of taxpayers’ cash to property developers run by Sheikh Mansour.

Lineker asked Kogan if the regulator would stop future state-backed takeovers of English clubs.

He replied: “Not as a matter of course. I mean, I think we would be looking at any company, country, individual who wishes to buy a club against the criteria that are laid out in the legislation that created us. That legislation does not allow for us to block something just because it's a Norwegian sovereign fund, as an example. And actually we have a pretty good strong mixed economy of different types of owners within the five leagues and I'm not sure it makes sense for us to do that.

“But, you know, it'll come down to the circumstances which they apply and the guarantees they want to give. But we're bound very much by the way the legislation has been written, which doesn't preclude that from happening.”