There are moments when a story becomes so large that it is easy to forget how long people have been trying to tell it.
It was good to welcome Nick Harris onto Money Talks last night. Nick has been covering Manchester City’s finances for 15 years, long before the Football Leaks revelations transformed the discussion, long before the Premier League investigation and long before an independent commission reached its findings.
I came to this story later than Nick. I began writing extensively about Manchester City’s finances around 2018 and 2019. In March 2019, I estimated that City’s true financial position was likely to involve its owners breaking Financial Fair Play rules by somewhere between £150 million and £250 million per annum.
What has emerged since suggests that estimate was not overstating the scale of what was happening.
The independent commission report stated that City’s income was “hugely overstated by over £830 million” across the relevant years. That figure relates to sponsorship income. As I have pointed out previously, it does not include alleged off the books payments to players, agents and other staff, or the allocation of City related expenditure to City Football Group.
This is why I have consistently described what happened as financial doping. The scale matters, the duration matters, and the effect it had on English football matters.
Speaking to Nick reinforced something else. None of this appeared overnight.
Nick Harris Saw Warning Signs Years Ago
Nick told us that his misgivings about Manchester City’s financial position went back to November 2011.
Working as an investigative journalist at the Mail on Sunday while also running Sporting Intelligence, he looked at UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations and City’s financial position and became convinced they were going to fail FFP at the first hurdle.
He wrote at the time that the only way City would avoid failure was through what he described as “creative accounting or accounting gymnastics”.
City subsequently failed FFP in 2014.
That became another important moment. Nick explained how the failure raised further questions about intellectual property transactions, City Football Group, staffing costs and City’s commercial revenues.
Then came Football Leaks in 2018.
Nick was very clear about its importance. Without the documents obtained by Rui Pinto and subsequently published, he does not believe we would have reached where we are today. Those documents provided evidence that triggered investigations by UEFA and the Premier League. Pasted text
One email stood out to him.
Nick discussed an email involving senior City executive Simon Pearce which, he said, showed Etihad was paying only £8 million towards a sponsorship arrangement worth substantially more. Nick described seeing that material and realising the seriousness of what he believed was happening.
In his words: “This really is fraud. Widespread sustained fraud.”
Nick also explained that the authenticity of the emails became an issue during City’s CAS proceedings and said City did not ultimately query their authenticity.
For years, people covering this subject were accused of having agendas. The evidence itself was always more important than the tribal arguments surrounding it.
£830 Million Puts Scale Into Perspective
The number that deserves attention is £830 million.
The commission report extract shared this week states that City wrongly recorded as income sums which should instead have been treated as equity contributions from ADUG. It says the club’s income across those years was consequently “hugely overstated by over £830 million”.
That is extraordinary.
Back in 2019, I was estimating that the scale of City’s financial doping could amount to between £150 million and £250 million per annum. Those figures were based on my analysis at the time. I said then that nothing in professional sport equated to what City had done.
The £830 million figure concerns sponsorship income alone.
I have also been clear that I do not believe the issues stopped in 2018 simply because the Premier League charges covered evidence relating to a particular historical period. The evidence assessed by the independent commission related to leaked material running up until 2017/18.
I have said repeatedly that, in my view, City’s financial doping continued beyond that point.
That distinction matters when the question of punishment is eventually considered.
City have indicated that this process is not finished. Nick also cautioned against treating it as finished. He believes City will attempt to drag matters out for as long as possible, although he described the current position as the “beginning of the end”.
There remain questions about appeals, possible punishments, compensation claims from other clubs, the ramifications for City directors and the future direction of Manchester City itself.
Those questions will have their time.
For now, the findings themselves deserve to be absorbed.
Abuse Should Never Be Part of Journalism
One part of our conversation had very little to do with balance sheets, sponsorship agreements or accounting.
Nick spoke about the abuse he has received during his reporting.
Some of it was vile.
He described how his home address was published online in 2020 while his wife, Helen, was dying from brain cancer. He received the telephone call telling him his address had appeared on social media while he was sitting outside the hospice where Helen was staying during Covid restrictions.
After Helen died in December 2020, Nick said he received messages suggesting he deserved what had happened because of his reporting on Manchester City.
There is no football argument that makes behaviour like that acceptable.
I have received abuse myself for covering this subject, although nowhere remotely approaching the level Nick experienced. Some of the same people who targeted him also directed abuse towards me.
Nick kept reporting.
He also discussed the legal pressure that can accompany investigative journalism. He described letters sent to his employers while he was working on stories concerning Manchester City and said their effect was to portray him to editors as someone pursuing an agenda.
His employers backed his reporting.
Nick was also careful to point out that such tactics are not exclusive to Manchester City. He has experienced legal pressure while investigating organisations and individuals across sport.
What struck me most was his explanation of why he continued.
He did not describe last week’s developments as personal vindication. His hope was that the outcome might encourage people to have greater confidence in serious investigative journalism.
That deserves recognition.
Football Cannot Forget How We Reached This Point
Nick mentioned several journalists who have pursued this story over the years, including Rob Harris, Tariq Panja, Martyn Ziegler and Matt Slater.
He also credited Football Leaks.
That history is important because the current position did not emerge from one article, one journalist or one document. It developed through years of investigation, leaked material, regulatory processes and reporting.
Nick also revealed that several people with inside knowledge had provided information over the years which he could not publish because identifying details could have jeopardised their careers or families.
One source, he said, had intimate knowledge of the relationship between Etihad and Manchester City and gave him confidence about what was happening before the relevant Football Leaks material became public.
There may eventually be more to tell.
For me, the central issue remains the same as it was when I started writing about this years ago.
The numbers mattered because football’s financial regulations mattered. Clubs were operating within the same competition, competing for the same trophies, revenues and players. I argued in 2019 that City’s true financial position involved sums running into hundreds of millions of pounds every year.
We now have an independent commission report containing the figure of more than £830 million in overstated sponsorship income across eight years.
That deserves to be understood in its full scale.
There will be arguments about appeals. There will be arguments about punishment. There will be arguments about compensation and what happens next.
Nick Harris has spent 15 years following the evidence wherever it took him. It was a pleasure having him on Money Talks, and after hearing what he and his family endured because he continued doing his job, he deserves enormous sympathy and respect.
This story is not finished.
As Nick put it last night, we may finally have reached the “beginning of the end”.