The London clubs plus Liverpool think City have breached the FFP rule and shouldn’t play Champions League football.
Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool are getting together to try and stop Manchester City playing in next season’s Champions League due to the Financial Fair Play ruling, reports the Daily Mail.
UEFA introduced the regulations to try and provide a more fair playing field as outside money continued to be pumped into football in large quantities.
The rule says that clubs cannot lose more than £105m over three seasons, yet City have announced losses of £51.6m for the 2012/13 campaign – taking their total since 2011 to £149.5m.
It means in theory that the Citizens can be excluded from next year’s Champions League competition, although could ‘exempt’ as much as £110m to meet the FFP requirements.
However, tweaks to the small print that were made by UEFA in 2014 means that other clubs can challenge those plea bargains if they feel the outcomes negatively affect them.
It is this part of the FFP ruling that the three Premier League sides are looking to exploit to challenge City’s eligibility for European football.
Blues manager Jose Mourinho has even spoken out about ‘unnamed clubs’ that the 51-year-old believes are in breach of the rules.
“There are clubs that are following exactly the project of Financial Fair Play and there are other clubs doing it in a dodgy way,” Mourinho was quoted by the Daily Mail.
“For me, that is very clear. I don’t say the clubs – that is not my job.”
If this were to happen it would be the first major development for UEFA since the FFP regulation was introduced and it will be interesting to see if City are actually punished.
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