Manchester City go into the 2024/25 season with 115 Financial Fair Play charges hanging over their heads – but one of their former stars has insisted that it doesn’t diminish anything that the team have achieved.
City have won eight Premier League titles during the past 12 years, and last term became the first team ever to become English champions for four seasons in succession.
But the club were charged some time ago with 115 alleged breaches of financial rules – their Premier League hearing could take place this autumn, with a potential verdict by the summer.
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Manchester City deny the charges and are fighting the case hard, so it’s difficult to say whether they’ll be hit with sanctions, or whether they would affect the 2024-25 season.
Former Manchester City goalkeeper David James believes that, whatever the outcome, the situation doesn’t overshadow everything that the team have achieved in recent years.
“I don’t think the players or manager are guilty of wrongdoing,” he tells FourFourTwo. “You’re looking at the best players, playing the best football, it doesn’t overshadow what they’ve done.
“The players haven’t cheated. They’ve been the best team in the Premier League for the past four years, and they deserve it because they play great football.”
James represented Manchester City between 2004 and 2006, not long after their move to the Etihad Stadium, but before their takeover by Thaksin Shinawatra and then Sheikh Mansour.
City finished eighth in the table after Stuart Pearce took over midway through the 2004-05 campaign, which ended with James famously being played up front in the closing stages of the final game of the season at home to Middlesbrough.
Chasing victory, Pearce deployed the 6ft 4in goalkeeper as a target man in the opposition’s penalty area, but City weren’t able to find the goal they were looking for, as a 1-1 draw denied them a place in the UEFA Cup.
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