Manchester City Face Financial Charges
Football fans want consequences, but opinions differ on what they should be
Opinium’s latest research reveals how UK football fans think Manchester City F.C. should be punished if they are ultimately found guilty of the financial charges facing the club. Almost half (47%) of football fans think Manchester City should receive a points deduction; however, 41% go further and think they should be relegated to a lower division. Two fifths (38%) think the punishment should be a financial fine paid to the Premier League, and 36% think they should be stripped of the titles and trophies won during the period covered by the charges.
The majority of Manchester City fans (74%) do think their club should face a punishment if they’re ultimately found guilty of the allegations; however the punishment these fans think the club should face differs from the view of football fans generally. Whilst 36% believe they should pay a fine to the Premier League (vs 38% of non-Manchester City football fans), only 28% (vs 48% of non-Manchester City football fans) think they should receive a points deduction and 7% (vs 44% of non-Manchester City football fans) think Manchester City should be relegated.
The removal of silverware and redistribution of these trophies to other clubs is a hot topic among football fans. Overall, 42% of football fans think Manchester City’s trophies and titles won during the period covered by the charges should be awarded to other teams if they are found guilty; this sentiment is shared by 35% of Manchester City’s own fans. Fans of rival teams, who would gain the most from a redistribution of silverware punishment, are unsurprisingly more inclined to think that other teams should receive the trophies: specifically, 54% of Liverpool fans and 51% of Manchester United fans.
Regardless of what the punishment could be, three quarters (76%) think a severe punishment is necessary to deter other clubs from breaking the rules, this sentiment is also shared by half (53%) of Manchester City fans.
While it looks like there is finally an end in sight to this financial charges saga, there is one metric on which all football fans can agree: 69% of all football fans think the investigation and decision-making process has taken too long, decreasing only to 62% among Manchester City fans.
Whilst the majority (74%) of football fans think that a strong punishment would help restore trust in the fairness of Premier League football, it is not the Premier League that is thought to be the biggest victim should Manchester City ultimately be found guilty of the financial charges. According to football fans, the biggest victims in all this are Manchester City fans themselves (38%, increasing to 51% among Manchester City fans). This is followed by the reputation of English football (35%), football fans in general (28%) and other Premier League clubs.
This research was run on our Opinium UK Consumer Omnibus collecting responses from 1,054 nationally representative UK football fans.
