With the ink hardly dry on the verdict that Manchester City is guilty of 114 rule breaches and disguising secret funding of £831m, plenty of babies are being thrown out alongside bathwater.
With appeals pending, the saga may not even have reached half-time but mooted remedies already range from Premier League expulsion and a near-£1bn fine to booting the club into non-league football alongside the likes of Woking and Wealdstone.
Volleys aimed at the foreign state ownership of English clubs have been so fierce that journalist and Arsenal fan Stephen Bush has billed himself as a “relative moderate” because he doesn’t “want the club’s ground to be paved over and salted”.
Then there are rebounds from sponsor nations and a belated recognition from (Everton supporter) Andy Burnham that Man City’s Abu Dhabi owners had been a “huge partner in the building of modern Manchester”.
Bush’s fellow FT columnist, the football books author Simon Kuper, has also waded in, arguing: “Owners should be free to spend their own money on football. Their funding has made the Premier League better and more competitive.”
The wider investment game
Of course, this is a game that’s not just about trophies. A football club’s contribution to its home turf is also measured in new grounds, public sports facilities, apprenticeships and pathways into myriad forms of soccer.
The Citizens nickname of Manchester’s most recent football champions should therefore also be a metaphor for the volunteers, supporters and communities that underpin the grass roots fabric of all teams across the UK. These should be central considerations when Britain debates who invests in its historic clubs.
The findings in City’s case must be addressed through the proper process. But one club’s compliance should not become a blanket judgment against investment in English football. Welcoming capital and enforcing rules are compatible responsibilities, not competing ambitions.
The useful question is what investment leaves behind. Does it strengthen the institution, improve facilities, widen opportunities and establish roots beyond the tenure of a star player or successful manager? Those tests offer a better starting point than either automatic enthusiasm for wealthy owners or de facto suspicion of overseas money.
In east Manchester, the City Football Academy, opened in December 2014, replacing an 80-acre polluted industrial site with facilities for senior players, young footballers and the women’s team, alongside classrooms, medical provision and community access.
Jobs and opportunities
Contractor BAM records 883 contracts placed with local companies, 95 apprentices and trainees working on the project, and employment for 93 previously unemployed people.
The creation of City’s Etihad Stadium in the repurposing of Manchester’s publicly-funded Commonwealth Games arena included a regeneration partnership spawning facilities such as Connell Sixth Form College and East Manchester Leisure Centre.
The benefits extend to people who may never buy a match ticket. City in the Community reported more than 16,000 unique participants across 17 programmes in 2023/24, with five school pitches regenerated by June 2024. City’s new £10m women’s training facility provides dedicated medical, rehabilitation and performance support. The club’s community programmes and elite women’s facilities both deserve credit.
Elsewhere, Wrexham owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney’s have supported the women’s team’s first semi-professional contracts, introduced in 2023, and the purchase of The Rock stadium as its permanent home in August 2025. Investment has also helped rebuild the academy and expand opportunities for players from under-nine to under-21 level.
At Brighton , a £8.5 million training development serves six women’s and girls’ teams, with £1m contributed by the Football Foundation.
Clearly, not all takeovers are beneficial and promises should be accepted at face value. Investment should be judged by delivery: sustainable finances, responsible governance, respect for supporters and facilities that remain useful beyond the next transfer window.
A level playing field
An owner’s nationality is no substitute for examining their actual actions. The same standards should apply to capital arriving from abroad and raised at home.
Supporters should be able to ask where investment is going, who benefits and whether commitments will outlast a change in sporting fortunes. Those are sensible demands for stewardship, not arguments for shutting the door on people willing to put resources into a club’s future.
For a nation considering how to attract productive capital, football deserves a more discriminating debate. Historic clubs should not be treated as untouchable museum pieces. However, neither should their heritage become a licence for owners to behave as they please.
Vital investment must not be lost. As Arsenal supporter Bush adds: “What I don’t want is for the UAE to stop investing in office and retail space in Manchester, London and the UK’s other great cities; for British wealth managers to lose out on Emirati clients to the Swiss or the Americans and for England’s elite private schools… to have fewer children from Abu Dhabi.”
Nor should we. The national interest lies in attracting investors prepared to build, while maintaining the standards that make their investment credible. Protecting clubs means securing their future – not denying them the means to improve it.
Andrew Cave is the former US Business Editor and Associate City Editor at The Telegraph and the author The Secrets of CEOs, Billions to Bust and Back and The Power of Purpose.
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