{"id":931740,"date":"2026-10-13T17:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T17:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/931740\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T17:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T17:54:10","slug":"football-regulator-chair-insists-he-will-resign-if-politically-pressured-over-manchester-city-football-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/931740\/","title":{"rendered":"Football regulator chair insists he will resign if politically pressured over Manchester City | Football politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The chair of the Independent \u00adFootball Regulator (IFR), David Kogan, has said he will resign if he faces any political pressure on how to respond to Manchester City being found guilty<\/a> of breaching Premier League financial rules over a nine-year period, insisting \u201cmy independence is absolute\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kogan could remove City\u2019s Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) should the damning verdict of an independent commission be upheld at the end of an ongoing appeal process. \u00adConcern had been raised, however, that the proximity of City\u2019s \u00adownership to Abu Dhabi\u2019s rulers could trigger a political intervention by the UK \u00adgovernment and an immediate test of the new regulator\u2019s powers.<\/p>\n

Those concerns have been rebuffed by Kogan. \u201cOur independence is absolute and my independence personally is absolute,\u201d he said. \u201cI [have] made it very clear \u2026 any form of political interference on the way we operate is going to result in my resigning from this role, and I stand by that completely. And, just to be crystal clear, we\u2019ve come under absolutely no political pressure whatsoever on this or any other topic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kogan was speaking on Tuesday at the launch of the long-awaited State of the Game report, a document that lays out the financial challenges facing the English football pyramid. The City case has cast a huge shadow as the regulator prepares to introduce a new licensing regime for clubs later this season. \u201cWe have powers within the legislation that allow us to review not only owners and directors and senior executives, but also whether those owners are fit and proper \u00adpeople to run clubs going forward,\u201d said Kogan, describing the process by which the regulator might intervene.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat process is reliant on us \u00adhaving very detailed knowledge and information, which requires a \u00adcertain amount of investigation. Then we would take judgments based on the legal advice that we then receive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should a club owner ultimately be found to have failed a \u201cfitness\u201d test related to \u201cintegrity, honesty and financial soundness\u201d, the regulator could force the club to be sold. \u201cWe deal with issues of this type much more frequently than you might realise because we are constantly looking at clubs,\u201d Kogan said, stating if any decision by the regulator became the subject of legal action then clubs would be asked to foot the bill through a funding levy.<\/p>\n

David Kogan reiterated that the regulator had powers to determine whether owners such as Manchester City\u2019s were \u2018fit and proper\u2019. Photograph: Ben Whitley\/PA<\/p>\n

The acceleration of revenues among the Premier League\u2019s biggest clubs is one of the key findings in the State of the Game report. The highest earning top-flight club currently earns 605 times the revenue of the lowest earning National League club. At the same time, spending has increased at all levels of the game, with 94% of the 116 clubs under the regulator\u2019s regime posting a financial loss in 2025-26. In one particularly eye-catching statistic, the report found 11 Football League clubs recorded costs that exceeded their income even once player wages had been stripped out.<\/p>\n

Kogan argued that a number of external factors that fall outside the regulator\u2019s purview are affecting the game, including the expansion of the club calendar, the regulation of \u00adplayers\u2019 agents and the recent rise in interest rates. However, he argued that one key measure \u2013 the agreement of a redistribution deal between the Premier League and EFL \u2013 could unlock change immediately.<\/p>\n

While Kogan accepts the Premier League\u2019s argument regarding the need for parachute payments due to \u201ccolossal\u201d drops in revenue caused by relegation, he believes they have had a \u201cdistortive effect that\u2019s grown over the years\u201d. Kogan said that if a deal was done that reduced parachute payments but increased the amount going to all clubs then \u201cthat will go some way towards looking at the \u00addistorted effect\u201d. Once that money was distributed, he said, \u201cyou\u2019re going to see a softening effect going through down the 116 clubs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Manchester City\u2019s owner, Sheikh Mansour, and chair, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, are under scrutiny. Photograph: Martin Rickett\/PA<\/p>\n

The Premier League welcomed the publication of the report, arguing: \u201cIt recognises what English football has built \u2013 the world\u2019s most popular league, the leading second tier, and a pyramid of unmatched depth.\u201d<\/p>\n

The league argued that a recent offer of financial redistribution to the EFL \u2013 understood to amount to \u00a3320m per season \u2013 \u201cmeets the \u00adobjectives the IFR has set out in its report\u201d and said it \u201cremains \u00adcommitted to concluding\u00a0a long-term partnership with the EFL that is fair, generous and \u00adbalances the interests of all clubs\u201d.<\/p>\n

The EFL said the report\u2019s findings \u201creinforce the EFL\u2019s longstanding position that English football generates sufficient revenue to sustain both a successful Premier League and a thriving pyramid\u201d and it remained \u201ccommitted to working constructively with the Premier League and the regulator to secure a financial settlement in the interests of the whole game\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, Lisa Nandy, said the stark figures covered in the report had \u201cblown the doors off the game\u201d. She urged football authorities to \u201cconsider these findings for the good of the game, for the fans, and for the communities of which they are so often the bedrock\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The chair of the Independent \u00adFootball Regulator (IFR), David Kogan, has said he will resign if he faces…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":931741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-931740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/931741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}