Andy Burnham has defended his intervention in support of Manchester City’s owners as he agreed to opposition parties’ demands to publish details of their meetings, reports BritPanorama.
The Prime Minister faced criticism after expressing concern that City’s Abu Dhabi owners might sell the club following a verdict that found the team had breached the Premier League’s financial rules, noting their significant contribution to the development of modern Manchester.
In response, Downing Street issued clarifications, with a spokesperson for the PM reiterating that the ruling against the club was indeed serious.
Burnham encountered calls to “keep politics out of football” amid ongoing appeal proceedings and requests from opposition leaders, including Kemi Badenoch, for full transparency regarding his involvement with the club as Mayor of Greater Manchester.
He stated his willingness to disclose details of his work with the club’s owners, mentioning on the Rest is Politics podcast that he would “put out there” everything he had done in his previous role.
Defending his comments about Manchester’s investment, Burnham remarked, “I don’t think I misspoke. My focus had been on the Labour Party conference.” He added that he had not conflated football issues with investment matters, emphasizing the serious nature of the commission’s findings.
Burnham further committed to publishing details of his meetings with City’s ownership, clarifying, “None of it is recent, actually, in terms of the meetings I had. I only had one significant meeting, actually, and that was in 2021.” He maintained that while football issues are critical and must be addressed independently, they should be viewed separately from investment topics.
The Premier League recently concluded that City had orchestrated “sham” commercial deals with various sponsors, forming part of a covert funding strategy which indicated that the majority of sponsorship fees were underwritten by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd, the club’s majority owner.
Shadow sports minister Louie French urged Burnham to disclose any meetings he had since assuming the role of PM and called on Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy to address pressing inquiries related to the situation.
“The Prime Minister must publish every contact between his ministers, officials and Manchester City since he walked into Number 10. He must also clarify his involvement in this case, while Lisa Nandy should respond comprehensively to my questions,” he stated.
City is appealing the guilty verdict, asserting that the commission’s decision contains “clear material errors of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.”
