Burnham to Publish Man City Meetings
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he will publish details of his meetings with senior Manchester City figures, after criticism of his remarks on the club’s guilty verdict for breaching the Premier League’s financial rules and a demand from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch for full disclosure.
Speaking on The Rest is Politics podcast, Burnham said he was happy to respond to the opposition leader’s request. “I will quite clearly put out there everything that I have done working with them in my previous role as Mayor of Greater Manchester,” he said. He added that none of the contact was recent, and that he had held only one significant meeting with the club, in 2021.
The pressure stems from Burnham’s record as Greater Manchester mayor, a post he held from 2017 until earlier this year, a period of sustained success for City. In that role he championed Gulf investment as a means of growing the city region’s economy, a strategy local leaders had pursued before he became the first elected mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. His history has prompted questions about his relationship with City’s Abu Dhabi owners, and Badenoch has called on Downing Street to release all details of his meetings with senior figures at the club.
The controversy centres on Burnham’s initial reaction to the verdict. He told the BBC he would be “really concerned” if City’s owners chose to sell up following the ruling, and later denied that his response had downplayed the seriousness of the findings. On the podcast he rejected the suggestion that he had misspoken. He said his mind had been on the Labour Party conference when he gave the interviews, and that it was the questions, not he, that had linked the verdict to the owners’ possible departure. Football matters and investment matters, he argued, are separate issues that people should not conflate. He said the independent commission’s findings were serious, as he had stated in the original interview.
The reaction has reached the Premier League. Sources told BBC Sport that some clubs were “astonished” by Burnham’s stance and were concerned about the possibility of political interference in City’s appeal process.
The verdict came from an independent commission, and the process is separate from the Premier League itself. After a 42-day hearing in 2024, the commission found City had broken the league’s financial rules over a nine-year period between 2009 and 2018, using “sham” contracts with commercial partners to secretly channel more than £830m into the club’s football operations. Its report concluded that a number of important club witnesses gave false evidence in key respects, and that some did so knowingly and dishonestly.
City have lodged an appeal, which will be heard by a separate independent appeal board, and the club continues to deny wrongdoing. Sanctions have not yet been announced.
On the pitch, City played for the first time since the verdict on Sunday, winning 3-0 at Liverpool.
