Could history be rewritten? Guardiola, Man City and the 115 charges

If, as expected, Pep Guardiola leaves Manchester City at the end of this season, he will do so as one of the most successful and influential managers in Premier League history.

City have been the dominant force in the English game during his 10 seasons in charge, a tenure in which they won the Premier League six times (including a record four in a row), as well as the Champions League and a historic Treble.

But to what extent does the unprecedented catalogue of more than 100 charges of alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules cast a shadow over Guardiola's time in charge?

With City having always denied wrongdoing, the answer will only become clear when the outcome of the case is finally revealed.

An independent commission is yet to publish a ruling almost a year and a half after a disciplinary hearing concluded.

Whether the saga has played a role in the timing of Guardiola's expected departure, and whether he wanted to leave City before the result was known, is unclear.

But until that time, it is inevitable that questions will be asked about how exactly City achieved the trophy-laden era it has enjoyed since the takeover of the club by billionaire Abu Dhabi royal Sheikh Mansour - the deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates - in 2008.

The 115 charges relate largely to a range of alleged financial rule breaches by City between 2009 and 2018.

While there is no suggestion that Guardiola was aware of any alleged wrongdoing, there is a two-year overlap with his tenure at Etihad Stadium, which began in the summer of 2016.

alleged failure to provide accurate financial information, including details for player and manager payments, from 2009-10 to 2017-18 seasons

alleged failure to comply with Uefa's financial fair play (FFP) rules from 2013-14 to 2017-18

alleged breaches of Premier League's profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) from 2015-16 to 2017-18.

City also face multiple charges that they failed to co-operate with the Premier League's investigation between December 2018 and February 2023.

As manager, Guardiola has not been involved with the legal process. But he has not been able to claim that these charges only apply to a period before his arrival.

The charges are thought to relate to allegations first made in 2018 by German media outlet Der Spiegel, which published leaked internal City emails.

It claimed that the documents showed the club had inflated sponsorship revenue from state-owned airline Etihad and state-controlled telecoms firm Etisalat, by disguising direct investment from its holding company - Mansour's Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) - as sponsorship income, by channelling money through the companies' accounts.

This, it was alleged, was a means of getting around FFP rules introduced by Uefa in 2011, and PSR brought in by the Premier League in 2012, two similar systems of spending control designed to limit clubs' losses. City and the companies denied wrongdoing.

There then followed further allegations of misreporting financial information centred on documents that claimed to show secret 'off-the-books' payments to previous manager Roberto Mancini via consultancy fees from a club in Abu Dhabi, and giving players more money than was officially going through the accounts so that recorded spending was less than it actually was. Mancini denied any wrongdoing.

In short, City effectively stand accused of subverting Premier League rules that clubs had agreed to comply with, and of distorting the competition over multiple seasons.

City - who have always denied they are state-owned - said the emails were obtained illegally and were an "attempt to damage the club's reputation", insisting they were innocent.

If City are cleared of the more serious charges, Guardiola's legacy will be viewed as secure.

But if the club are found to have broken financial rules, many will conclude that the wrongdoing helped City to spend more money on better players, and to lay the foundations which Guardiola then built on to achieve so much success, culminating in the Treble triumph of 2023.

In 2024, Jose Mourinho pointedly insisted he won his three Premier League titles with Chelsea "fairly and cleanly", after being asked about Guardiola making a six-finger gesture after a match, signifying the haul of titles he had won.

Mourinho also joked that he might still be retrospectively awarded a Premier League winners' medal, if City ended up having titles stripped from them as punishment. As manager of Manchester United, Mourinho had finished second to City in the 2017-18 season.

If City were to be found guilty, there would likely be plenty of references by rival fans to the titles that Guardiola won by just one point (over Liverpool in both 2019 and 2022) and two points (over Arsenal in 2024).

Of course, if City were found guilty, it would be impossible to know if Guardiola would have won less - and how much less - if the club had adhered to the rules.

But such is the scale and seriousness of the charges, in such an event, critics will inevitably argue that his many accomplishments are tainted, even those that occurred after the period the case relates to.

In 2019, with City under investigation by Uefa, Guardiola was directly asked by BBC Sport if his legacy could be affected by the controversy.

"No, absolutely not," he replied.

However, City's chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak has admitted frustration at the club's on-pitch achievements being accompanied by repeated reminders of the charges lodged against them.

Another Premier League club serve as a warning. There is now some scepticism towards the various trophies Chelsea won in the 2010s, after the club were found to have made a catalogue of secret payments to agents over transfers, between 2011 and 2018.

Even if the charges levelled at City are eventually upheld, however, many of the club's fans would no doubt argue that whatever decisions may have been made behind the scenes by some executives, they should not negate Guardiola's visionary leadership, his tactical genius or the impact he has had on the game.

"Pep Guardiola's detractors may try to argue that an asterisk should be added to the trophies he has won with Manchester City because the club's alleged misrepresentation of revenue and costs gave them a competitive advantage on the field," says Tim Jotischky, a reputation expert at the PHA Group.

"But, regardless of whether the club is found guilty of some or all the charges, I don't believe it will damage his legacy."

But apart from the allegations, what about the suggestion that much of City's recent success is due to the vast wealth of their Abu Dhabi owner?

For instance, just a year after Guardiola's arrival at Etihad Stadium, La Liga president Javier Tebas accused City of "financial doping" in comments the club described as "ill-informed and in parts pure fiction".

In 2019, then-Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp said City were in "fantasia land", where they could buy whoever they wanted.

Guardiola responded by saying the insinuation that City were spending their way to success "bothers me, because it's not true that we spent £200m every window."

"In an era when sovereign wealth funds and private equity have transformed the nature of football ownership, Manchester City's spending is not disproportionate compared to their closest rivals," says Jotischky.

"Guardiola's reputation rests on his wider impact, his ability to reinvent the way others thought about the game and his influence has permeated throughout the football pyramid... it is undeniable that Guardiola's impact extends beyond trophy count."