Independent Football Regulator confirms it has 'absolute power' to force Man City owners to sell the club

Andy Burnham has been confronted about his relationship with Man City's owners | GB NEWS. City were found guilty of breaching 114 Premier League financial rules last month and lodged an appeal against the verdict.

The club has consistently denied any wrongdoing after being found to have inflated their revenue by £900million from the 2009-10 season to 2017-18. They were also found to have made a "concerted effort" to "stop and frustrate" the Premier League's investigation.

Kogan explained it was too early to discuss any action the IFR was taking, but confirmed the club's owner, Sheikh Mansour, can be forced to sell. He told the Rest is Football podcast: "I am not going to get pushed into making any judgement on this until we've seen all of those questions being answered, and then we will have to decide whether we're going to mount our own investigation and come to a conclusion on that and what we're going to do.

And pre-empting that would be a colossal mistake." When questioned what role the IFR could play, he said: "We would judge against the tests of ownership and senior directors and executives. We would judge the actions of those individuals.

We will look at the individuals who've given evidence, we will look at the individuals involved with the club and we will take a judgement call."

Kogan was questioned on whether this meant the IFR could force City's owners to sell up.

He said: "We have the power to ask an owner to step away from a club if we believe that they run a club in a way that is neither fit, fair or done with propriety. We've got absolute power to do so." Kogan previously said he would resign if there was any political interference in the club's future, after Andy Burnham said he would be "really concerned" if the club's Abu Dhabi owners had to sell up, prompting Downing Street to clarify his position.

He told the BBC: "The Prime Minister is entirely entitled to make his own observations on anything. I am the chairman of the IFR and independence absolutely runs through everything we're doing.

And no politician has tried to influence and would try to influence anything we do on that." The Premier League initially brought 115 charges against City for alleged breaches of its financial rules.