Premier League 'dragged through the mud' by Man City case - Gary Neville

The Premier League has been "dragged through the mud" by the Manchester City guilty verdict, Gary Neville has said. An independent commission found City guilty on all charges related to breaching Premier League financial rules, concluding they "clearly intended to circumvent" the regulations over a period of nine seasons, primarily by disguising owner funding as sponsorship revenue.

Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher has called on the club's owner Sheikh Mansour to sell up, while former Manchester United full-back Neville believes the reputation of the whole league has been affected. "To listen to this, it is chilling," he said on the Stick To Football podcast.

"We always think that we've got an enormous integrity, the Premier League, that we are the sort of league that sets the standard, and that it's other leagues that have got corruption, fraud, doping scandals, match-fixing, referee scandals. "This is now coming to our country.

This is now coming to our league. This is the greatest export that we have in our country.

At the moment we're being dragged through the mud." City were found to have inflated revenue and hid costs to the tune of more than £900 million across the nine-season period, and in doing so avoided breaching Premier League and UEFA spending limits. They have indicated their intention to appeal against the commission's decision, saying it "contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe".

City said "a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all (the club's) positions". Neville described the "irrefutable evidence" remark as "bizarre", adding: "It was a bit Trump-esque, wasn't it?" Carragher said there can be no future for any City executives implicated in the scandal.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Carragher said: "Manchester City are at the end of their Abu Dhabi era. The club can only heal and recover from the shame of their guilt once the custodians recognise they have failed in their duty and sell up.

"There is no way to sugar-coat this. The scale of the institutional cheating and lack of co-operation in the investigation means the position of all City executives involved is untenable.

"Fighting on will only prolong the agony of supporters who wrongly believe their pleas of innocence.