Arsenal legend Martin Keown makes shock claim over Manchester City punishment

Martin Keown claims Manchester City will learn their fate in the coming weeks and their punishment is unlikely to be as severe as many are predicting.

City were found guilty on all 115 charges relating to financial breaches of Premier League rules, lodging their appeal against the decision last month.

All charges and have been denied and City continue to plead their innocence but could face huge sanctions ranging from points deductions, expulsion from the Premier League and being stripped of the titles they won during the period from 2009-10 to 2017-18.

Keown, whose former club Arsenal were negatively impacted by City’s wrongdoing, insists he has heard that the matter is set to be resolved swiftly and that talk of potential relegations is wide of the mark.

He told talkSPORT: ‘I’m hearing this will all be over in a number of weeks and it won’t be nearly as bad as we think it might be. Maybe they get off with huge fines and we return to the football pitch.

‘They’re resolute, they believe that they’re right and their owners are giving them that firm message, irrefutable evidence which will be revealed. So they’re holding on to that.

‘In six weeks or so we’ll see what’s going to happen.’

Amid the suggestion that City would look to reach a compromise deal with the Premier League, Keown’s co-host Simon Jordan claimed that would be an unlikely outcome given it would require the current Premier League leaders to admit a measure of guilt.

‘They’re not going to a court of law they are going to an independent commission,’ he said.

‘If they say to the Premier League now in advance of an appeal and agree to dop their hands and say we’ll agree to do a deal and sort it out amongst ourselves so we don’t need to go to an appeal, if that’s what you’re hearing that mean Man City have got to admit guilt or some degree of culpability.

‘How are they going to do that then? If they do a deal and pay it up everyone is going to say ‘you’ve just done a deal and paid it up’.’