Andy Burnham had two hospitality dinners with Manchester City’s chairman back in 2017 and 2018, and get this: those dinners were totally missing from a recent statement about his meetings with the club. This is a bombshell, especially with Man City facing heat for “systematically” breaking Premier League rules and Burnham himself being under intense pressure to clarify his past dealings with the club.
The “Missing” Meetings and Deleted History
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority, or GMCA, released a statement on Monday detailing Burnham’s meetings with Man City during his nearly decade-long run as mayor. It mentioned a formal meeting with Chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak in October 2021 and an informal chat in the stands at a Vincent Kompany testimonial in 2019. It even said he was a guest at a “small number of home matches.” But here’s the kicker: the statement completely skipped over two specific hospitality dinners he had with the Man City chairman at separate matches.
Turns out, these dinners weren’t always a secret. A previous GMCA register of declarations, which the BBC actually saw, detailed them crystal clear. We’re talking about a dinner with the chairman and then-Manchester City Council leader Richard Leese at an Everton match in August 2017, valued at £300. Then there was another one, a dinner with the chairman at a Man City/Man Utd derby in April 2018, hitting around £699. He even declared a £150 pair of tickets to see Ed Sheeran perform at the stadium in May 2018. So, he declared them, right? But that entire register has since been *deleted* from the GMCA website, according to The Sun. The official line from the authority is that they only publish entries from the current mayoral term, which started in 2024. But wait, the BBC is asking questions because their website actually has entries dating back to 2022. Talk about a transparency issue!
Political Pressure Cooker: Everyone Wants Answers
This whole situation is blowing up in Burnham’s face. He’s already been under fire ever since Man City was found guilty of breaking Premier League rules. And remember last month, when he sparked widespread controversy by saying he’d be “really concerned” if the club’s owners sold up? Yeah, that didn’t help. The political pressure on him to be super clear about any former discussions with Man City is just piling on.
You’ve got Tory shadow sports minister Louie French throwing punches, saying Burnham “promised the country and House of Commons full transparency” and calling his intervention “inappropriate.” Then Robert Jenrick from Reform UK comes in, declaring “this saga stinks” and accusing Burnham of apparently “concealed his extensive links to Man City’s owners.” Even Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has been demanding for days that No 10 release all the details of meetings between the prime minister and senior club figures. It’s a full-on political pile-up, and Burnham is right in the middle.
Downing Street, for their part, is defending the two dinners, arguing it was just hospitality received at home games and that it had been declared, so not separate meetings with the chairman. Burnham himself chimed in on the “Rest Is Politics” podcast last week, saying he’s “happy” to put everything out there and that “none of it is recent, actually,” in terms of the meetings he had. But with deleted records and questions swirling about the GMCA’s own website policies, that might not be enough to calm the storm.
So, where does this leave us? The ball is squarely in Burnham’s court to deliver on that transparency promise. Everyone’s watching, waiting for those details to drop, and you can bet the opposition isn’t letting this one go anytime soon.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by BBC Sport.
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