Pep Guardiola says Manchester City deserve an apology from those claiming the club broke Financial Fair Play rules after the Court of Arbitration for Sport cleared the Blues of the charges against them.
City were handed the two-year ban for 'serious breaches' of FFP regulations, but CAS yesterday ruled that those allegations were either 'not established or time-barred'. The charge of non-co-operation in the investigation was upheld, with City fined ten million euros.
Guardiola's men are now free to play in next season's Champions League competition, marking the end of a lengthy investigation and appeal process that City were always confident would see them exonerated.
Whenever Guardiola has been asked about the charges, he has expressed confidence in City's case and indicated he would offer more comment after the verdict was passed.
Speaking ahead of City's Premier League game with Bournemouth, the boss said the CAS ruling proves the club were innocent all along.
He said: "I’m incredibly happy for the decision. It shows everything that people said about the club was not true.
"We will defend on the pitch what we won on the pitch."
"We should be apologised to because if we did something wrong we will accept the decision from UEFA because we did something wrong.
"We don’t expect Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal, Chelsea or Wolves to defend us but we have the right to defend ourselves when we believe what we have done is correct and three independent judges said this. Today is a good day, yesterday was a good day for football because we play by the same rules as all the clubs in Europe.
"If we had broken FFP, we would have been banned but we have to defend ourselves because we were right. People said we were cheating and lying and the presumption of innocence was not there.
"When we were proved right we were incredibly happy becasue we can defend what we have done on the pitch."
