- A former Man City member of staff has been banned for breaching betting rules
- Richard Bredice worked under Pep Guardiola and placed 456 bets over six years
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A former member of Pep Guardiola’s staff at Manchester City has been banned from all football activity for breaching betting rules - including waging on transfers at the club and against his own employer.
Richard Bredice has lost his job as lead performance analyst at Burnley after an independent commission handed down a 12-month sanction, with six months suspended for two years.
The majority of Bredice’s 456 bets were placed during a six-year stint at City spanning until 2019, before he joined Vincent Kompany at Anderlecht and then Turf Moor.
In them, he is alleged to have made 12 ‘inside information bets’ – almost exclusively focused on potential transfers in and out of the Etihad Stadium – to a profit of just over £1,700.
Bredice denied the FA’s assertion that he was privy to details surrounding City’s plans and maintained that targets were already in the public domain at the time of his stakes.
One stake, of £515, was made the morning after a staff party and the commission concluded that the future of the unnamed player in question was mentioned at the function.
Bredice is said to have ‘strongly rejected’ suggestions that he was friendly with City players, specifically those the subject of his betting patterns, and claimed they were instead ‘frightening’ to him given their status.
Eleven of the 12 ‘inside information bets’ were successful, while 129 of the other 444 stakes on matters away from transfers returned a profit.
On the day of a Champions League dead-rubber against Shakhtar Donetsk in 2017, Bredice placed a successful £50 wager on the Ukrainians beating City.
A year before, he had bet £20 on Chelsea to progress beyond City in an FA Cup clash nine days before the sides met at Stamford Bridge. Bredice cashed out four days out from the game, at a loss of £1. Manuel Pellegrini went on to start a host of teenagers in a 5-1 defeat.
Bredice – who can appeal the verdict – was also fined £4,500 and made to pay £500 in costs.