The full story of Benjamin Mendy's Man City wages battle

The employment tribunal which ruled Benjamin Mendy is entitled to around £8m of the £11m in wages Manchester City withheld when he was accused of raping women reveals the defender believes he was 'abandoned in his hour of need' by the club.

The former Blues defender sued the club for 'unauthorised deductions' from his pay while he was accused of rape, attempted rape, and sexual assault. He was later found not guilty of all the charges.

The French World Cup winner took the club to an Employment Tribunal. Employment judge Joanne Dunlop said: "I have concluded that Mr Mendy is entitled to recover some, but not all, of the sums claimed."

READ MORE: Benjamin Mendy urges Manchester City to 'do the honourable thing' and return unpaid wages

The judge concluded the club was not entitled to withhold his wages during the two periods Mendy spent on bail, firstly from January 8, 2022, to December 29, 2022, and then from January 18, 2023 to the end of his contract on June 30 later that year. The judge said the main reason he couldn't play during these periods was because he remained suspended from all football activities by the Football Association, which took the action on 'safeguarding' grounds because of the youth of one his accusers.

No figure is mentioned in the ruling, but the periods cover almost 17 months during which the player would have earned more than £8m, at a wage revealed during the case as £500,000-a-month.

Judge Dunlop said she could see both sides of the story - one that the club believed Mendy brought all his troubles on himself and, on the other hand, that the player, despite his self-confessed love of sex and parties, believed he had been 'abandoned... in his hour of need'.

She said: "To a degree, both sides presented arguments which went to the question of whether or not Mr Mendy deserves to be paid the wages that Manchester City chose to withhold from him. Mr Mendy’s position is that he is an innocent man whose career has been ruined, and life blighted, by false sexual allegations and that the football club which brought him to this country effectively abandoned him in his hour of need. Manchester City’s position is that Mr Mendy largely brought his troubles upon himself and ignored sensible advice and warning after warning in his self-destructive pursuit of his chosen lifestyle. Both these narratives have validity, and there is no one cause of the chain of events which unfolded in this case."

The KC representing City urged the judge to note that 'some young girls dress up, present as older than they actually are, and go out to nightclubs, and that by indiscriminately having sex with women who were effectively strangers... Mr Mendy was leaving himself open to the risk that some of them would be under 18'. The player's lawyer said this was verging on 'victim blaming', the judgment reveals.

The judgment reads: "When Mr Mendy joined Manchester City he was 23 years old. As a professional footballer in France he had developed a taste and habit for ‘partying’, a euphemistic term which, in Mr Mendy’s case included having frequent casual sexual encounters with different women, often women whom he had only just met. In 2017, the same year as he joined Manchester City, he also made his debut for the French senior team. As his fame and earnings increased, opportunities for partying, and casual sex, similarly increased."

Mendy continued his party lifestyle during Covid and 'regardless' of the restrictions imposed at the time and even police bail conditions placed on him following his arrests, the judgment says.

The employment tribunal judge, in her ruling, said: "I doubt that quite so much legal expertise and endeavour has ever before been expended in the prosecution and defence of a wages claim brought by a single claimant. But then, I am also fairly sure that no other single claimant has ever alleged that sums in the region of £11 million have been deducted from his wages."

She added: "I found that Mr Mendy was 'ready and willing' to work during the non-custody periods, and was prevented from doing so by impediments (the FA suspension and bail conditions) which were unavoidable or involuntary on his part."

But she ruled the club was entitled to withhold wages for the periods when he was in custody due to 'his own culpable actions'. The club continued paying Mr Mendy his £500,000-a-month salary following his first arrest in November 2020. However they stopped doing so in September 2021, after he was charged with the first set of offences, the tribunal was told.

He spent a total of five months in custody on remand, and when released was subject to strict bail conditions, as well as an interim suspension order by the Football Association (FA) which prohibited him in taking part in 'any football-related activity'.

His contract expired in June 2023, before he was cleared of the final two charges against him at a retrial the following month. The money withheld over a period of 22 months was never paid.

Court documents shared with the tribunal said Mr Mendy 'very quickly ran out of money' and had to sell his Cheshire mansion to cover legal fees, bills and child support payments after his wages were withheld. “I struggled to pay my child support, I felt awful,” the footballer said in a written witness statement.

He said his agent Meissa N’diaye, paid towards his legal fees, while teammates including England international Raheem Sterling offered 'financial support'. “Raheem Sterling, Bernardo Silva and Riyad Mahrez all lent me money to help me try and pay my legal fees and support my family,” he said.

Mr Mendy said the restrictions that stopped him from being able to play were a consequence of the unproven allegations against him and that under the terms of his £6m-a-year, six-year contract, the club was not entitled to deduct his pay, but that they did so contrary to section 13 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.

He said other players had attended parties he hosted at his then-home in Mottram St Andrew. He said it was 'incredibly unjust that Manchester City effectively singled [him] out from the team when [he] was doing nothing different to the rest of the team'.

"The difference between me and the other Manchester City players is that I was the one that was falsely accused of rape and publicly humiliated" he added.

City's barrister, Sean Jones KC, argued Mr Mendy's incarceration was a 'consequence of his behaviour' after he held parties and gatherings at his Cheshire mansion in breach of bail conditions and lockdown rules.

"His behaviour fell little short of demanding to be locked up," he said.

Sports lawyer Nick De Marco KC, representing Mr Mendy, accused City of launching an 'attack' on Mr Mendy's character and embarking on a 're-trial of his private life'. He said his client had made mistakes but had already 'paid a very high price'.

Mendy, who cost the Blues £52m in 2017, joined French Second Division side Lorient on a free transfer last summer. In April, a High Court tax debt case against Mr Mendy was dismissed after he paid a £700,000 bill.

Following the judgment, Mr Mendy said in a statement: “Today the employment tribunal upheld the main part of my claim against Manchester City Football Club for unpaid wages, finding that the club had unlawfully made deductions from my wages for a total period of 16 months and 23 days.

"Having had to wait for three years for my wages, I am delighted with the decision and sincerely hope that the club will now do the honourable thing and pay the outstanding amounts, as well as the other amounts promised to me under the contract, without further delay, so I can finally put this difficult part of my life behind me."

The defender, who joined French Second Division side Lorient on a free transfer last summer, thanked his friends, family, agent and legal team.