Manchester City to investigate how they can stop players ignoring drug rules after anti-doping charge

City are understood to have failed to update the FA with information regarding players' whereabouts, thereby undermining the process of random drug sampling

Manchester City have been charged for breaching rules on anti-doping (Getty)

Manchester City are likely to investigate how to ensure players who miss training give them advance notice, after being charged by the Football Association with a breach of anti-doping rules, The Independent understands.

City’s medical department is thought to be responsible for ensuring that the club comply with rules ensuring that the FA knows exactly where players are every day, so that random drug tests can take place. But though players are supposed to be personally responsible if their expected whereabouts change, clubs can find it extremely difficult to drum the message home and City are among those who have faced an uphill task with certain individuals in the past.

City have not commented on the FA’s decision to charge them with misconduct for a failure on three occasions to comply with Regulation 14(d) of its anti-doping code, which deals with the whereabouts of players. But the bad publicity attached to the charge is likely to be a frustration to a club who take their professionalism very seriously.

City certainly have more staff than many clubs to chase up players whose whereabouts change unexpectedly, with the use of an App one way to make the task easier for them. Smaller clubs said they felt that a club of City’s size had “no excuse” if they are found in breach. But another source in the game said that it is can be a “nightmare if the player can’t be bothered to let you know.” It is those who do not show for training who can often cause the problem – because it is the training session which the drug testers focus on more often.

Each club has a designated officer who must produce weekly plans to send to the FA, filled in online, with times and venues of training sessions for that week, plus the names of players in each squad who will be present. These must be submitted half an hour before the start of the week’s first session.

If a player is not going to be present at a session, then the FA must be told half an hour before it starts and provided with a one-hour slot in that day when he or she will be available and a venue where he or she can be tested. At some Premier League clubs, this can take place between 10-11am at the player’s home address.

But it is the accuracy of the training session list which has become vitally important to clubs. If the testers arrive at the training ground and the players who are named online in the squad are not there at the specified time then those players not there will receive a strike. Three strikes lead to a ban. Clubs have also come to realise that it is wise to put down less time for the training session on the online form, rather than too much. Otherwise, they risk testers turning up when some players have gone home.

Pep Guardiola's Manchester City have come under fresh scrutiny following (Getty)

Technically, players are supposed to communicate by text or phone on a dedicated FA number if their plans for a day change – but many clubs do end up doing the bureaucratic work for them.

One lower league club told The Independent on Thursday of a staff member running around the training ground before 10am to check with the physios that all the players were in, had not been given a day off or were not at a hospital – in which case, that location must also be spelled out to the governing body.

“You have to be really organised and staff and players have to communicate,” said a source. “It has taken some getting used to in football as it is completely alien to anything known before. And also people genuinely forget to tell others when plans change.”