At long last, we have a decision.<\/p>\n
Manchester City, the dominant force in English soccer over the past 15 years, were found guilty<\/a> by an independent commission of more than 100 serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations over a nine-year period beginning in 2009.<\/p>\n In a scathing statement that sent shockwaves through the soccer world this week, the Premier League said Man City used “sham” contracts with commercial partners to inflate the club’s revenues and disguise more than \u00a3900 million as legitimate income. In reality, the club’s infinitely wealthy owner, the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), was funding the majority of those deals, with sponsors only paying a small portion.<\/p>\n That allowed Man City, for so long stuck firmly in the shadow of local rivals Manchester United, to spend over \u00a31 billion on star players and coaches and grow into a global soccer behemoth that has since won dozens of trophies, including eight Premier League titles and the Champions League.<\/p>\n So, where do we go from here? Let’s dive in.<\/p>\n Manchester City quickly confirmed they’ll appeal. That appeal will be heard by a new three-person independent commission.<\/p>\n The club has always proclaimed innocence in the matter, and doubled down in the wake of the guilty verdict by saying the ruling contains “clear material errors.” Man City claim to possess “irrefutable” evidence that absolves them of wrongdoing. What could that possibly be, though? <\/p>\n This investigation began back in 2018, and the independent commission’s hearing started in September 2024 after the club was formally charged.<\/p>\n It seems unlikely that City, who’ve gone to great lengths to fight the matter in court and had a number of key witnesses give statements during the hearing, haven’t already<\/em> presented all possible evidence in a (thus far failed) effort to absolve themselves. Have they just been sitting on a smoking gun the entire time, waiting for the 11th hour to surprise everyone?<\/p>\n It is possible, of course, that City could win an appeal and be cleared. They successfully overturned a two-year European ban that was imposed on them by UEFA in 2020 for breaking Financial Fair Play regulations, though the club can’t bring this matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) like it did on that occasion.<\/p>\n This ultimately could be taken to London’s High Court, though.<\/p>\n Since there’s no established set of sanctions for Premier League financial breaches – they’re handled on a case-by-case basis – absolutely everything is on the table.<\/p>\n Massive fines and significant points deductions – possibly spanning multiple seasons to make it difficult for Man City to bounce right back up from a potential relegation – seem inevitable, and the extreme option of Premier League expulsion also exists.<\/p>\n Considering the tone of the Premier League’s announcement and the fury that you could feel<\/em> in each paragraph of the league’s 1,545-word statement, it’s hard to believe City will get off with a simple slap on the wrist.<\/p>\n “This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history,” CEO Richard Masters said in the statement. <\/p>\n The punishment, then, figures to be proportionate.<\/p>\n The sanctions will be decided in a separate hearing held by another three-person independent panel and should, in theory, arrive quicker than the guilty verdict did.<\/p>\n The Premier League said it wants this process to be concluded “as soon as possible,” and expressed regret over the amount of time it took to produce the guilty verdict itself. <\/p>\n Inertia benefits nobody here.<\/p>\n Premier League regulations state that Man City’s appeal, due by Friday, should conclude no more than 12 weeks after being filed, with a decision on the appeal due within 30 days after that. Assuming the appeal is heard and acted upon before the punishment is doled out, we could get a final decision in 2027 before the end of the current Premier League season.<\/p>\n That is obviously in the best interest of all parties. Leaving players, fans, and clubs – both Man City and others – in limbo is detrimental to everyone and to the league as a whole.<\/p>\n Man City are currently top of the Premier League with a perfect record after five matches this season. They could absolutely go on to win another league title. But are they genuine contenders, or will they lose all those points (and more) and tumble down the table? Everyone deserves to know where they stand before the 2026-27 campaign ends in May.<\/p>\n Things get really messy if a decision isn’t reached during the season.<\/p>\n Both Everton and Nottingham Forest were docked points during the 2023-24 season for breaking the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).<\/p>\n The Toffees lost a total of eight points for two breaches, while Forest were deducted four points for a single breach.<\/p>\n The unprecedented scale of Man City’s misconduct is hard to contextualize, but logic alone suggests that if they’re given a points penalty, it’ll far outweigh the punishments their Premier League peers faced in those situations.<\/p>\n Though the Premier League and second-tier Championship are part of the same footballing ecosystem in England, they are separate entities. Man City cannot simply be placed directly into the Championship as punishment for their financial misdeeds.<\/p>\n The only way Enzo Maresca’s team can end up in the second division is if they incur a points penalty big enough that it effectively makes it impossible for them to escape the relegation zone this season (or in a future season if the sanctions take that long).<\/p>\n That would ensure the normal flow of relegation and promotion continues between the two leagues, with the same number of clubs (three) going up and down together at season’s end.<\/p>\n This is the nuclear option the Premier League could consider, and is very<\/em> different from relegation.<\/p>\n For starters, 15 other Premier League clubs would have to vote in favor of expulsion; the Premier League is a private company governed by its 20 member clubs and England’s Football Association (FA).<\/p>\n It’s not totally outlandish to consider the possibility that some clubs would vote to keep Man City in the league. Many surely would want them kicked out, but others, particularly those who have benefitted financially from transfer dealings with Man City over the past decade, might not be so keen to lose such a valuable trading partner. <\/p>\n If they were to be expelled, though, Man City would then have to apply with the FA to rejoin the English Football League (EFL), which governs everything from the Championship (second tier) to League Two (fourth tier).<\/p>\n By law, any new member that wishes to join the EFL (or reintegrate) must start at the League Two level. <\/p>\n But the EFL, like the Premier League, is a collective of its clubs, and those 72 teams would get to vote on whether or not to accept Man City as a member; Man City would need a simple majority to be admitted.<\/p>\n Why, though, would any of the clubs fighting tooth and nail to make their way up the country’s soccer pyramid allow another club – especially one of Man City’s stature and financial power – to potentially slow their own ascent? The Citizens, even if they’re significantly hamstrung, would instantly be the best team in the lower tiers, and any promotions they would earn would come at the expense of another squad.<\/p>\n There’s no guarantee that an EFL vote would pass to allow them entry.<\/p>\n Possibly! It depends, ultimately, on the severity of the sanctions. Erling Haaland playing against Tranmere Rovers and Accrington Stanley in League Two? A truly hilarious concept, but don’t count on it.<\/p>\n If City are handed a massive points penalty that all but guarantees relegation to the Championship next season, you could envision a scenario where many of the players, especially those on long, lucrative contracts, stick around and try to earn immediate promotion back to the top flight. (Whether that would actually defeat the purpose of having sanctions in the first place is another matter.)<\/p>\n The Athletic’s David Ornstein, who first reported<\/a> last week that Man City had been found guilty on the majority of the 115 charges against them, said there are no existing clauses that allow City’s players to instantly get out of their contracts upon potential relegation.<\/p>\n “As far as my information goes, which has always been the case, I don’t think there are relegation clauses in the Manchester City contracts because they’ve never been countenancing that day coming, because they’ve always protested their innocence in this situation,” Ornstein explained on The Athletic FC Podcast<\/a>. <\/p>\n That depends who you ask. There are no “good” outcomes here, really. <\/p>\n If titles are stripped, the players who won them will feel robbed of the success they say was achieved “on the pitch,” as former star midfielder Rodri recently explained<\/a>. But would those players have been in any position to win those titles if not for the off-field cheating? Almost certainly not.<\/p>\n I agree with Wayne Rooney’s assertion<\/a> that titles shouldn’t be retroactively allocated to other clubs that either finished second to Man City in the league or lost against them in cup finals. Stripping the titles won during the period in question and leaving them unassigned in the official record books makes sense, and hurts the reputation of Man City, the institution, more than any individual players who have long since enjoyed their trophy celebrations.<\/p>\n It is certainly unfair to current Man City players, some of whom were literal children when the club began engaging in its financial scheme in 2009, that their careers could be directly impacted by possible relegation. But the breaches, so intentional and brazen, deserve severe punishment that’s commensurate to the acts and actually deters other clubs (and Man City) from doing something similar in the future. Some collateral damage is inevitable. It’s unfortunate, sure, but Man City created that reality themselves and deserve to pay for it.<\/p>\n Otherwise, what’s the point?<\/p>\n This will also all feel hollow if the club’s owners – assuming they’re found to have been directly involved in the scam – aren’t kicked out of the league and forced to sell Manchester City. <\/p>\n A fine simply won’t cut it when we’re dealing with a state-backed ownership group that counts its cash in billions.<\/p>\n The Abu Dhabi United Group, which bought Manchester City in 2008 and is the club’s majority owner, is led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan. By now, you’ve likely heard of references to “Sheikh Mansour” in matters surrounding Man City. That’s him. <\/p>\n He’s the vice-president, deputy prime minister, and chairman of the Presidential Court of the United Arab Emirates, and he’s the younger brother of UAE president Mohamed bin Zayed.<\/p>\n What role, if any, did Sheikh Mansour play alongside senior Man City staff in all this? And how involved was compatriot Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the club chairman who has been one of Man City’s most vocal defenders in all this?<\/p>\n It’s possible that English soccer’s Independent Football Regulator (IFR), established in 2025 to help ensure financial sustainability for the sport in the country and its clubs, could step in and suspend or revoke Manchester City’s license to operate. How might the ADUG respond in that scenario?<\/p>\n It would be naive not to consider the political ramifications. These conversations go beyond the pitch and the Etihad Stadium.<\/p>\n UK prime minister Andy Burnham, who served as mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 until June of this year, said he’d be “really concerned” to lose Man City’s Emirati owners if they were forced to sell the club.<\/p>\n “They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester and obviously the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is,” Burnham told Chris Mason of the BBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n The club’s ownership group has invested heavily in east Manchester since purchasing the team. Could they threaten to pull that investment if forced to sell Man City? How might 10 Downing Street react in that case?<\/p>\n The government has intervened in football matters before – under very different circumstances, it must be said – when Roman Abramovich was forced to sell Chelsea in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n Political relations between the UK and UAE would be put to the test if there was any government involvement here, which, frankly, is another argument against state ownership in club soccer.<\/p>\n This is another fascinating – and potentially enormously expensive – layer to this whole situation. <\/p>\nWhat happens next?<\/h3>\n
What could the sanctions be?<\/h3>\n
When will we know the punishment?<\/h3>\n
Are there any precedents?<\/h3>\n
How would relegation work?<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/assets-cms.thescore.com\/uploads\/image\/file\/772649\/cropped_GettyImages-2201470942.jpg?ts=1740698307\")
What happens if they’re expelled?<\/h3>\n
So, would all their players then leave?<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/assets-cms.thescore.com\/uploads\/image\/file\/845414\/cropped_GettyImages-2291738532.jpg?ts=1787668562\")
What should<\/em> the sanctions be?<\/h3>\n
And what about those owners?<\/h3>\n
![](\"https:\/\/assets-cms.thescore.com\/uploads\/image\/file\/849928\/cropped_GettyImages-1995443222.jpg?ts=1790711380\")
How about the other clubs impacted?<\/h3>\n