Manchester City found guilty of breaking Premier League financial rules: Everything we know so far
An independent commission has found Manchester City guilty of all charges related to breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, and the club now face unprecedented sanctions.
The bombshell announcement, published last week, ignited debate and speculation across the football world.
Will City’s titles be stripped and re-awarded? Is relegation or expulsion from the Premier League possible? Can they appeal? When and how will sanctions be decided?
Here’s everything we know so far:
The investigation and the verdict:
The three-person commission found City guilty of using ‘sham’ contracts and commercial deals as part of a disguised funding scheme which inflated revenues and reduced costs by £900 million between the 2009/10 and 2017/18 seasons.
It was also found that City breached spending limits, misstated accounts and “committed multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and utmost good faith towards the League”.
Of the 115 charges brought against City, the club was found guilty of all of them relating to breaches of financial rules, and the majority of them relating to their failure to co-operate with the investigation.
The decision comes eight years after the Premier League first investigated City’s financial operations, following German outlet Der Spiegel's 2018 publication of leaked emails and documents, obtained by hacker Rui Pinto, that allegedly showed systemic and deliberate violations of financial rules.
City were charged in 2023, and a 10-week hearing took place in September 2024, with the verdict finally being made public last week.
City appeal:
City have already appealed the verdict and have vehemently protested their innocence, a club statement said: “The club’s firm position is that, on multiple grounds, the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe.
“The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case.”
In 2020, UEFA issued the club a two-year ban from European competitions; after an appeal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned the ruling, as the alleged offences were found to be either time-barred (occurred outside UEFA’s five-year statute of limitations) or unproven.
City cannot appeal to the CAS this time and cannot rely on any statute of limitations.
Instead, the appeal will be heard by a new three-person panel, and could eventually be escalated to the High Court if the process was found not to be fair and impartial.
City’s main argument in the appeal will be that the extra money did not come from their owners, Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), but directly from the Abu Dhabi government.
This argument was already made to the initial panel but was found to be “untrue” and concocted retrospectively to disguise the funding scheme.
Sanctions:
Potential sanctions have been the subject of extensive fan debate since the verdict, but there is no clear indication of what they will look like.
The independent commission will decide the punishment in a separate hearing, and nothing is off the table; in a worst‑case scenario, City could even face expulsion from the league, which would require them to reapply to join the EFL in League Two.
Other possibilities include point deductions and severe fines.
While the club being stripped of their titles appears less likely, with the BBC reporting the Premier League and its clubs are not pushing for this outcome, it cannot be ruled out.
In the 2023/24 season, Everton and Nottingham Forest were each handed point deductions for breaches of Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR).
Everton were docked 10 points — later reduced to six on appeal — for a single breach, and a further two points for a second. Forest, meanwhile, were deducted four points for one breach.
The enormity of City’s breaches dwarfs any previous case and makes it hard to predict how the punishment might be scaled.
The Premier League are expected to want the sanction hearing and decision made this season, as no rules state the appeal process must be concluded before penalties are imposed.
Compensation for other clubs:
City won seven trophies in the period relevant to the breaches, including three Premier League titles, and built one of the most successful and dominant teams in history off the back of it under Pep Guardiola.
Rival clubs have sought legal advice over potential compensation for lost revenue, arguing that City’s actions may have deprived them of prize money and other income.
The Times revealed Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Tottenham served legal notices on City in 2024, reserving the right to seek compensation that could exceed £100 million if the club were found guilty of serious charges.
There is precedent: Everton were ordered to pay Burnley £35 million in damages because their breaches were judged to have harmed the Clarets’ chances of avoiding relegation.
These legal cases against City could drag on for years, at untold cost; City are already predicted to have spent over £100 million on legal fees.
The political element:
The United Arab Emirates and the UK are political allies, and the case could strain that relationship, with the UAE threatening to pull billions of pounds of investment from the UK in retaliation for the verdict, according to The Telegraph.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham worked closely with City’s owners in his previous role as Mayor of Manchester, collaborating on the £1 billion Manchester Life project that transformed the area around the Etihad Stadium.
Burnham said last week he would be “really concerned” if the City owners were forced out, with a spokesperson later clarifying that no club is above the rules and that the process's outcome should be respected.
Manchester City travel to Anfield this weekend for their first game since the verdict.
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