The verdict took 1,331 days. The Premier League charged Manchester City in February 2023, an independent commission found the club guilty on Tuesday, September 29, and the punishment has not been decided yet.
That last part is the story. Everyone is asking whether City get relegated. The real question is whether any sanction lands before the people who earned it have retired.
What the Panel Actually Found
The finding is broad. According to the Premier League’s statement, as reported by Sky Sports, City were found guilty of every charge covering serious breaches of the league’s financial rules over nine seasons. That puts the total at 114 of the 115 charges.
They were also found guilty of all but one of the charges for failing to cooperate with the league’s own investigation.
Read that second line slowly. The commission found the club both cooked the books and stonewalled the auditors.
Al Jazeera reported that between 2009/10 and 2017/18, City used “sham” contracts with commercial partners as part of a “disguised funding scheme” that inflated club revenue by £830 million.
The mechanism, per the league’s published statement carried by Goal, was simple. Sponsors paid part of the fee. Abu Dhabi United Group, the owner, quietly paid the rest.
That is a familiar old trick: the owner’s money, dressed up as a sponsor’s.
Two Accounts of the Same Nine Seasons
The Commission
Guilty on all serious financial charges across 2009/10 to 2017/18. Sponsorship income inflated through owner-funded “sham” deals. All but one non-cooperation charge upheld. Sanctions to follow at a further hearing.
Manchester City
Denies wrongdoing and says it will appeal, with a deadline of Friday, October 2. Chief executive Ferran Soriano has said the fight with the league could take years to conclude.
Only one of those columns comes with a 115-charge evidentiary record behind it.
The Sanction Is a Second Trial
Here is what most coverage skips past. The verdict decides nothing about punishment.
The league says sanctions will be set at a further hearing before the independent commission, Al Jazeera explained. The menu runs from fines and transfer bans to points deductions and expulsion.
Football finance academic Kieran Maguire has argued the penalty should “add a zero” to the deductions handed to Everton and Nottingham Forest. By our arithmetic that implies something in the region of 40 to 60 points.
For scale, Everton were docked 10 points in 2023-24, cut to six on appeal, and lost two more for a second breach. Forest lost four. Those clubs were punished for overspending. City have been found to have disguised where their money came from for nine years.
Then comes the timing trap. If a deduction is imposed before the appeal is heard, City could be relegated and later cleared. If the league waits, the case drags into a fifth, sixth, seventh year.
Clocks favor the defendant. City’s lawyers know it.
What It Means for Erling Haaland
The club’s biggest asset signed up anyway. NBC News reported in January 2025 that Haaland agreed a nine-and-a-half-year deal running to 2034, the longest contract in Premier League history.
He has said publicly he is not afraid of any punishment the club might face.
Reports in Spain say his contract carries no relegation release clause, and City sources have reiterated that no such clause exists for him or anyone else in the squad. If that holds, the most valuable striker in the world is legally tied to whatever the commission decides.
That makes this a labor story as much as a finance one. The players did not sign the sponsorship contracts. They may still pay for them.
Where We Stand
Our view: the Premier League now has to prove the verdict means something.
A finding that the champions faked revenue for nine seasons and obstructed the investigation cannot end in a fine Abu Dhabi can cover with loose change. Anything short of a sporting penalty tells the other nineteen clubs that the rulebook is a pricing sheet.
The league also owes everyone speed. It took 743 days to get from the opening of the hearing to a verdict. Sanctions cannot take that long again.
Rival clubs finished behind City in seasons this panel has now called fraudulent. Players and fans paid for tickets to those seasons. None of them get the years back.
The commission has done its part. The question now sitting with the league is whether it has the nerve to enforce its own ruling against the club that won four straight titles from 2020-21 to 2023-24.