The Manchester City 115 charges case picked the middle of an international break to end its silence, easily the most considerate bit of timing anyone connected to it has shown in three and a half years, since there is no Premier League fixture list to talk over the noise.
The hearing wrapped up on December 6, 2024, and for the best part of 21 months the only reliable news has been that there was none.
Late last week The Athletic reported that an independent panel had found City guilty of all but one of the 115 charges.
The club did not deny it, saying only that the process “remains ongoing.” Some outlets put it as 114 of 115, which is the same result counted the other way. Because the process is confidential, this is still reporting rather than a ruling anyone can read, and the part that matters most to City has not arrived yet, since no sanction has been determined and every option remains on the table.
What Has Been Decided And What Has Not
The charges fall into two groups. 80 relate to breaches of financial rules and a further 35 to failing to cooperate with the Premier League’s investigation, and the financial ones cover accurate accounting, full disclosure of player and manager pay, and compliance with league and UEFA financial rules.
The bulk of the alleged conduct sits between 2009 and 2018, though the referral itself stretches across the seasons from 2009-10 to 2022-23, so the reported period depends on which document you read.
Kieran Maguire, the football finance academic whom most of the game now treats as the reference point on this case, said before the verdict surfaced that the panel had a mountain to climb.
“We believe that around half a million pieces of evidence have been submitted by both the prosecution and the defence,” he said, adding: “There is a huge amount of evidence to go through, and the allegations are very, very serious. So you need to have enough evidence.”
That volume goes a long way to explaining why a three-person panel needed 21 months, and it also hints at how much material City’s lawyers will have to work with when they appeal, which is expected to be close to certain.
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The Precedents Everyone Keeps Reaching For
Guilt on this scale sends people straight to the only two Premier League cases that ended in points deductions. Everton lost eight points across two separate breaches of profit and sustainability rules in 2023-24, while Nottingham Forest lost four.
Everton’s first punishment was originally 10 points and was cut to 6 on appeal, which is the figure Maguire uses below.
His reasoning is about scale.
“If we look at precedents, we have Everton and Nottingham Forest, who lost six and four points for one violation over a three-year period,” he said. “The charges against Manchester City cover a nine-year period, so the scale is much greater.”
He then turned that into a number:
“I think a zero should be added to the Forest and Everton penalties. So a deduction of 40 to 60 points would be a logical step to bring it in line with previous decisions.”
It is a sensible piece of arithmetic, though it is arithmetic and not a formula. Dan Plumley, another finance specialist, has pointed out that there has never been a set of threshold standards saying that a breach of a given size earns a given number of points, and that gap is exactly where lawyers earn their fees on appeal.
A commission that borrows Maguire’s multiplier would be doing so by choice, not obligation, and would need to explain why in a document that City’s team will read line by line.
Could City Survive A Points Deduction?
The uncomfortable part for the neutral observer is that City look formidable while all this hangs over them. Enzo Maresca took over on a three-year deal this summer after Guardiola left, and City top the table after winning their first five matches. Whether a deduction would be applied to this season or the one in which the appeals finish is unknown, which is a large part of why nobody can say what it would do to the table.
The maths still tells its own story. City won the title with 91 points in 2023-24, and a deduction of 40 from a season like that would leave them at 51, which is comfortable mid-table.
A deduction of 60 would leave them around 31, and that total has been relegation territory in most recent seasons. So the range Maguire proposes stretches from an embarrassing season to a serious fight against the drop, depending on where the panel lands and how strong City are while it does.
Relegation itself is a live disagreement among the experts.
Maguire argues it is off the table:
“The Premier League cannot send Manchester City to the First or Second Division, as that is a decision for the English Football League (EFL), and the EFL has not brought any proven charges against the club. Therefore, it must be a points deduction.”
Other lawyers frame the range differently, with disputes specialist Ian Hargreaves describing options running from a transfer ban at the moderate end to expulsion from the league at the most severe.
The panel’s powers are described as open-ended, covering fines, points deductions or relegation, so the safest reading is that a huge deduction that produces relegation in practice would achieve the same result without anyone having to test the argument.
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Why A Fine Alone Would Look Strange
The Chelsea comparison keeps coming up whenever someone argues City should get off lightly, and it deserves a proper look. Chelsea’s case was brought by the FA, not the Premier League, and involved 74 breaches of agent payment rules that the club’s new owners self-reported after the 2022 takeover.
The result was a £10m fine, a suspended two-window registration ban running to June 30, 2027, and a suspended six-point deduction that was later set aside on appeal.
City are in a different position on almost every count.
Their case emerged from a four-year Premier League investigation and not from a voluntary disclosure, and 35 of the 115 charges concern a failure to cooperate, which is precisely the opposite of what Chelsea’s statement described as “unprecedented transparency.”
Maguire expects the cooperation findings to be punished separately and financially, in the manner of the UEFA case, where City’s two-year Champions League ban was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport but the ruling still left a mark on the club’s conduct. A fine could therefore appear as one part of the package, though as the entire answer it would look like the league declining to act.
Transfer Ban And The Other Big Option
A registration ban is the next most obvious tool, and Hargreaves places it at the gentler end of the range. It fits agent and transfer breaches neatly, as it does with Chelsea, but City’s case is mostly about how sponsorship income and pay were reported, not about how players were signed.
Banning them from buying would punish the recruitment department for the conduct of the accounts, and it would take years to bite, since a squad this strong can run on its existing players for a long time.
Stripping titles is the option that generates the loudest debate and the least logic.
All of City’s trophies are now described as under threat, but removing them would invite rivals to claim lost prize money and European places, and the legal fallout would probably outlast the punishment itself. It makes for a grand headline and a poor practical remedy.
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The Consequences
Maguire was blunt about the wider stakes, again speaking hypothetically before the verdict reports appeared.
“Corporate fraud is a very serious charge. The board of directors will have to resign. If Manchester City are found guilty (although both the club and the Premier League are confident they are in the right), the management must go, and this could lead to a complete restructuring of the club.”
That last part is the one nobody can assess yet, because the panel’s written reasoning has not been published and the details of what it found on each charge matter enormously. A conviction on non-cooperation is a very different sort of offence from one on misreporting revenue, and the sanction will follow the findings, not the headline number.
The Long Road From Here
The timetable is now the story. The club has said significant elements of the process are still to be completed, which means a sanction phase followed by an appeal that is likely to add months more.
Caroline Dinenage, who chairs the Commons culture committee, has asked that any remaining stages be completed as swiftly as is reasonably possible, which is the sort of polite request that has rarely worked on this case.
So the season will run with City at the top of the table and a verdict hanging over them, and nobody, including the club, can say what any of the results will be worth.
The question for three and a half years was whether City would be found guilty.
The one now is what a guilty verdict is worth, and that will be answered in points, appeals and precedents that the Premier League has never before had to write.
