For three and a half years, “115 charges” has been a punchline, a chant, and a question nobody could answer. On Tuesday, the Premier League answered it. An independent commission found Manchester City guilty of every charge of serious financial wrongdoing it faced, covering nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18, plus most of the charges that the club failed to cooperate with the investigation.
“This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history,” said Richard Masters, the league’s chief executive. “It details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade.”
City, who sit top of the table after five straight wins, say they are “disappointed and surprised” and will appeal.
Some of the headlines since have gone a long way past what has actually been decided, with talk of expulsion and even of the club being dissolved. So here is what the commission found, what it has not decided yet, and what could really happen.
What City were found guilty of
The core finding is that City made themselves look far richer than they were. According to the commission, the club arranged “sham” contracts with commercial partners, inflating its revenue and reducing its costs by more than £900 million over the nine seasons.
The way it worked, the panel found, was that sponsors in Abu Dhabi paid only part of what their deals were worth on paper. The rest was quietly funded by Abu Dhabi United Group, the investment company of City’s owner, Sheikh Mansour. ESPN’s reading of the decision puts the gap at £949.94 million declared from those deals against £119.25 million actually paid by the sponsors themselves.
Why does that matter? Because the rules in that era limited how much an owner could pour into a club. Money dressed up as sponsorship counts as earned income. Money from the owner does not. By the commission’s account, City used that disguise to stay inside spending limits set by both the Premier League and UEFA while spending like a club with no limits at all.
The commission also found that City hid payments that topped up the salaries of managers and players, filed accounts that misstated the club’s real finances, and kept the truth from its own auditors. On top of that, it upheld most of the charges that City obstructed the league’s investigation between 2018 and 2023. The commission said the club made “concerted efforts to stop and frustrate” the inquiry. Reports put the final count at 114 of the 115 charges proven.
What has not been decided
The punishment. That is the most important thing to understand about this week.
“There are elements of the case that remain to be decided,” Masters said, “including, importantly, what sanction must follow for these breaches.” The sanction will be set at a separate hearing in front of the same independent commission. The Premier League argues for a punishment, City argue against it, and the panel decides. There is no fixed table of penalties, because the clubs themselves rejected one, so this panel has unusually wide discretion. The league has said it wants the whole process wrapped up quickly, and Sky Sports reports it wants it done this season.
So could City actually be expelled?
It is possible. It is not decided, and it is not the only option. Here is the realistic range:
- A fine. Almost certain to be part of any sanction, and almost certainly not the whole of it.
- A points deduction. The most likely outcome, and the size is the real question. Everton lost eight points across two cases in 2023/24 and Nottingham Forest lost four, each for a single season of overspending. City were found guilty across nine seasons, plus non-cooperation. In the Football League, Derby County once lost 21 points and Luton Town 30. City’s case covers far more seasons, and far more money, than any of them.
- Other sporting sanctions, like a transfer ban.
- Expulsion from the Premier League, the most severe option the commission has. David Bernstein, a former City chairman and former chairman of the Football Association, called the findings “damning beyond belief” and suggested expulsion should follow if the appeals fail.
One thing worth clearing up: “dissolution” is not on the table. The Premier League decides who plays in its competition. It does not have the power to close down a football club, and nobody involved in the process has suggested it.
And the trophies? City won the Premier League three times in the period covered by the charges, in 2011/12, 2013/14 and 2017/18. Fans of every club that finished behind them will ask whether those titles get taken away. The league has not said anything about that, and stripping titles is not something it has done before.
What happens next
Friday, October 2 is the deadline for City to appeal, and they have already said they will, arguing that the decision contains “clear material errors of law, principle and fact.” The club also says it has “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” on its side.
The appeal goes to a new three-person board under the Premier League’s own rules. Unlike City’s famous 2020 case with UEFA, there is no route to the Court of Arbitration for Sport this time. Back then, CAS overturned a two-year ban from European competition and cut a €30 million fine to €10 million, largely because many of the allegations were too old or not proven. That escape hatch does not exist here. If the appeal fails, City’s only remaining option is to ask the High Court to review whether the process was fair, which is a much narrower argument than “we did not do it.”
So the likely order is: appeal, a sanctions hearing, and possibly a court challenge after that. None of it will be quick, but the league is pushing for an answer before the season ends.
The strange part: City are winning right now
All of this is landing on a team that has done nothing wrong on the pitch this season. Enzo Maresca’s City are five from five, 15 points, three clear of Arsenal. We wrote this month about their derby win over Manchester United, the one the referees later admitted should not have stood. Much of this squad was still in school when the conduct in this case began.
That is what makes the coming months so uncomfortable. A points deduction would hit this squad and this title race, not the people who signed those sponsorship deals more than a decade ago. Arsenal, who held off City to win the title last season, seven points clear in the end after the title race we were tracking in the spring, now have to wonder whether the table they are chasing is the real one.
The league has spent three and a half years saying the rules apply to everyone. This week it proved City broke them. The next few months will show what that is actually worth.
