Manchester City have reportedly been found guilty on 114 of the 115 Premier League charges. Nobody has been punished yet, City are expected to appeal, and United are working out what the breaches cost them. Eight years of waiting, and it still isn’t over.
What do we actually know?
Less than the noise suggests. The Athletic’s David Ornstein reported on Friday 25 September that the independent commission had found City guilty on 114 of the 115 charges. Sky Sports, BBC Sport, Reuters and AFP followed. The written verdict hasn’t been published, and nobody has reported which charge wasn’t proven. The Premier League calls it “a private and confidential process” and isn’t commenting.
The charges cover two things. The first is City’s finances between 2009-10 and 2017-18: 54 charges for inaccurate financial information, 14 over manager and player pay, 5 under UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules and 7 under the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules. The second is 35 charges for failing to cooperate with the investigation between December 2018 and February 2023 (Sky Sports).
No punishment has been decided. That’s for a separate sanction hearing, and the options run from fines and points deductions to transfer bans, compensation orders and expulsion. There’s no fixed tariff for a case like this (Sky Sports).
City are expected to appeal, but haven’t confirmed they have. AFP says City will appeal if the reports are confirmed. The Telegraph says they’re expected to once any sanctions are known. Either side gets 14 days to lodge an appeal, a new three-person Appeal Board would hear it, and this time City can’t go to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. City’s own line hasn’t moved: chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak told fans the process “still has a long way to run”.
Who is saying what?
Throw the book at them. The Daily Mail’s Oliver Holt wants City stripped of all eight Premier League titles and relegated. The Telegraph’s Oliver Brown calls relegation across multiple divisions “an appropriate starting point”. Roy Keane says City “chose to cheat” and should “take their medicine now”.
Something drastic, even from their own. David Bernstein, City’s chairman from 1998 to 2003, says a fine won’t cut it: “money is not sufficient, it would have to be something, unfortunately, more drastic than that”.
A big points deduction. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire calls a deduction “the most likely outcome”, and back in February he suggested 40 to 60 points would make sense. Stefan Borson, once a financial adviser to City, expects that “any punishment will be severe”.
Punish the present, not the past. Sporting News’ Kyle Bonn wants a deduction this season that ends City’s title hopes, and argues that stripping old titles “does little to actually punish a club”. CaughtOffside [source link no longer available] suggests 20 to 30 points.
A fine and move on. An unnamed Premier League club source told TEAMtalk that “the majority of clubs are expecting a fine”.
Not so fast. City say the process isn’t finished, and their statement questions whether the League has acted as “an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence”. Lawyer Ian Hargreaves calls the verdict “the beginning of a new phase”, not the end.
The old boys. United’s former players went straight for the medal cabinet. Rio Ferdinand: “Another premier league medal to be added to the cabinet”. David de Gea: “How many Premier League titles have I won then?” Juan Mata, on ITV: “I’ve never won the Premier League - or have I?”
Where do they agree — and disagree?
Outside City, almost everyone agrees the punishment should hurt. Where they split is how, and whether it should reach back into history.
Past or present. This is the biggest split. Holt, Brown and a queue of former United players want the titles treated as void. But BBC Sport’s Dan Roan reports “little appetite” inside the Premier League for stripping titles, and The Athletic’s Oliver Kay expects sanctions to be “forward-looking rather than historic”. Ornstein and the Daily Mail’s Mike Keegan keep the door open, pointing out that a points deduction could be applied retrospectively (Football365).
How big. The range runs from a fine, through 20 to 30 points and Maguire’s 40 to 60, all the way to relegation. Everton and Nottingham Forest’s deductions are the obvious yardstick, and nobody agrees how far to scale them up.
Can the league take it? Bonn warns relegation would be “catastrophic” for the league as a whole. Brown and Keane say the scale of the offence outweighs that.
Is it over? The loudest voices are treating it as done. City, independent lawyers and Sky’s explainers all point to the sanction hearing and appeal still to come. Estimates run from under 12 weeks for an appeal to another two years for the whole thing.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy summed up the mood outside football: it’s “not a good moment for football”, and fans “need to know that the rules are applied fairly and consistently”.
What could it mean for United?
In three seasons inside the main charge period, City finished directly ahead of United.
| Season | United manager | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | Sir Alex Ferguson | Level on 89 points. City won the title on goal difference, with Agüero’s late winner against QPR. |
| 2015-16 | Louis van Gaal | United fifth, level on 66 points with fourth-placed City. Champions League missed on goal difference. |
| 2017-18 | José Mourinho | United second on 81 points. City champions on 100. |
The money. The Athletic reports United have started an internal assessment of potential financial losses from the seasons they finished behind City. The club has said nothing officially and hasn’t filed anything. United, Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs lodged notices back in November 2024 to protect their right to claim. The Independent’s Miguel Delaney reports the claims could be worth more than £200m, but nobody has put a figure on United’s share, whatever the “£200m windfall” headlines say.
There’s a precedent: Burnley have already won compensation from Everton over Everton’s breaches. The catch is that a club has to prove the breaches actually cost it money. Pointing at the league table isn’t enough.
The medals. The Mourinho quotes about wanting his medal are doing the rounds again, but they’re from 2024. More to the point, nobody we’ve read expects titles to be handed to the runners-up. If United get anything out of this, it’s far more likely to be a cheque than a medal.
This season. Nobody knows when a punishment will land. But talkSPORT’s Ben Jacobs reports that sanctions can be applied while an appeal is still going on. So a points deduction this season isn’t off the table, and that would shake up the league United are trying to climb.
THE UNITED ROUNDUP VIEW
A cheque, not a medal. And don’t wait up.
If the reports are right, City broke the rules for the best part of a decade, and United finished behind them in three seasons that mattered. That’s worth being angry about. But the realistic prize for United is money, not medals. Nobody in a position to decide has shown any appetite for rewriting the record books.
Even the money is a long way off. There’s a sanction hearing, then an appeal, and then any claim United make has to prove the breaches cost them. So enjoy Rio’s cabinet jokes by all means. Just don’t expect the 2011-12 title to turn up in the post.
What can’t be said yet is exactly what City were found guilty of, because the verdict hasn’t been published. Until it is, everything here is reported, not confirmed.
What happens next?
Watch for three things: the written verdict being published, the date of the sanction hearing, and whether City lodge their appeal now or once they know the punishment. Any compensation claims from United and the other clubs would come after that, through a separate process. We’ll update this piece as each one lands.
Left out of this piece: claims that City have already lodged an appeal (only one outlet says so, and nobody reputable backs it up); two different versions of a Rodri quote; Mourinho’s 2024 comments presented as new reactions; and a reported £800m total for rival clubs’ claims, which we could only see in a headline.