Manchester City 115 Charges Ruling: 3 Reasons They May Not Be Punished As You Expect

On Friday, reports indicated that an independent commission had found Manchester City guilty on 114 of the 115 Premier League charges first brought in February 2023. The BBC later revealed that a decision had been made, confirming that member clubs were told after Thursday’s league meeting. But that is not an official ruling, and it does not say how many points the Abu Dhabi-owned club will lose.

The Premier League would not comment, calling the process confidential. City said the inquiry remains ongoing and pointed back to their February 2023 line, that they have evidence to support their position.

On Saturday, chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak said the club’s plan to prove innocence is as strong as when this began. Pep Guardiola left at the end of last season, Enzo Maresca is the man in the dugout now, and the table will keep moving while the lawyers do their jobs.

The charges cover nine seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18, and they include failures to give accurate financial information, incomplete details of pay for Roberto Mancini and players like Yaya Toure, and breaches related to UEFA’s old financial rules and the Premier League’s profitability tests. Over 50 of the charges are about financial reporting. That is what people want punished this week..

But there are good reasons it may not happen as you think. Here are three of them:

1. There is still no official verdict

What was revealed on Friday was a leak of a liability finding, not a handbook punishment. The verdict was never expected to come with the sanctions attached. Liability and penalty are two stages. The commission still has to hold a sanctions hearing, where both sides can argue what should follow from the finding, and that hearing has not been made public yet.

Also, the reasons have not been released either. Until they are, the 114-from-115 figure should be treated as reported, not as a document anyone can read. City have used that gap. Their statement talks about key elements still to be completed and about confidentiality.

A process that has already run from a 2018 Der Spiegel leak, through a February 2023 charge sheet, through a hearing that sat from September to December 2024, is not going to jump from an anonymous briefing to a 12-point deduction by just a few days.

The commission can deduct points now or later, fine the club, suspend them from matches, order compensation, or recommend that the board expel them. It can also do none of those things until it has heard mitigation. Everton were docked points for smaller profitability breaches and still had those numbers cut on appeal. Nottingham Forest also lost four points.

Those cases were easier because the rule and the tariff were simpler. Manchester City’s case is more complicated.

2. An appeal will delay points deduction

Once an official verdict is out, both the club and the league have 14 days to appeal. The Rt. Hon. Sir Gary Hickinbottom, who chairs the Premier League judicial panel, would then pick a new three-person panel. The Premier League Rule W.86 says an appeal should not last more than five days and should be heard in one block, with a 12-week window after the appeal is filed. Per BBC Sport, the sanctions hearing could take months.

If the appeal goes against them, they cannot take the Premier League case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the way they did with UEFA in 2020. They can still go to arbitration and argue that the panel went beyond its powers, acted in bad faith, or reached a decision no reasonable panel could have reached. That bar is high, but it is another year of process if they choose it.

Manchester City will keep referring to the 2020 UEFA case. UEFA gave them a two-year ban, but CAS cut it to a fine. That case does not decide this one because the Premier League rules and evidence are different. But it shows how City fight cases in court.

3. Even if guilty, punishment is unlikely to be what you expect

Relegation and stripping Manchester City of titles are the two outcomes being talked about most. The issue is, both are extremes of what the commission could impose, and they raise questions about how these cases are handled.

James Hill, a sports regulatory lawyer, told The Athletic when the charges were first brought that he would expect any points deduction to apply from that point onwards. Not to mention that panels are generally reluctant to rewrite past seasons because the punishment would affect players and supporters who had no part in the case. Stripping the 2012, 2014 or 2018 titles is also not a standard punishment set out in the rules. It is why since Friday, reports have treated it as both possible and unlikely.

Expulsion is another option on the table, so is points deduction large enough to send the club down. Neither, however, is how similar cases in English football have ended. A fine on its own would also appear light when compared with Everton and Nottingham Forest, especially because many of City’s charges are about the accuracy of their financial records.

The outcome analysts keep returning to is a points deduction applied to future seasons, possibly alongside a suspended penalty and a fine. That could still have a major effect on the title race. But it would not mean wiping 17 years from Manchester City’s honours board overnight.