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Manchester City have reportedly been found guilty on all but one of the 115 Premier League charges brought against them. If that extraordinary verdict survives the remaining process and appeal, English football has reached a moment when anything resembling a token punishment would become impossible to defend.
The sanction has not yet been decided and City are expected to appeal. The Premier League has also yet to publish the full judgment publicly, while City insist the process remains ongoing. Those qualifications matter because due process matters, even when emotions are understandably running high.
But if the reported findings are ultimately upheld, this cannot end with an enormous club receiving an enormous fine that its owners can comfortably absorb. It cannot end with six points disappearing from a season in which those points can simply be won back. And it certainly cannot end with a punishment designed primarily to make the authorities look tough while leaving Manchester City’s competitive position essentially intact.
The alleged breaches covered years of financial reporting, payments, compliance with financial regulations and co-operation with the Premier League investigation. This was never one late set of accounts or one narrow profitability miscalculation. The case went to the heart of whether one of English football’s dominant clubs operated within the same financial framework as everybody else.
That distinction is fundamental. Financial regulations are sporting regulations because money determines which players can be bought, which managers can be hired, how deep a squad can become and how long a club can sustain success. If the rules governing that financial competition are seriously breached, the consequences cannot logically be confined to an accounting department.
City won three Premier League titles during the 2009-to-2018 period covered by many of the allegations, alongside domestic cups, before going on to become the dominant English club of the following era. None of that means every trophy should automatically be erased or every great performance dismissed. Players still had to play, managers still had to coach and supporters still experienced those moments.
But it would be equally absurd to pretend the financial foundation of a football empire can be separated completely from what happened on the pitch. Clubs do not spend years arguing over financial rules because finance is irrelevant to sporting performance. They argue precisely because financial power is one of the most decisive competitive advantages in modern football.
If the findings stand, therefore, the Premier League is not merely deciding how to punish Manchester City. It is deciding whether its own rules ever truly mattered.
Every club that restrained spending to remain compliant, every executive who sold a player because the accounts demanded it, every manager denied another signing and every supporter whose club accepted competitive pain in order to follow the regulations will be watching the sanction.
The message cannot possibly be that obeying the rules was optional provided you became powerful enough before being caught.
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The punishment has to be sporting because the advantage was sporting
This is where fines become almost laughable.
Manchester City are one of the richest and most commercially powerful clubs in world football. A financial penalty, however spectacular the headline figure, risks becoming little more than another expense in the accounts. Punishment must remove something the club actually values competitively.
Points do that. Relegation does that. Expulsion does that.
The Premier League’s rules allow sanctions ranging from reprimands and fines through to points deductions and expulsion from the competition. If the reported scale of the guilty findings is confirmed, the authorities should be looking towards the severe end of those options rather than searching for the minimum punishment capable of surviving an appeal.
There will inevitably be arguments about proportionality. There should be. A legal process cannot simply translate 114 guilty findings into 114 identical punishments because the charges concern different rules, different periods and different conduct. The eventual written judgment will matter enormously in understanding precisely what the commission found.
But proportionality works in both directions. A punishment can be disproportionately weak as well as disproportionately severe.
If one of the most extensive financial disciplinary cases English football has ever seen ultimately produces a penalty that barely interrupts City’s pursuit of trophies, what possible deterrent has been created?
A rule that becomes cheaper to break than to obey is not a rule. It is a business expense.
English football cannot have one justice system for the powerful
The Premier League has spent years insisting that financial regulation protects competitive balance and sporting integrity. This is the moment when those words either acquire meaning or become corporate decoration.
Other clubs have made painful decisions because financial rules exist. Supporters have watched players leave. Transfer plans have been curtailed. Sporting ambitions have been reduced. In other cases, points deductions have materially affected league positions.
Now imagine telling those supporters that a club reportedly found guilty on almost the entire charge sheet will remain essentially untouched because the potential consequences of a serious punishment are inconvenient.
That would destroy confidence in the system far more effectively than any original breach.
Manchester City’s size must not become mitigation. Their success must not become mitigation. The global audience they attract must not become mitigation. The commercial damage the Premier League might suffer from relegating one of its biggest brands must not become mitigation.
In fact, the opposite principle should apply. The more powerful the institution, the more important it is that everyone sees the rules apply equally.
Otherwise English football creates the worst possible incentive: smaller clubs are forced to fear the regulations while super-clubs are encouraged to calculate whether challenging them is simply part of the cost of doing business.
What about the titles?
This is where the argument becomes much harder.
Supporters of Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and other rivals will understandably look backwards. They will remember title races, Champions League qualification battles and trophies decided during the period now under scrutiny. Some will inevitably demand championships be stripped and historical league tables rewritten.
Emotionally, that reaction is easy to understand. Administratively, retrospectively redistributing years of football is enormously complicated.
A trophy is not merely a line in a database. Matches were played, teams made different strategic decisions because of circumstances at the time, players moved clubs and entire seasons developed in ways that cannot simply be reconstructed years later. Awarding a championship retrospectively does not recreate the celebration another club might have enjoyed on the final day.
That is precisely why the delay surrounding this case has been so damaging.
More than three years passed between the charges being announced and this reported verdict, while the underlying investigation stretches back considerably further. City continued competing, winning and spending while one of the most consequential cases in the sport remained unresolved.
There is no perfect way to repair the past now.
There is, however, a very obvious way to protect the future: make the sanction so meaningful that no club in English football ever concludes that systematic non-compliance could be worth the gamble.
Relegation should be genuinely on the table
City supporters will rightly point out that they did not prepare financial statements, negotiate regulatory submissions or conduct investigations. They bought tickets, travelled around the country and supported their team like every other fan.
They should not be personally vilified for decisions taken above them.
Indeed, City supporters also deserve something they have been denied for years: certainty. Their club’s extraordinary achievements have existed beneath the permanent shadow of the charges, leaving every conversation about one of English football’s greatest teams accompanied by the same argument.
A decisive conclusion is better for everyone.
If City’s appeal materially changes the findings, then the punishment must reflect that. If the reported verdict survives substantially intact, however, the Premier League cannot hide behind caution.
Expulsion should be considered seriously.
And if that means Manchester City dropping well beyond the comfortable inconvenience of one season in the Championship and having to earn their status back through the football pyramid, so be it. Whether the competition’s regulations and football’s wider structure ultimately permit that precise outcome is a legal and administrative question, but it should not be dismissed merely because the club involved happens to be Manchester City.
A 10-point deduction followed by another £200million transfer window would not restore faith in English football.
A fine would not restore faith.
A transfer restriction alone would not restore faith.
The punishment has to demonstrate that sporting success obtained while breaching fundamental competition rules comes with a sporting cost capable of outweighing whatever advantage those breaches created.
Manchester City currently sit top of the Premier League after winning their opening five matches under Enzo Maresca. They spent around £450million during the summer as another enormously expensive team was assembled.
That makes the decision facing English football even more uncomfortable. A major sanction would disrupt the current season, anger broadcasters, create legal conflict and produce consequences far beyond Manchester City.
None of those are legitimate reasons to avoid it.
Rules are easiest to enforce when nothing important is at stake. Their real value is revealed when enforcing them becomes painful.
If Manchester City ultimately overturn these findings, they should be cleared and the argument ends. But if a verdict finding them guilty on virtually the entire charge sheet survives appeal, English football cannot pretend an ordinary punishment is enough.
Do not fine them and move on. Do not shave a handful of points from the table and congratulate yourselves on being tough. Impose a sporting punishment so severe that every owner in football understands the cost of breaking the competition’s fundamental rules.
If that means sending Manchester City down the pyramid and making one of the richest clubs in the world earn its way back, then that is exactly what should happen.
Because if 114 guilty findings are not enough to make the strongest possible sanction realistic, English football should stop pretending it has financial rules at all.
This article is an opinion and analysis piece. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views or official position of BettingTips4You.com or BSpin Limited.
