Manchester City Found Guilty: What Happens Next

Manchester City have been found guilty of serious breaches of the Premier League's financial rules, ending one of the longest and most expensive investigations in English football history. An independent commission announced its verdict on September 29, 2026, ruling against the club on 114 of the 115 charges brought against it in February 2023 after a four-year investigation. No punishment has been set: the Premier League will decide sanctions at a separate hearing, while the club has until Friday, October 2, 2026, to appeal, according to Heavy's reporting on the commission's findings.

The case covers the 2009/10 to 2017/18 seasons, the nine-year stretch in which the club's Abu Dhabi-backed owners transformed it into one of the most dominant sides in English football. The Premier League said some sponsorship deals formed part of a "disguised funding scheme" that inflated reported revenue and understated operating costs by more than 900 million pounds. Commercial partners paid only part of the agreed sponsorship sums, with the remainder covered by companies linked to the ownership group, the league said. Another arrangement, involving image-rights company Fordham, was described as a "sham circular arrangement" for players' image rights.

A seven-year road to the verdict

The road to the verdict stretches back to 2019, when the Premier League opened its investigation after German magazine Der Spiegel published leaked internal emails, as documented in the case's background. The league formally charged the club with 115 breaches in February 2023, covering financial reporting, player and manager payments, profitability and sustainability rules, UEFA's financial fair play regulations, and cooperation with the investigation. A three-person independent commission then heard evidence over a 42-day period between September and December 2024. The verdict first leaked on September 25, 2026, when The Athletic reported the club had been found guilty of all but one of the charges, before the Premier League published its official statement four days later.

The commission's conclusions were blunt. It found the club guilty of every charge tied to serious financial breaches, and of most of the charges tied to obstructing the investigation. In its written reasons, the commission said "by its conduct the club clearly intended to circumvent the PL Rules," adding that honest reporting would have left it in breach of both Premier League and UEFA spending rules "by a very substantial amount."

What the club says — and what comes next

City rejected the findings outright. The club said it was disappointed and surprised by the ruling, insisted it is innocent of the accusations, and announced it would pursue every available appeal route, arguing the decision contains serious errors of law, principle and fact. If the club appeals, the case goes to a separate three-member appeal board, which must issue its decision within 30 days of the appeal hearing ending — though no date has been set for that hearing.

Then comes the question that matters most to fans: the punishment. Under Premier League rules, possible sanctions include a reprimand, unlimited fines, points deductions and even expulsion from the league. League chief executive Richard Masters called the case "the most significant in Premier League history," saying the verdict "establishes the facts of what happened" at the club during the period under review. Several rival clubs have previously reserved the right to seek compensation, which could open a second front of litigation beyond the league's own sanction.

The saga has an echo from the past. In 2020 the club overturned a two-year UEFA ban at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which cut a 30-million-euro fine to 10 million euros for failing to cooperate with UEFA's investigation. This time, however, the process runs entirely under Premier League rules, with a different appeal route and different sanction options. Some commentators argue the real scandal is the rulebook itself: one editorial argued financial fair play protects established elites and that the verdict exposes the system's hypocrisy — a view the league would dispute, but one that shows how divided football remains over whether these rules create fairness or merely entrench advantage.

For supporters, the stakes could not be higher. A points deduction would reshape the current title race overnight; expulsion would redraw the entire Premier League table. A lengthy appeal would keep the club in legal limbo through the heart of the season, clouding transfer plans and sponsorship negotiations. After four years of investigation and three years of charges, English football finally has a verdict — but the story is only entering its next act. Read more on the Sports beat.