More than three years have passed since the Premier League dropped a bombshell on Manchester City, and there is still no verdict. The case involving over 115 alleged financial rule breaches is the most complex, and most consequential, disciplinary matter English football has ever dealt with. While title races come and go, the outcome of this tribunal could redraw the landscape of Premier League football for a generation.
This is not a simple fine-and-move-on situation. The scale of the allegations, the length of the hearing, and the silence from the commission since it wrapped up proceedings in December 2024 all point to a ruling of enormous weight. Here is a full breakdown of what is actually alleged, what has happened so far, and where things stand in 2026.
How It Started: Der Spiegel and the Football Leaks
The case traces back to November 2018, when German publication Der Spiegel published leaked internal documents from Manchester City as part of a wider Football Leaks data dump. The emails appeared to show club executives discussing how to structure financial transactions, particularly commercial deals with Etihad Airways and Etisalat, in ways that would satisfy UEFA’s Financial Fair Play requirements while, critics alleged, disguising direct investment from the club’s Abu Dhabi owners as legitimate commercial revenue.
UEFA launched its own investigation and in February 2020 handed City a two-year European ban and a €30 million fine. City challenged that decision at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and CAS overturned the ban. The panel found that UEFA had not properly established that the transactions were disguised equity funding, and concluded that many of the alleged violations were in any case time-barred under UEFA’s five-year statute of limitations.
City called it vindication. Rival fans called it a technicality. The Premier League, which operates without that same five-year cut-off, spent the next two years building its own case.
What Are the 115 Charges, Exactly?
In February 2023, the Premier League formally charged Manchester City with 115 alleged breaches of its financial rules. Some reports since then have put the actual figure closer to 130 individual counts, though the Premier League’s original statement listed 115.
The alleged violations cover a nine-year window from the 2009/10 season through to the end of 2017/18 — a period during which City won the Premier League three times under Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini, before Pep Guardiola arrived in 2016.
The charges break down into several broad categories:
Inaccurate financial reporting — Roughly 54 of the charges relate to City allegedly failing to provide accurate and up-to-date financial information across multiple seasons. Premier League rules require clubs to give the league a “true and fair” view of their revenue, which includes how sponsorship deals are structured and valued. The allegation here is that City’s reported income did not reflect reality.
Undisclosed player and manager payments — The Premier League alleges that City failed to fully declare financial payments made to players and at least one manager across multiple seasons. Crucially, one charge relates to a manager allegedly having a secret contract, meaning the publicly declared salary significantly understated what was actually being paid. Every Premier League club signs up to a code requiring complete disclosure of these arrangements.
Breaching UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules — For a five-year period, City allegedly violated UEFA’s own FFP requirements and failed to comply with them. This matters because the Premier League requires member clubs to abide by UEFA’s regulations as well as its own. CAS cleared City of the most serious UEFA-facing charges, but the Premier League’s rules do not carry the same time limits.
Failure to cooperate with the investigation — Perhaps the most damaging category in terms of potential leniency. The Premier League specifically alleges that City did not provide documents in “utmost good faith” during the investigation. This is significant because, for comparison, Chelsea received a £10 million fine in 2024 after its new ownership proactively self-reported legacy payments from the Roman Abramovich era. The co-operation discount Chelsea received is not available to City if the failure-to-cooperate charges are proven.
Manchester City has consistently and emphatically denied every single charge. The club has previously said it holds a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” to support its position.
The Hearing: September to December 2024
The formal independent hearing began in September 2024 and ran for twelve weeks, concluding in December 2024 at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London. The proceedings were held in strict confidence, Premier League rules require that independent commission hearings remain private, meaning no daily reporting, no leaks to journalists, no live commentary.
Three independent judges oversaw the case, selected by Murray Rosen KC, chair of the Premier League’s judicial panel. City’s defence was led by Lord Pannick KC, one of the most senior barristers in England, who has argued cases before the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights. The involvement of legal firepower at that level tells you how seriously both sides treated the hearing.
Hundreds of thousands of documents were reviewed. Witnesses from City’s recent history were called. The Premier League presented its case, City rebutted it, and by December 2024 the formal hearing phase was over.
Where Things Stand in 2026
Here is where the situation gets genuinely strange. The hearing ended in December 2024, and as of late April 2026 there has still been no public verdict. That is more than 16 months of silence.
No one outside the commission knows exactly why it is taking so long. Several explanations have been floated by legal and football finance experts. The sheer volume of evidence, covering nine years of financial records and running to millions of pages, makes it unlike any previous Premier League disciplinary case. The three judges may still be working through their deliberations, or they may be at odds and working toward consensus. Publishing a ruling of this scale requires not just a verdict but a written judgment explaining the reasoning behind every finding, which is itself a substantial exercise.
LaLiga president Javier Tebas, speaking at the Financial Times Business of Football Summit in February 2026, was blunt in his criticism. He described the situation as a failure of governance and noted that other clubs had been charged and sanctioned for financial breaches within the same period. “Manchester City has impunity,” he said. “I speak to a lot of Premier League clubs, and the majority don’t understand this either. That makes the institution weaker.”
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters was asked about the case at the same event and gave nothing away. “I simply can’t comment,” he said. “Having spent three years not commenting, I’m not going to start now.”
Initial estimates placed the verdict in spring 2025. Then summer 2025. Then Easter 2026. The current read among people close to the case is that a verdict may arrive in the summer of 2026, though even that is not confirmed. If either side then appeals, and both the Premier League and Manchester City have 14 days to do so following publication, that appeal goes before a fresh three-person panel, pushing any actual sanctions further into the future. Some experts believe the full legal process, including appeals, could run into 2027.
The Title Race Complication
There is an uncomfortable wrinkle for the Premier League in the 2025/26 season. Manchester City are currently in the running to win the league title, with Arsenal their main rivals. If City win the title and the tribunal subsequently finds them guilty and imposes a points deduction, it creates a scenario English football has never faced: a club being stripped of a championship after the fact.
Legal publication The Lawyer described City’s position in the title race as “something of a nightmare for the Premier League,” raising the real possibility of a club being crowned champions at the same time as a tribunal finds it guilty of systematic rule breaches over many years. A retroactive points deduction could hand the title to Arsenal. It would be chaotic, litigious, and without precedent in Premier League history.
Pep Guardiola has said publicly that he wants the process concluded quickly and that he will accept whatever the independent panel decides.
What Happens If City Are Found Guilty?
The Premier League’s rulebook contains eight potential sanctions for financial misconduct, ranging from fines and transfer bans to points deductions and expulsion from the league.
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has suggested that if the most serious charges are proven, City could face a points deduction somewhere between 40 and 60 points, a penalty that would almost certainly mean relegation regardless of performances on the pitch. “The Premier League cannot relegate Manchester City to League One or League Two because that is an EFL decision,” Maguire has noted. “Therefore, it has to be a points deduction.”
Expulsion from the Premier League is theoretically possible for the most egregious proven breaches, though most analysts regard it as an extreme outcome. Stripping of titles won during the 2009–2018 period is also under consideration.
For context: Everton received a 10-point deduction in November 2023 for a £19.5 million PSR breach. Nottingham Forest received 4 points for a £34.5 million overspend. The scale of the allegations against City dwarfs both, which is part of why the figures being discussed are so much larger.
Four Premier League clubs, Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, and Chelsea, have reportedly explored the possibility of seeking financial compensation if City is found guilty, on the basis that the alleged financial misconduct distorted competition and cost them titles and prize money over multiple seasons.
City’s Position and Legal Strategy
City won at CAS in 2020 by exposing structural weaknesses in UEFA’s regulations. The same legal team, led by Lord Pannick, is running a similar strategy here. The club continues to deny all wrongdoing and has previously positioned the case as one it “looks forward to putting to rest once and for all.”
The key difference from the UEFA case is that the Premier League’s rules do not carry a time-bar on investigations, meaning the 2009–2018 material is fully in play regardless of how old it is. The leaked Der Spiegel emails are admissible as evidence under the Premier League’s rules. And the failure-to-cooperate charge, if proven, removes the possibility of any leniency based on good behaviour.
The Bigger Picture
The delay has damaged the Premier League’s credibility in the eyes of rival clubs, regulators abroad, and football governance observers generally. Over three years have passed since the charges were first brought, and still no resolution. In a competition where smaller clubs have been punished swiftly and visibly for far less, the protracted silence around City’s case creates, at minimum, a perception problem.
The outcome matters beyond City. A guilty verdict with meaningful sanctions would establish that no club is too large or too wealthy to be held to the rules. An acquittal would raise serious questions about whether the rules as currently written are enforceable at all. Either way, it will shape how financial regulation in English football works for years.
The commission has not set a public deadline for its ruling. For now, the wait continues.
All charges remain allegations. Manchester City has denied all wrongdoing. No verdict has been issued as of the date of publication (April 2026).
