- The Premier League has confirmed Manchester City are guilty of every charge of serious financial-rule breaches across nine seasons (2009/10–2017/18).
- An independent commission found "sham" sponsorship contracts and a disguised funding scheme, run through owner Abu Dhabi United Group, that inflated the club's position by more than £900 million.
- City filed misstated accounts, hid the true state of its finances from auditors — and called witnesses who gave evidence the commission found false.
- Sanctions are still to be decided, but the rulebook allows a points deduction, an unlimited fine — or expulsion from the Premier League.
- City deny everything and will appeal by Friday, October 2, calling the ruling "unsafe."
The Etihad Stadium, home of Manchester City. (Arne Müseler / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 de)
For years it was the case that wouldn't die — the one City fans dismissed as a witch hunt and rivals clung to like a life raft. On Tuesday, it landed with a thud that shook English football: Manchester City have been found guilty on all charges of serious breaches of the Premier League's financial rules, covering nine seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18.
The league didn't bury it. It published a lengthy statement and a 40-page commission document — some of it redacted — laying out "strong, cogent evidence" of "serious wrongdoing." Chief executive Richard Masters didn't mince words: "This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history." He's not wrong.
The verdict nobody thought would actually land
The charges came in February 2023, after a four-year investigation triggered by leaked emails published by German magazine Der Spiegel. A three-person independent commission then heard the case over ten weeks in late 2024 — and it's taken until now for the verdict to go public.
The core finding is blunt: "The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period. It details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade." City were also found guilty of the majority of charges over their failure to co-operate with the investigation — what the league called "multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and utmost good faith."
How the "sham" scheme worked
This is where it gets ugly. The commission found that City "arranged 'sham' contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on 'sham' agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club's revenues and reduce its costs."
In plain terms: the sponsorship money on the books wasn't really sponsorship money. Sponsors paid only a fraction of their headline fees — the rest was quietly covered by Abu Dhabi United Group, the vehicle that owns the club. A "sham" circular arrangement with an entity called Fordham, which bought players' image rights, was funded the same way. The net effect: more than £900 million of inflated revenues and reduced costs (the commission's documents put the disguised funding alone at £830.69 million).
The club "filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances" from auditors and regulators — and was "significantly in breach of both the Premier League's and UEFA's spending limits." Most damning of all, witnesses called by the club gave evidence that was "false in a number of key respects" — testimony they knew to be untrue.
Inside Manchester City's dressing room — the trophies of the Abu Dhabi era now sit under a very dark cloud. (Christian David / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
What happens next: expulsion, points — or a fortune in fines
Here's the part everyone is actually waiting for: the punishment. The league says sanctions remain to be decided, and that it's "committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process." Under the Premier League's own handbook, the menu is dramatic — a points deduction, an unlimited fine, or even expulsion from the league entirely.
Reports from the ruling's fallout say rival clubs — long convinced City were cooking the books — are already pushing for expulsion from the top flight. Whether the commission goes that far is the single biggest unanswered question in world football right now.
City are fighting back hard. The club said it was "disappointed and surprised," insisted it is "innocent of the accusations," and vowed to pursue every appeal avenue, arguing the opinion "contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe." They have until Friday, October 2 to file that appeal — and chief executive Ferran Soriano issued a three-minute video address to stunned staff insisting the case rests on "a single false accusation."
Why this is the biggest day in Premier League history
Context matters. The guilty period covers City's transformation from noisy neighbours to the dominant force in English football — including Premier League titles in 2011/12, 2013/14 and 2017/18, won with squads assembled under finances the commission now says were systematically misstated.
None of this erases what happened on the pitch — and City will get their appeal. But whatever the final sanction, Tuesday's verdict rewrites the story of the modern Premier League. The most successful club of the era didn't just push the rules. According to an independent commission, they shredded them, hid the shredder, and lied about it for the best part of a decade.
Now everyone waits to find out the price.