Editorial use only. All images are copyright Every Second Media Limited. No images may be reproduced without prior permission. All rights reserved. Premier League and Football League images are subject to licensing agreements with Football DataCo Limited. see https://www.football-dataco.com Mandatory Credit: Photo by Harvey Todd/Every Second Media/Shutterstock (14737400e) A general view of the Manchester City crest on the corner flag ahead of the Manchester City FC v Watford FC Carabao Cup 3rd Round match at the Etihad Stadium, Manchester, England, United Kingdom on 24 September 2024 Manchester City FC v Watford FC, Etihad Stadium, Manchester, United Kingdom - 24 Sep 2024
Editorial use only. All images are copyright Every Second Media Limited. No images may be reproduced without prior permission. All rights reserved. Premier League and Football League images are subject to licensing agreements with Football DataCo Limited. see https://www.football-dataco.com Mandatory Credit: Photo by Harvey Todd/Every Second Media/Shutterstock (14737400e) A general view of the Manchester City crest on the corner flag ahead of the Manchester City FC v Watford FC Carabao Cup 3rd Round match at the Etihad Stadium, Manchester, England, United Kingdom on 24 September 2024 Manchester City FC v Watford FC, Etihad Stadium, Manchester, United Kingdom - 24 Sep 2024
Football is an angry place just now. Consider that the Premier League’s ruling on Manchester City’s financial activities covers nine seasons – a period ending in 2018 – and you can perhaps imagine why.
The judgment finally released this Tuesday says City cheated and continued to cheat, in what now looks a fairly high-handed way.
They secretively used money from the club’s Abu Dhabi owners to bypass the financial restrictions that their competitors were under – and in doing so, they built a team good enough to produce an unprecedented 100-point season.
For some people, the intricacies of football accounting are riveting enough to make this fascinating. The majority rely on others to explain where City have gone wrong and how it benefited them.
Less football on the telly? Read about it instead
Our exclusive football newsletter cuts through the noise to deliver analysis and gossip straight to your inbox every week. Sign up now for free.
Still more have already reached saturation point: the seasons are complete, City were the best team, nothing can change that, so why should I care?
Lawyers for other Premier League and EFL clubs are already tooling up to answer that question.
If, the theory goes, the presence of Manchester City in the Champions League (due to unfair advantages gained by fraud) deprived other teams of such rewards, they will seek redress. The scope of that is wild.
November 2018: German newspaper Der Spiegel publish claims Manchester City have breached FFP rules
March 2019: UEFA launch investigation into the claims
May 2019: Manchester City launch an appeal against the investigation
November 2019: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rules the appeal as inadmissible
February 2020: Manchester City are handed a two-year ban from European competition and a €30m fine by UEFA
July 2020: The ban is overturned after the club appeal to CAS
April 2022: Der Spiegel report the Premier League has been investigating Manchester City for three years
February 2023: The Premier League charges the club with 115 breaches of its financial rules
September 2024: Start of a 10-week hearing between the Premier League and Manchester City
September 2026: Reports emerge that Manchester City have been found guilty on all but one of the 115 financial rules the club are accused of breaking
If a club has missed out on a place that produces a minimum £50m in Champions League prize money, they have been unable to invest that figure in their team. Or let’s say your side got relegated by a single place.
That’s an even bigger financial loss: generally experts estimate the cost of Premier League relegation around £100m. And so on.
Ask Metro
Use AI to go deeper into the stories you care about – powered by Metro and trusted publications.
Clearly when calculating damages it’s in the clubs’ interests to estimate as provocatively as possible. But these two examples show how rivals might reasonably itemise huge figures given the scope of City’s alleged breaches.
Perhaps the financial concerns of football clubs doesn’t get your heart racing. You may take the broader view and say teams with the most money have always used it to be the best – why are City suddenly so different? It’s unfair that rules came in that prevented them doing what teams have always done. Nottingham Forest signed Trevor Francis in 1979 with a transfer fee of one million pounds that was nearly double the previous highest fee. He scored the winner in the European Cup final a few months later. Was that win bought?
Or what about free-spending 1990s side Blackburn Rovers? Or Manchester United, the league’s biggest spenders in their era of dominance.
Man City
Man City won three Premier League titles during the period in question (Photo: Getty)
Perhaps they shouldn’t have been able to do it, but the rules City have allegedly broken are those they agreed to with their fellow Premier League clubs, and they are necessary.
A great example of what happens when lavish spending in sport is unregulated is LIV Golf.
That was a breakaway tour with no heritage to trash, but the freedom to spend is also freedom to change your mind at any moment. Imagine if that approach had been adopted with one of our great football clubs, which would now disappear.
[MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - APRIL 19: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola looks on prior to the Premier League match between Manchester City and Arsenal at Etihad Stadium on April 19, 2026 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Copa/Getty Images)
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - APRIL 19: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola looks on prior to the Premier League match between Manchester City and Arsenal at Etihad Stadium on April 19, 2026 in Manchester, England. (Photo by Copa/Getty Images)](https://metro.co.uk/2026/10/03/pep-guardiola-plans-surprise-man-city-return-premier-league-verdict-29675732/)
We don’t know yet what sanctions will be proposed. City might yet be exonerated. Given the judgement’s ruling on how obstructive the club have been to the commission’s investigation, it seems unlikely they will come quietly.
If you liked the football City played in the last decade, that memory is still yours. You can’t buy success, that’s why people love competitive sports like football so much, but based on what we’ve seen of the accounts, money did everything it could do to create their era of dominance.
Just because they could have done this without breaking rules in an another era (not that Gulf states would perhaps have been wealthy enough in another era), in this era, I’m afraid, it’s not allowed. You can’t count your offside goal because previously the offside law didn’t exist.
What City are ruled to have done has also inflated the costs in which all football clubs operate – almost, at many levels of the pyramid, beyond endurance. You can have empathy for City fans, you can say you don’t mind a bit of lawbreaking, you’re just here for the football, you can argue others have done similar historically, in other ways. But if you are engaging with the meat of the issue with the evidence we have, you can’t believe they are in the right.
MORE: UAE threatens to stop billions of UK investments after Manchester City guilty verdict
Editorial use ONLY. No model release available. NO UNPAID USE. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Gavin Ellis/TGS Photo/Shutterstock (17170973a) Andy Carroll of Dagenham during Dagenham & Redbridge vs Hampton & Richmond Borough, Enterprise National League South Football at the Chigwell Construction Stadium on 26th September 2026 Dagenham & Redbridge vs Hampton & Richmond Borough, Enterprise National League South, Football, the Chigwell Construction Stadium, London, Greater London, United Kingdom - 26 Sep 2026
Editorial use ONLY. No model release available. NO UNPAID USE. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Gavin Ellis/TGS Photo/Shutterstock (17170973a) Andy Carroll of Dagenham during Dagenham & Redbridge vs Hampton & Richmond Borough, Enterprise National League South Football at the Chigwell Construction Stadium on 26th September 2026 Dagenham & Redbridge vs Hampton & Richmond Borough, Enterprise National League South, Football, the Chigwell Construction Stadium, London, Greater London, United Kingdom - 26 Sep 2026