The season will be at least two months old when a verdict might be handed down - and even then will be subject to appeal
Antonio Conte was still Tottenham manager, the Liz Truss lettuce had barely rotted away and the Covid health emergency was technically still two months from being over globally.
That was the state of the world when the Premier League first announced Manchester City’s 130 alleged breaches – it was originally thought to be 115 – of its rules, spanning nearly 10 years of competition and dating back to before the club won its first title.
Yet here we are more than two years later just as in the dark as we were that day about what might happen to the most successful Premier League club of the 21st century.
Why has it gone on so long?
A hearing ran from September to December last year before an independent panel of three adjudicators, who have now spent nearly eight months deliberating over the evidence, and are reportedly not expected to report before October at the earliest.
“There are several reasons why this is taking quite as long as it has,” David Winnie, head of sports for Gilson Gray, tells The i Paper.
“Firstly, the sheer volume of charges: there’s a whole swathe of issues that the three-person panel is having to wade its way through in terms of evidence, documents, leaked emails, various disclosure obligations. It’s a pile of stuff.
“And then I think the three-person panel knows the weight of its decision. So I think it wants to get it right.
“The hurdle that it needs to jump here is ’the balance of probabilities’. But because of the sheer seriousness of the charges, it could actually lead the panel to applying a heightened scrutiny.”
(FILES) Manchester City's Spanish head coach Pep Guardiola gestures during the FIFA Club World Cup 2025 round of 16 football match between England's Manchester City and Saudi's Al-Hilal at the Camping World stadium in Orlando on June 30, 2025. Manchester City, which has amassed championships, domestic cups and even a Champions League title over the last decade, ended last season without any trophies. As Pep Guardiola enters his tenth season, can he lead the club back to success? (Photo by PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA / AFP) (Photo by PATRICIA DE MELO MOREIRA/AFP via Getty Images)
The message from City is ‘business as usual’ (Photo: Getty)
The panel is an independent one, independently selected, and Premier League chief executive Richard Masters has been at pains to point out that he cannot influence the timeline of their actions.
“I just have to wait,” Masters said this week.
“Legal processes rarely take less time than anticipated. We have to be patient.
“It’s an independent judiciary, essentially. So once the allegations, the charge has been put forward, they go before an independent panel, which is independently selected, and they are then in charge of the process and its timings.
“They hear the case, they decide the outcome, and we have no influence over that, over it or its timing.”
What will happen next?
Even if the panel does produce a verdict in October, it is unlikely that will be the end of it. Most experienced observers expect that if virtually any of the 130 charges are proven, the club will appeal, given their initial statement referred to a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position”.
The case cannot be refereed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), where City have already had one appeal heard after being tried by Uefa, but can instead be appealed to another independent panel in the UK. Depending on how many verdicts are appealed, that is unlikely to be an expeditious process.
But even when, eventually, a final verdict is applied, there may well be other law suits to deal with.
Winnie adds: “When the decision comes down, and if some of these charges, not even all of them but some of them, are proven, I would not be surprised if other teams in the Premier League jump on the bandwagon, as it were, and start their own proceedings against either the club or the Premier League itself.”
What will the sanctions be?
If City are found guilty, the full range of punishments is available to the independent panel, from financial penalties to competitive ones, and whatever decision is made will be done under the microscope of intense international scrutiny.
“Given the severity and given the sheer number of charges, they have to be seen to be coming down hard,” Winnie says.
“[If it were] a fine, you could put any number you want, and Man City will just reach into the back pocket and pay it. To them, a fine is a win.
Your next read
“You’re then maybe looking at ratcheting up a points deduction that could be potentially applied retrospectively with the past seasons so lost titles.
“I suppose the ultimate would be expulsion from the Premier League. That would be the nuclear option.
“They’ve got restrictions, and potentially on player registrations or conditional punishments or suspended sanctions, or a combination of all of them, but I think the big one for Man City that they don’t want is expulsion from the Premier League. Anything else, they’ll deal with, they can handle.”