In a landmark moment for English football, an independent commission found Manchester City guilty on 114 of 115 financial charges brought against them by the Premier League.
The historic verdict follows an exhaustive investigation into the club’s financial conduct spanning a nine-year period between 2009 and 2018.
The charges concern severe allegations, including failure to provide accurate financial information, disguising owner funding as commercial sponsorship income, operating off-the-books payment structures for managerial remuneration, and breaching Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules.
FourFourTwo decide Manchester City’s fate
While Manchester City have maintained their innocence throughout the process and are expected to lodge an appeal, the guilty ruling leaves the club facing unprecedented potential sanctions. These range from astronomical financial fines and multi-window transfer bans to heavy points deductions or even potential expulsion from the top flight.
To answer the question everybody is asking: how would the FourFourTwo team punish Manchester City?
Editor: James Andrew
What should happen: They should be expelled from the Premier League, denied entry into the Football League and made to start again further down the pyramid.
In addition, for every year these breaches were made – nine years in total – they should be banned from signing any external sponsorship deals.
What do you think will happen?: Points deductions staggered over a number of seasons but ultimately not enough to relegate them.
Fined £900m with the money distributed to clubs who successfully claim loss of earnings against them.
Transfer ban for five years. But leave the past in the past, strip Manchester City of their trophies, but they should not be redistributed to other clubs.
Deputy Editor: Matt Ketchell
What should happen: Titles stripped, relegated to the bottom of the English Football League, current squad players to be returned to their origin club for free, Sham ‘69’s ‘If The Kids Are United’ to be played as compulsory goal music for the first nine seasons.
What you think will happen?: One-off points deduction, two-window transfer ban, medium-to-large fine.
If these charges are proven, and appeals are heard and rejected, this is the biggest corruption in club football history and has damaged countless clubs and individuals. At the very least, the club should be expelled from the Premier League and heavily fined. My preference would be for the club to be relegated to the foot of the Football League (League Two) and fined £900m.
The Premier League’s statement has given new meaning to the word ‘sham’. That word is now permanently linked to Manchester City Football Club. English punk band Sham 69’s famous single ‘If The Kids Are United’ features the lyrics: ‘How do you feel, They can lie to my face, But not to my heart, If we all stand together, It will just be the start.’ The Premier League must stand up to these offences, and no doubt fans of rival clubs will be in agreement that punishment should be strong.
Individuals responsible for these actions should be banned from football for life, as Juventus club executive Luciano Moggi was for his role in the Calciopoli scandal in 2006. Manchester City’s current owners would fail the owners and directors test in light of the charges being upheld; therefore, a compulsory sale of the club should be enforced. Titles should be stripped, but not reallocated.
My gut feeling is that harsh sanctions will land, appeals will be rejected but then the two parties will gather round a table and negotiate something more sensible than playing ‘If The Kids Are United’ as compulsory goal music for the first nine seasons.
Online Editor: Mark White
What should happen: The Enhanced Games is a version of the Olympics in which athletes are allowed to take performance-enhancing substances without being subject to drug tests; I propose a similar thing in football for financially doping clubs.
Let’s get Manchester City, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain and whichever other owners want to spend a nation’s GDP on Enzo Fernandez into one ‘super league’ and leave them to themselves, away from The Proper Football. If players want to join that mess, so be it.
What do you think will happen?: Manchester City are hit with a record fine and points deduction. They appeal: the fine is reduced, and the points deduction is lessened.
A few of the players leave – mainly on loan, as some kind of gap year – but others are happy to play a season in the Championship to take City back to the Premier League, where they continue as if nothing happened for the start of the 2028/29 season.
Senior Staff Writer: Joe Donnohue
What should happen: Manchester City shouldn’t receive a pithy points deduction – it needs to be more serious than that. Points deductions devalue the competition in which they’re enforced. Sporting sanctions for book-keeping offences doesn’t sit right either, especially when the list of available penalties is so vast.
City should be made to repay, in instalments or otherwise, the £900 million in cost savings and ‘sham’ payments that artificially inflated their revenue.
It should be redistributed to the rest of the division and to the wider footballing pyramid, for the betterment of the game.
The club should also be subjected to restricted transfer spending of £50m per season and prohibited from participating in European competition for five seasons.
These are, in my opinion, measures that level the playing field and redress the unfair advantage City have benefited from over the past 17 years, in a meaningful way without cheapening the Premier League brand.
What do you think will happen?: It’s been suggested that instead of one huge, relegation-inducing points deduction this season or next, that Man City will be subject to several seasons of 25-point deductions, making it in effect impossible to qualify for the Champions League, but most likely not enough to relegate them.
I also think a multi-year transfer embargo, or conditions on player trading, will be enforced, as well as a substantial fine, although I doubt it will come close to that £900m figure.
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