After Friday's unofficial reports that Manchester City had been found guilty on almost all of the 115 charges of financial rule breaching, it was only a matter of time before the true breadth of those breaches came to light. It was not surprising, save for maybe the almost perfect batting average of the charges, that City was found guilty, but the details are something to behold. The Premier League released its statement on the situation on Tuesday, and the headline number is eye-grabbing: City was found to have circumvented both the league's and UEFA's spending limits by over £900 million between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons. (The investigation, which started in 2019, does not cover anything more recent than the title-winning 2017-18 season.)
Just to establish a reference point about the scale of City's wrongdoing, when Everton was deducted 10 points in late 2023 for a similar style breach of the Premier League's profit and sustainability rules, the Toffees were found to have violated the limits by £19.5 million. A few months after that, Nottingham Forest received a four-point deduction for a violation of £34.5 million. (The difference there had to do with both an inconsistency in the application of the rules and Forest's more willing cooperation with the investigation in comparison to Everton's.) The punishment scale isn't a one-to-one factor, so it's not like City will receive a 461-point deduction, or even a 260-point deduction, but the £900 million number does help one understand the degree of malfeasance City has engaged in since the club was bought by Abu Dhabi United Group.
As a refresher, the main charges against City came in the form of juiced-up sponsorship revenue, in which the listed sponsors were recorded to have paid a much higher amount of pounds than actually received. The difference between the listed number and the actual number was found to have been paid by Abu Dhabi United Group, helping to increase City's commercial revenue from about £82 million the season before the period of investigation, all the way to £500 million by the summer of 2018. The purpose of such a scheme is to circumvent the spending limits the Premier League puts on its teams. Even if a club has access to the kind of unlimited spending power an owner like the Abu Dhabi United Group can provide, it is restricted by rules stipulating that spending on players and coaches must scale in relation to its revenue. Thus, City gained access to more of its owners' fortune by disguising incoming money from those owners as sponsorship revenue.
The specifics of City's breaches also help paint the picture of a club who felt emboldened by the successes it achieved early on in this new ownership era. The independent commission's findings are detailed in a (heavily redacted) Core Decision released alongside the Premier League's statement, and of particular interest is a chart on page 20, which shows the specific amounts per season that these "sham" agreements generated.
While the first season under investigation, the 2009-10 season, had an almost reasonable split of £4.5 million "real" money and £22.5 million "sham" money, that latter number spikes up to £70.75 million in 2011-12. That season, not so coincidentally, marks City's first Premier League title since 1968, and the first of what would eventually turn out to be three in the investigated period (eight overall in the Abu Dhabi era).
After the club won that 2012 title, it appears the need for any kind of restraint disappeared, as the following year's "sham" number jumped to £105.75 million and rose year-over-year to a final tally of £134.73 million in 2017-18, versus just £11 million actually paid by sponsors. The math is staggering: Of the recorded £949.94 million in revenue from Abu Dhabi-based sponsors, City only received £119.25 million, plugging in £830.69 million of Abu Dhabi United Group money to fill the gap. The remaining breaches to push the total number over £900 million stemmed from smaller charges, including one of paying manager Roberto Mancini, who was at the helm of the 2011-12 title-winning season, off the books, and another of selling player image rights to a company that the commission found to be "little more than a front for ADUG."
The question now shifts from "Is Manchester City guilty, and how bad is it?" to "What happens now?" There's no clear answer yet on the level of punishment that the Premier League will eventually lay down, especially with the hanging threat of a lengthy appeals process. The league's statement clarified that City has until Oct. 2 to file an appeal, but also that the league board's intention "is that the full process (including any appeals and publication of relevant decisions) is concluded as soon as possible." City, clearly, has a lot of money to fight what could be a death blow to the club, so a finish to this endless saga (as a reminder, the league started investigating in 2019) might not come to pass as quickly as the league or rival fans might hope.
The punishments on the table range from manageable (fines, transfer bans) to crippling (massive point deductions or even automatic relegation) to nuclear: If City were to get expelled from the Premier League, the EFL, which administrates divisions two, three, and four in England, would be under no obligation to accept City in the Championship, League One, or League Two. There's a world where City is kicked completely out of the English soccer pyramid. City will of course fight any potential punishment tooth and nail. The alternative might be that Manchester City, winners of eight of the last 15 Premier League titles, ceases to exist as an entity in English soccer.
