Analysis

A 40-point deduction would turn Manchester City into Chelsea. Fifty-five would follow them back up

A scenario, not a forecast. An independent commission has found Manchester City guilty of the Premier League's charges; City have appealed, and no sanction has been set. If a points deduction did follow, the Premier League's spending rule would feel it a year late and remember it for three. A 40-point deduction would take City back over the spending line and leave them, like Chelsea now, relying on player sales. A 55-point deduction would send them down, and even if they came straight back, the rule would still be taking points from them in their second season back.

By Arthur van de Laak28 September 2026Updated 26 October 2026 · View updates28 min read

Figures as of 26 October 2026, scenario version V2CF · Latest figures · What the engine does not capture

A post was doing the rounds on X this morning. Its argument was that relegating Manchester City would not simply move one club down a division: it would ripple through broadcasting, sponsorship, the fixture list and the whole matchday economy of Manchester. It is a fair question, and it deserves numbers rather than adjectives. So this piece takes the spending rule the Premier League now uses and asks what a points deduction would do inside it, season by season.

I should say where I stand. I support Arsenal, who finished second to City in 2022/23 and 2023/24, and some Arsenal memories do not fade. Emmanuel Adebayor, weeks after leaving us for City, running the full length of the pitch at Eastlands in September 2009 to slide on his knees in front of the away end is one of them. So I will admit the temptation, and that is exactly why my view on the case stays out of this entirely. What follows is arithmetic on the rule, and it is pure speculation about a sanction that has not been decided.

It also picks up where yesterday’s piece on Chelsea and Manchester City left off. That piece found City needing little profit from player sales to stay inside the Premier League’s spending limit, and only because a large part of their counted revenue came from finishing high and playing in Europe. A points deduction would reach exactly that money.

This is speculation, and it is labelled as such throughout. The Athletic reported on 25 September that the independent commission had found 114 of the Premier League’s 115 charges against Manchester City proven. When this was written, on 28 September, the decision had not been published, no sanction had been set, City deny wrongdoing and are expected to appeal, and the commission can choose from fines, points deductions, expulsion and compensation orders, or a combination. Nothing here predicts which, if any, will follow. It asks a narrower question: if a deduction came, what would the spending rule make of it?

Two sizes are modelled. Forty points, which on last season’s 78 would leave City in the division but out of Europe. Fifty-five, which would send them down.

Every figure starts from my reconstruction of City’s squad, rebuilt player by player from the club’s filed accounts and checked against the Premier League’s own registration lists. The scenarios then change only the revenue lines that the rule’s text says a deduction would reach. Where I first had to make an assumption, about the allowance a promoted club brings back and about how the Championship counts its costs, the Premier League’s and the EFL’s own published guidance settled it.

The rule works with a year’s delay

The squad cost ratio compares what a squad costs with what a club earns from football, plus its profit from selling players in the six most recent transfer windows, divided by three. Much of the earnings side is based on last season, not this one. That matters for timing.

A deduction applied during 2026/27 would not change City’s figure for the test on 1 March 2027. That test pays league money on last season’s second place, and City are already playing in this season’s Champions League. The damage would arrive at the 2027/28 test, the first one to see a season finished with the points removed.

The club would feel it sooner than the rule does. Premier League prize money is paid on where a club actually finishes, so a drop from second to sixteenth would cut City’s merit payment for 2026/27 by about £53m in their accounts. The rule only looks at a club’s actual season figures again if it was over the 85% line at the March test, and at 74.4%, City’s figure now, City would not be. Those lower actual figures would instead feed into the following season’s calculation.

Three cushions, and one thing with no cushion at all

The rule was written to stop one bad season wrecking a club’s calculation, and three of its revenue lines have a floor built in.

• League prize money. The rule pays at the best of three positions: last season’s finish, the average finish over three seasons, or fifteenth place. City’s last two finishes were third and second. Add a season of fourteenth and the three-year average is sixth; add sixteenth or seventeenth and it is seventh. So a collapse down the table costs City only about £15m to £19m of league money in the rule, not the full drop from second to the bottom half.
• Commercial income. The rule counts last season’s figure, so sponsorship earned during the deduction season still counts in full the following year.
• Television fees. These are paid on the highest of last season’s televised games, the three-season average, or fifteen, so they fall only slowly.

European money has no cushion. It counts only for a club that qualifies for Europe in the season being tested. City’s European money in the rule is £84.4m of UEFA distributions and £13.8m of extra home gates, and a club that finishes outside the European places gets neither.

Scenario one: 40 points

City keep their place in the Premier League and finish somewhere in the lower half, outside Europe. League money falls to seventh place on the three-year average, and the European money goes.

The squad cost and the sale-profit average are held still, so the table isolates what the deduction itself does. Every figure in this piece is on the Orange Ledger’s figures of 26 October 2026; the scenario is version V2CF.

City’s revenue falls by £117.0m, and their position moves across the line towards Chelsea’s. League money at seventh on the three-year average, no European football, a ratio of 86.2% against Chelsea’s 88.3%, and a need for about £129m a year of profit from selling players against Chelsea’s £163m. The £30.1m of league money in the third row is not a coincidence: Chelsea’s three-year average is also seventh.

The selling pressure is concrete. The average for that test takes the sales of six transfer windows from February 2025: £0.2m of profit from February to June 2025, £91.1m in 2025/26, this season’s £145.8m so far, and 2027/28. To reach 85%, 2027/28 would have to produce about £150m of profit on sales, a little more than this season’s sales have produced so far.

And that is the gentler case, because the cushions only last a year. A second season outside Europe would start to reduce the commercial figure the rule counts, and the three-year average for league money would carry the low finish for three tests.

Scenario two: 55 points, one season down, straight back up

Fifty-five points from last season’s 78 leaves 23, which is relegation. To keep this to what the rule does, the scenario makes three simplifying choices:

• City are relegated at the end of 2026/27, spend 2027/28 in the Championship and win promotion straight back for 2028/29.
• They sell nobody from 2027/28 onwards, and buy nobody either, so the squad cost stays at £633.1m.
• Commercial income is shown at three levels, because nobody outside the club knows what its sponsorship contracts say about relegation. In each case it is assumed to recover fully once City are back.

The season in the Championship

A relegated club receives a parachute payment, 55% of a set share of the Premier League’s broadcasting money in its first season down, about £49m in 2024/25. If it goes straight back up, the payments stop.

The Championship has its own spending rule, adopted in May 2026 and published in full in the EFL’s Regulations for 2026/27. It counts player wages, first-team manager costs and agents’ fees against 85% of the club’s relevant turnover plus 85% of its net player trading, with transfer fees counted when they fall due under the contract rather than spread over its length. Owners can top that up by up to £34m over three years and no more than £16m in a season, the figures the published rules give for 2026/27, slightly above the £33m and £15m announced in May; the rules set the allowance by a formula tied to parachute and solidarity payments, so it moves when they do. It is the one place in this story where owner money counts, and only a little. Clubs relegated from the Premier League get a transition period, with the in-season testing starting from the January window.

It is not the Premier League’s rule with a different name, and that matters here. The Premier League spreads transfer fees over each player’s contract and adds player-sale profit on an accounting basis; the Championship counts fees as they fall due and trading as the net of what is paid and received, so the £633.1m squad cost used everywhere else in this piece cannot simply be set against Championship income. Whether City would breach the Championship’s rule, and by how much, would need a separate reconstruction on the EFL’s own definitions. This piece does not attempt it.

The scenario simply assumes City come back up. That is the most generous assumption in the piece, because an EFL sanction could itself stand in the way. The Championship season still matters to what follows, but only through two things the Premier League’s rule reads from it: City’s income that season, and the fact that, in this scenario, nobody was sold.

The first season back

The Premier League’s rule treats a promoted club differently, and in City’s case the differences cut both ways.

• League money is paid at fifteenth place, whatever the club’s history: about £122.6m including the equal share, against £171.5m now.
• Commercial income is cushioned. A promoted club counts the better of last season’s figure or its average over three seasons, so City’s two Premier League years would hold the figure up even if the Championship year fell.
• Matchday income is not. It is counted at last season’s average per home game, which would be a Championship season’s prices.
• There is no European money, and no parachute payment.
• The sale-profit average has only one good year left in it. The £12.9m of profit from February to June 2026 and this season’s £145.8m, divided by three with nothing after them, is £52.9m.

In the most generous column City come back at 105.2%, inside the 115% line where league points are deducted, but pay a £24m levy and see their allowance cut from 30 percentage points to 10. At half the commercial income they lose 8 league points in their first season back.

The second season back

By 2029/30 the last of today’s sale profit has rolled out of the average and the allowance has been spent. Even with commercial income fully back at £367.6m and matchday income back at Premier League levels, a £633m squad against about £582m of revenue is 108.9%.

On the most generous assumptions, City lose 19 points in their second season back. In the harshest column the deduction is 36, because the deduction for a second breach in a row is multiplied by 1.3.

If the sponsors do not come back

The tables above are kind in one important way: they assume every sponsor returns in full once City are back in the Premier League. That may be the least realistic assumption in the piece. Commercial partners pay for exposure, audience and association. Relegation changes all three, and contracts may contain terms allowing fees to fall or deals to be renegotiated. Because those contracts are private, the model shows three outcomes rather than assuming one.

So here is the second season back again, this time with the commercial income lost in the Championship year staying lost.

At three-quarters of the commercial income, City would lose 37 points in their second season back. At half, the deduction rises to 68. A deduction on that scale would make another relegation extraordinarily difficult to avoid, and the cycle could begin again.

Matchday income points the same way. Championship tickets are cheaper, crowds for a relegated side can fall, and the rule reads the first season back from the Championship season’s average per game. At a third of City’s filed average per game instead of half, the three-quarters column comes to about 112 to 113% in the very first season back, just inside the 115% line.

The relegation lasts one season. The rule remembers it for three: through the sale-profit average, through the commercial figure and through an allowance that each breach uses up.

The same choice without a deduction

The contrast is what makes the point. With no deduction at all, City could stop selling players and sit at 78.0%, 80.6%, then 86.4% by 2029/30. The only cost would be a levy of about £0.10m in the third year, with no points at risk. A 55-point deduction turns a club that can afford to stop selling into one that cannot afford to stop for a single season.

Holding the squad cost still makes every path look worse than it would be in practice. A club that stops trading also stops buying, contracts expire and transfer fees finish being written off, and relegation clauses could cut wages sharply in the Championship year. Selling nobody is the scenario’s assumption, not a plan any club would follow; it shows how much of the work selling would have to do.

Who gains if City go down

The question of what happens to English football without Manchester City has a precise answer inside the rule, because the rule’s money does not disappear. It moves.

• The club that finishes eighteenth stays up. With City in the bottom three on a deduction, only two other clubs go down. The survivor’s league money is counted at no lower than fifteenth place, about £122.6m including the equal share, instead of a first-year parachute payment of about £49m: roughly £74m more revenue in its own calculation.
• Every club that finished below City’s sporting position moves up a place, worth about £3.76m each in league prize money.
• City’s European place goes to someone else, along with the European money the rule counts, which for a Champions League club is the largest single line a deduction removes.
• Levies paid by a club over the line are shared among the clubs that stayed inside it.

The broadcasting money itself is agreed for a fixed period, so the pot shared out would not shrink the moment City left. What their absence would do to the value of the next deal, and to the matchday economy around the Etihad, is outside what the rule measures and outside this piece.

What the two scenarios have in common

In both, the first thing a deduction takes is money the rule does not protect: European football. In both, the answer the rule leaves City with is the one Chelsea already live with: selling players at a profit, every year, at a scale few clubs reach.

My view is that the rule behaves exactly as it was designed to, and that is the problem it would face here. Its cushions were built to protect a club from one bad season on the pitch: a poor finish, a missed European place, a sponsor walking away. They were not built for a sanction. The same smoothing that softens a bad season would stretch a punishment across three, and the part of a club’s income the rule cannot protect, European football, is the first thing a deduction takes. If the punishment were a points deduction on this scale, the spending rule would turn a one-season sporting sanction into a multi-year financial one.

What this doesn’t say

• That any sanction will be imposed, or what it would be. When this was written the decision was unpublished; it was published on 29 September, City appealed on 2 October, and no sanction has been set. Forty and fifty-five points are chosen to show two different mechanisms, not as predictions.
• When a sanction would apply. Both scenarios assume a deduction in 2026/27; a later one moves every date by a year.
• That City would be promoted straight back. It is assumed, to isolate what the rule does, and an EFL sanction in the Championship year could prevent it.
• That the squad cost would stay where it is. It is held still to isolate the effect of the deduction; in reality City would act, and contracts would run down.
• Whether City would breach the Championship’s rule. It defines squad costs and income differently from the Premier League’s, and would need its own reconstruction.
• What sanctions the Championship’s rule carries. Its sanctions are not set out in the EFL’s published guidance in a form that allows a calculation.
• What City’s sponsors would do. The tables show three levels of commercial income because the contracts are not public.

What it does say

• The spending rule would feel a deduction one test late: the 1 March 2027 figure is unaffected, although City’s 2026/27 accounts would carry about £53m less prize money.
• League money is cushioned by the three-year average. European money is not, and it is £98.2m of City’s counted revenue.
• At 40 points City would sit at about 86.2%, just above the line and 2.1 percentage points below Chelsea’s 88.3%, and would need about £129m a year of profit from selling players to reach 85%, against about £12m now.
• At 55 points, one season down and straight back up without selling, City would return at 105.2% even if every sponsor stayed, pay a £24m levy, and lose 19 points in their second season back as the allowance runs out. If a quarter of the commercial income were lost for good, that second-season deduction would be 37 points.
• A City relegation would move money inside the rule rather than remove it: the club finishing eighteenth would stay up, worth about £74m more revenue in its own calculation than a parachute payment.
• Without a deduction, the same decision to stop selling would cost a levy of about £0.10m.

The post on X asked what happens to English football when one of its biggest clubs is removed from the Premier League. The rule’s answer is colder than the question. The money does not vanish: it moves to the club that stays up in eighteenth, to whoever takes City’s European place, and, through levies, to the clubs that stayed inside the line. City would be left holding the one lever Chelsea already know well, selling players at a profit, and the spending rule would still be counting the cost in 2030.

More on the Manchester City caseThe ruling, what it could cost City, and what it cost the others→