The Manchester City case
On 29 September 2026 an independent commission found Manchester City in breach of the Premier League's financial rules across nine seasons. City have appealed, and sanctions have not been decided. These are our articles on the ruling, on what it could cost City, and on what it cost the other clubs.
The ruling
What the commission found, and who paid.
City's sponsors paid £119m. Their owner paid £831mThe independent commission has found every charge against Manchester City proven except one. Its findings cover nine seasons of misstated accounts from 2009/10 to 2017/18, breaches of UEFA and Premier League financial rules, and later failures to cooperate with the League's investigation. At the centre is what it calls a Disguised Funding Scheme: sponsorship deals with Abu Dhabi companies, recorded well above their value, with the club's owner secretly paying most of the fee. This is what the 40-page decision says, why the scheme worked under football's rules, and what happens next. City dispute the findings and have appealed.Read the piece →
City has 27 sponsors with no Abu Dhabi state ownership identified. What do they do now?The independent commission has ruled on Manchester City's past. The next test is commercial: whether the companies that pay City for reasons of their own still want to pay the same price. Most of City's 34 global partners have no Abu Dhabi state ownership identified, and several signed while the case was pending. The Orange Engine shows what lost sponsorship would do to City's spending room, alone and combined with a sanction.Read the piece →
What it could cost City
Scenarios for a points deduction and a tighter cap.
A 40-point deduction would turn Manchester City into Chelsea. Fifty-five would follow them back upA 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.Read the piece →
Under a 50% cap, Manchester City's way out runs through selling HaalandA hypothetical scenario, not a prediction. What would happen to Manchester City if the squad cost ratio were capped at 50% for five seasons, as Paul Quinn of theesk has proposed? With nobody sold City loses 30 league points in the first season. In our model the only strategy that keeps every point is selling from the top of the squad, starting with Erling Haaland.Read the piece →
What it cost the others
Prize money and European places, counted from public figures.
Take Manchester City out of the table, and £1.92 billion moves to the rest of English footballWhat if Manchester City had never been in the table? Take them out of every Premier League season from 2009/10 to 2025/26 and every club below them moves up a place: more prize money and, for some, a place in Europe. Added up across 41 clubs, with the money carried forward to today, it comes to £1.92 billion. It is a what-if count, not a claim for damages.Read the piece →
Manchester City in Europe: £227.7m for going through, and the clubs on the other sidePart 2. A count from UEFA's own payments, not a measure of what other clubs lost. UEFA paid Manchester City £227.7m (€264.7m) for going through rounds of its competitions from 2010/11 to 2025/26. What the next round was worth in the sixteen knockout ties City won, why Sevilla twice did better in the Europa League than a Champions League round of 16 would have paid, what followed from the 2023 treble, and why none of it is added to part 1. The commission's finding is under appeal.Read the piece →
BBC Sport and The Orange Ledger on Manchester City: the prize money agrees to £0.1m, the totals do notBBC Sport counts £844m for the nine seasons of the commission's finding. On the same nine seasons, with no rate applied, we count £501.6m. The League prize money in the two counts agrees to £0.1m in total and club by club. The rest differs because the two counts ask different questions: the BBC includes relegation and cup finals, we follow every European place down the table and leave relegation out.Read the piece →
These are counts and scenarios from public information. None is a claim that any club is owed anything. The commission's finding is under appeal.