Senior figures at Manchester City were first informed of the panel’s findings in July, ESPN reported, weeks before the club twice broke their own transfer record and spent in excess of £450m on seven first-team signings. The verdict itself only became public on Tuesday 29 September 2026, when the independent commission announced City had been found guilty of 114 of 115 charges spanning the 2009-10 to 2017-18 seasons.
Two months of private knowledge, then an appeal lodged at the very last window. It arrived at 7pm on Thursday, hours short of the deadline the Premier League had set.
City’s filing frames the ruling as fundamentally broken. The opinion contains “clear material errors of law, principle and fact” and is “unsafe”, the club says, insisting it is “innocent of the accusations” with “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” supporting its position.
Record signings arrived after the warning
ESPN’s timeline is specific. Elliot Anderson’s £116m move from Nottingham Forest was agreed before news of the verdict reached City, according to the sources cited by the broadcaster. Everything that followed was negotiated by executives already aware the panel had ruled against them.
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Enzo Fernández arrived from Chelsea for £125m on deadline day. Ayyoub Bouaddi and Iliman Ndiaye were among the other arrivals in a window described in that reporting as one of the most aggressive ever undertaken by an English club.
114 of 115, all serious
The commission ruled that City had arranged “sham” commercial contracts, inflated revenues by more than £900m and filed accounts that concealed the true source of their funding. The single acquittal relates to a non-cooperation count; the club was found guilty on three of the four cooperation charges and on every substantive financial charge.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said the ruling details how City “systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade”. City chief executive Ferran Soriano has countered that the whole case rests on a single false claim: that owner Sheikh Mansour’s funds were secretly routed through Abu Dhabi sponsors.
Appeal panel, then the sanction hearing
A new three-person Appeal Board will now review the verdict. The hearing is expected to run up to five days and must be convened within 12 weeks, with a decision due 30 days after it concludes. If the finding stands, a separate panel will decide the punishment, with options including a fine, a points deduction and expulsion from the Premier League. Everton’s six-point deduction and Derby County’s 21-point sanction are the recent English precedents.
The Premier League has confirmed the filing and said the Appeal Board hearing will “remain private and confidential” until a decision is permitted for publication.
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