Everton sit at the top of a very long queue. A new data study by OLBG puts the total compensation owed to Premier League rivals at around £527.9 million if Manchester City are stripped from the league’s historical merit payments.
The methodology is simple. Researchers removed City from the final table of every Premier League season from 2011-12 to 2025-26, bumped every other club up a place, and recalculated what they would have earned in central payments. Fifteen seasons of adjusted standings add up to a bill of more than half a billion pounds, spread across 38 current and former top-flight clubs.
The study is hypothetical. Its authors stress the figures “do not represent a confirmed debt or compensation order,” and whether a penny ever changes hands depends on how the sanctions phase of City’s case plays out.
Everton to Bolton: the full ranked list
The ranking is based on how often each club would have moved up a place over the 15-year window. The top five are:
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- Everton: £28,944,186
- Manchester United: £28,118,305
- West Ham United: £28,089,124
- Crystal Palace: £27,333,243
- Newcastle United: £26,902,577
The full table runs:
- 6. Chelsea: £25,787,679
- 7. Tottenham: £25,540,172
- 8. Liverpool: £24,423,357
- 9. Aston Villa: £23,052,791
- 10. Brighton: £21,769,248
- 11. Bournemouth: £21,415,229
- 12. Arsenal: £21,290,352
- 13. Southampton: £21,228,124
- 14. Wolves: £20,492,042
- 15. Burnley: £19,203,326
- 16. Fulham: £19,024,448
- 17. Leicester City: £17,994,755
- 18. Brentford: £14,200,387
- 19. Nottingham Forest: £12,611,429
- 20. Sunderland: £10,935,938
- 21. West Brom: £10,854,801
- 22. Watford: £10,492,758
- 23. Leeds United: £10,297,033
- 24. Swansea City: £9,107,386
- 25. Stoke City: £9,107,206
- 26. Norwich City: £7,448,389
- 27. Sheffield United: £6,618,375
- 28. Hull City: £4,422,590
- 29. Huddersfield Town: £3,849,786
- 30. Cardiff City: £3,154,601
- 31. Luton Town: £3,100,000
- 32. QPR: £2,755,841
- 33. Ipswich Town: £2,651,429
- 34. Middlesbrough: £1,941,609
- 35. Wigan Athletic: £1,510,943
- 36. Reading: £755,881
- 37. Blackburn Rovers: £755,062
- 38. Bolton Wanderers: £755,062
Fourteen clubs would stand to receive £20m or more. For three current League One sides, Reading, Wigan and Luton, even the lower-end figures would be meaningful money.
Players and agents also instructing lawyers
The spreadsheet is a thought experiment. The lawyering is not. Sky Sports reported last week that current and former Premier League players, their agents and several rival clubs have already contacted lawyers to explore compensation claims if City fail to overturn their guilty verdict.
Players are looking at lost win bonuses, title bonuses and European qualification bonuses. Former managers are being advised that similar incentive payments could be in play. The potential claims cover a long tail of years in which City finished above clubs whose squads believe they were cheated out of money.
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The trigger for all of this came on 29 September, when the Premier League confirmed that an independent commission had found City guilty of 114 of 115 charges relating to breaches of financial rules between 2009 and 2018. The sanctions phase is separate and has not yet been scheduled.
The appeal clock is ticking
Manchester City lodged an appeal on Thursday 1 October at 7pm, filed with the Chair of the Judicial Panel. The club argues the commission’s ruling contains “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe”, and insists it is innocent of all the accusations.
Under the Premier League’s accelerated appeal rules, the process is meant to be completed inside 12 weeks, with the hearing itself limited to five consecutive days and the appeal panel given 30 days to deliver its judgment. On that timeline, a decision could land by mid-January 2027, though City are expected to argue that the older procedural rules in force when they were charged in 2023 should apply, which would push things further out.
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