Three weeks ago Coral had Manchester City at 16/1 to be relegated this season. By 8 October they were 5/4 at William Hill, the shortest the market has ever put them.
“Manchester City have continued to shorten in our Premier League relegation market, and they are now the 5/4 favourites among the non-newly promoted sides to go down,” William Hill spokesperson Lee Phelps said.
The move is not a verdict on form. City top the table on a perfect record after six matches, including a 3-0 win at Liverpool. What the market is pricing in is a sanction, not a slump.
The trigger was an independent commission’s verdict on 29 September that City had breached 114 of 115 financial charges, with the panel finding the club used what it described as sham contracts to distort revenues by roughly £900m between 2009 and 2018. Premier League CEO Richard Masters said the report “details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade.”
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Maguire: 70 points and ‘effectively relegated’
Football finance expert Kieran Maguire told talkSPORT he expects the commission to hand down a deduction in the 50 to 60-point range, drawing on the precedents of roughly £20m single-year breaches that cost Everton and Nottingham Forest points under previous rulings.
“Given that the Man City offences took place over a longer period of time, therefore it’s multiple offences over multiple years, you would expect a multiple of the points deductions that we’ve seen,” Maguire said.
“If it’s more than 70 points, they’re effectively relegated… you give Man City a 50-point deduction, they go to minus 35, there’s 33 matches left to play for, you’ve actually got a fantastic story.”
An Opta analysis cited by prediction market Polymarket put the relegation probability above 80% at a 50-point deduction, with steeper rises at each incremental step above that.
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City lodge appeal with 23 January 2027 deadline
City lodged their appeal on 1 October, with the club maintaining it has a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” supporting its case. Under Premier League rules introduced this summer, the appeal panel has 12 weeks to hear the case and 30 days to deliver a judgment.
That takes the latest possible verdict date to 23 January 2027. A handbook clause added in the summer allows the league to override the deadline “when deemed necessary,” and City are expected to argue the accelerated rules should not retroactively apply to a case that has run for years. The club also cannot escalate to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, since Premier League regulations require disputes to be resolved in England and Wales.
Sky Sports reporter Kaveh Solhekol has suggested the sanctions themselves could be settled before the appeal verdict, with a decision on punishment possible within the next couple of months.
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