Enzo Maresca sent out a Manchester City side top of the Premier League against Brighton at the Etihad this afternoon, four months into his tenure and with the club still in the Champions League and the quarter-finals of the Carabao Cup. The ruling that could pull all of it apart is now months away.
Sources close to the appeal told Football 365 that the Premier League hopes to have the verdict on City’s challenge delivered in the early part of 2027. The timeline matters: the appeal was lodged on 1 October, and the private appeal board is supposed to work through the submissions inside twelve weeks. Any further escalation, including a potential route to the High Court, would push resolution deeper into next year.
If the appeal fails, a single-season points deduction of between 40 and 50 points is now considered the most likely sanction, according to Football 365’s sources. From a position at the top of the table, such a hit would effectively guarantee relegation.
114 guilty findings, one dismissed
The appeal is against the independent commission’s September ruling, which found City guilty of 114 of the 115 financial charges first brought in February 2023. The Premier League confirmed the outcome in a statement on Tuesday 29 September, saying the commission had found “serious breaches” of financial rules across a nine-season period and upheld the majority of the separate charges relating to City’s failure to co-operate with the investigation. The club said it was “disappointed and surprised”, maintained it was “innocent of the accusations” and promised to be “relentless” in pursuing an appeal.
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Only one charge was dismissed. The Premier League has not said which.
The scale of the alleged accounting is laid out in a redacted version of the commission report. Football finance analyst Kieran Maguire told GiveMeSport that the inflated figures were substantial.
“The redacted report sets out year by year how much the sham contracts contributed to the artificial commercial revenue. Over the rolling three-year period, in some years we could be talking about a £350million difference.”
A legal fight is being built
Maguire is also one of a number of observers who expect this to turn into a long war of attrition rather than a clean appeal process. He pointed to City’s early moves since the ruling.
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“A lawyer friend told me that City have already started the process of creating noise and mess around the process,” Maguire told Sportbible, adding that the club appeared to be “gearing up for a very long and expensive fight over this.”
That matches the view inside the game that even an appeal board decision would not be the end of it. City can seek arbitration after any sanctions hearing, and the case could then be taken to the High Court. Each step adds months.
Maresca keeps the show on the road
For now, nothing in the day-to-day of the Etihad looks like a club bracing for the drop. Maresca was appointed on a three-year deal on 29 June to succeed Pep Guardiola, who stepped down in May, and has his new side level on points with Arsenal at the top of the table and through to the quarter-finals of the League Cup after beating Brighton on penalties three days ago.
Today’s rematch at the Etihad was City’s first Premier League fixture since the September verdict was handed down. The appeal board is not expected to deliver its ruling before the opening weeks of 2027.
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