Every point Manchester City drop this season now sits in the shadow of a looming punishment hearing. The 2-1 defeat at Villa Park on Saturday was already damaging. A former referees’ chief has now added that the loss should not have unfolded quite the way it did.
Keith Hackett, the former head of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited and an ex-FIFA referee, has reviewed the 31st-minute incident between Iliman Ndiaye and Ian Maatsen inside Villa’s penalty area. The challenge was careless, he concluded, and referee Peter Bankes should have given the spot kick.
“Well, it’s a clumsy challenge for sure,” Hackett told Football Insider. “And as a result, one asks is if that was midfield, you’d be given a foul.”
Hackett suggested the shape of Ndiaye’s fall may have swayed the decision.
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“I think that may well have influenced the referee to not give it. But for me, it’s a careless challenge and it should have resulted in a penalty kick.”
Jackson double sinks Maresca’s unbeaten run
Nicolas Jackson struck twice for Villa, opening the scoring inside six minutes after a Marc Guehi slip, before restoring Villa’s lead on 60 minutes with a first-time finish that squirmed under Gianluigi Donnarumma.
Erling Haaland had briefly pulled City level in the 52nd minute, but Enzo Maresca, perfect in the league until kick-off in his first season since replacing Pep Guardiola, said both goals were avoidable. Villa manager Unai Emery was credited by his players with a half-time tactical shift that nullified City through the second period.
Guilty verdict looms over every dropped point
On 29 September 2026, the Premier League confirmed the independent commission’s verdict: City were guilty of 114 of the 115 charges first brought in February 2023, including every one of the 80 counts of financial wrongdoing and 34 of 35 counts of failure to cooperate with the investigation.
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City lodged an appeal on 1 October, a day before the deadline, arguing the ruling “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe”. Under this season’s accelerated rules the appeal is meant to be concluded within 12 weeks, with the board given a further 30 days to publish its decision, pointing to a possible outcome around 23 January 2027.
60 to 100 points: the figures hanging over City
No sanction has been set. A separate hearing will determine punishment, and no date has been scheduled for it. Analysts and sports lawyers have floated points deductions of 60 to 100, figures that would turn a club that won four straight Premier League titles between 2020-21 and 2023-24 into relegation candidates for the first time in two decades. Everton were docked six to eight points for a single breach of profit and sustainability rules; Nottingham Forest four. The scale of what City face has no modern Premier League precedent.
City remain top of the table pending Arsenal’s fixture, and their next league outing is at home to Brighton on 31 October.
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