Manchester City are weighing a Premier League sanction again, and this time the complication wears a number nine shirt. The Daily Express has reported that Erling Haaland’s contract is a factor in whether City can accept the terms of the leaked punishment facing the club. The Norwegian signed a nine-and-a-half-year deal in January 2025, running to 2034, at a basic wage of £500,000 a week, and it leaves little room for the financial restructuring a heavy sanction would demand.
The leak itself is being treated as a report, not an official position. Colombian broadcaster Cesar Augusto Londoño claimed UEFA was close to expelling City from all European competition for between seven and ten years if the Premier League guilty verdict survives the appeal. The Premier League has not confirmed its own intended sanction.
City’s position is that nothing is final. The club was found guilty on 114 of 115 charges earlier this year over alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules between 2009 and 2018, and has lodged an appeal. Bloomberg reporting carried by Yahoo Sports revealed that preliminary settlement talks with the Premier League collapsed because City refused to compromise their stance of innocence. The deal would have swapped the harshest sporting penalties for a financial payment, and would not have required an admission of wrongdoing.
The clause that is not there
Sports lawyer Dan Chapman at Leathes Prior told SportBible that relegation alone gives no player an automatic right to walk.
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“If City were relegated, it does not follow that by virtue of that players will be able to walk away from the club,” Chapman said.
More common in English football, Chapman added, is a clause that cuts a player’s salary once a club drops down a division. City have insisted no release clauses exist for Haaland or for any other member of the squad in such a scenario, according to club sources briefed to TEAMtalk. In a doomsday outcome, that leaves Haaland’s £500,000-a-week commitment on the books whichever division City are playing in.
A wage above any division below
The figure sits above the pay structure of every tier below the Premier League, and it pushes the limits of any wage framework the top flight might fold into the sanction. Haaland did not join City until 2022, long after the years the charges cover, but any punishment that touches wages or squad investment would land on the biggest contract in the squad.
The February deadline
An appeal verdict is expected by early February 2027, according to the same reporting that confirmed the collapsed settlement talks. The three-person independent panel appointed to hear it has 30 days to deliver its final decision once the hearing concludes. Only after that ruling will the Premier League be in a position to set, or revise, the terms it has in mind for City.
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