Nothing about Manchester City’s league campaign feels routine anymore. More than three years after the Premier League charged the club with 115 breaches of its financial regulations, no verdict has been delivered. Speaking before the new season kicked off, Premier League chief executive Richard Masters could offer no timeline.
“It has taken longer than expected, and I do understand the frustrations,” he said.
Masters would not engage with any question that could hint at when the ruling might drop.
“There’s only one available route through this, which is to allow the process to take its course.”
The following day, Masters brushed off any suggestion that the delay was consuming the sport, calling the outstanding case “not necessarily a topic of conversation with other clubs” as they prepared for the season.
Twenty months since the hearing closed
The confidential hearing at London’s International Dispute Resolution Centre ran from mid-September to early December 2024, and the three-person independent commission has been deliberating ever since. That is closer to two years than one. The 115 figure refers to the bullet points in the original charge sheet; ESPN reports that the number of individual rule breaches, once amendments are counted, has climbed above that.
The alleged breaches cover a nine-year window between 2009 and 2018, spanning the club’s rise from newly-rich upstart to serial Premier League champion. City deny every charge. The Premier League has consistently said it cannot comment on the substance while the commission is at work.
What a guilty verdict could cost
The severity of any punishment, if the commission rules against the club, has no precedent in English football. Analysts have floated a heavy points deduction as one plausible sanction, a penalty that would almost certainly send the club plummeting down the table regardless of results on the pitch. Fines, forfeited titles and transfer-market restrictions have all been mentioned as further possibilities. Appeals would follow any ruling, meaning even a decision this autumn would not close the file for some time.
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Guardiola gone, the wait continues
The case has now outlasted a managerial era. Pep Guardiola left the club at the end of last season after a decade in charge, replaced by Enzo Maresca ahead of 2026-27. In his final press conference in May, Guardiola said he retained faith in the club’s ability to fight the case.
“I trust them. Because I spoke with them and I trust how they behave and how they did,” he said.
“There will be the resolution.”
Guardiola noted that neither he nor his squad was at the club during the years the charges cover. Maresca and his new-look squad were not there either. Whatever the commission eventually decides, it will land on them all the same.
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