Eight years on from the start of the biggest scandal in recent British sporting memory, we finally have a verdict. But we don’t yet have all the answers.
While the football world is reeling from the bombshell news that Manchester City have been found guilty of the vast majority of the 115 charges against them, the Premier League dropped the other shoe on Tuesday night – revealing in full, excoriating detail the scale of the cheating.
The club remain insistent they are innocent, and that they intend to appeal, despite the League presenting such overwhelming evidence that City cooked the books to the tune of £900million in a nine-year period from 2009 to 2018.
So what happens now? What will the punishment be? Will City have to sell off all their star players? And when will it all finally end?
Here, Chief Sports Reporter MIKE KEEGAN answers the big questions that remain after the most explosive week in the history of the Premier League.
Manchester City have been found guilty of the vast majority of charges against them by the Premier League
Pep Guardiola won six league titles across 10 seasons at City
What is the timeline now – what information is still to come out and when?
The first landmark date is this Friday, which is the deadline for City to submit an appeal. An appeal was always viewed as an inevitability given the club continue to protest their innocence and chief executive Ferran Soriano has now confirmed one will be forthcoming.
The Premier League handbook goes into great detail about the time constraints surrounding appeals as part of an attempt to expedite the process. For example, any hearing can only last for five days, should be concluded within 12 weeks of the initial verdict and witness and expert statements should run to no more than 30 pages.
However, the first hurdle will be the make-up of a new panel. The chair of the existing panel should ‘as soon as reasonably practicable’ inform the parties involved of the identities of the proposed individuals.
Objections should then be made within two working days. Given how this has played out so far, this could be the first stage that suffers a delay. With so much riding on the choice of the panel, and so much at stake, an objection may well be forthcoming should either side have misgivings over a proposed individual.
Legal experts believe it is unlikely there will be a conclusion this season. With regards to a sanction, the Premier League are refusing to comment on whether that will come before the appeal is finished. However, it would appear there is a desire within the League to speed things along.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters now faces the prospect of kicking out the most successful team in his league for the last 15 years
What will happen to the witnesses judged to have given dishonest evidence?
Good question. Section 29(b) of the released judgment said that ‘certain… factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest’. The identity of these people, who gave evidence on behalf of City, has not been revealed.
It would appear the Premier League are pushing for redactions to be removed, with a clue given at the bottom of their bombshell statement on Tuesday.
It stated that while the League were ‘only permitted to publish a redacted version of the summary of the Commission’s “core findings”’ that ‘the process remains ongoing and any further information related to the proceedings that has not been published by the Premier League remains confidential’. They also vowed that, ‘unless legally prevented from doing so’ they would ‘publish the full decision’.
One to watch.
Why were the panel members not named?
If you were asked to rule on such a hugely-emotive case as this, would you want the public to know your identity?
As the Premier League have noted, the process is ongoing and there is a hope that more material will be released. The exact reason for the panel not being named is unclear at the moment, but that may change further down the line, depending on legal arguments.
Are there any grounds for criminal prosecution?
That remains to be seen. The priority for both parties right now will be the appeal.
The difficulty here is that there is not really a precedent in this country. In Italy, suspended sentences were handed out to former Juventus executives, including ex-chairman Andrea Agnelli, with regards to a false accounting case.
Agnelli got 20 months, while ex-sporting director Fabio Paratici – by then managing director of football at Tottenham – was handed 14 months.
There are few parallels for criminal punishment – in Italy, Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli (second left) and sporting director Fabio Paratici (right) were handed suspended sentences
How will the compensation claims work?
Four of City’s Premier League rivals – Arsenal, Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool – lodged legal claims ensuring that they would not be ‘out of time’ in the event that City were found guilty.
Each will already have an idea how much they are going to claim for. The most obvious avenue is the argument that City cost them European qualification and it would appear that, in that area, Spurs have the strongest case. Between 2009 and 2018, they finished one place outside the Champions League spots, with City ahead of them, on four occasions.
The irony here is that a process instigated by former Arsenal chief executive Tim Lewis could net their north London rivals a huge windfall, with £200million mentioned.
It is not just, however, failure to qualify for Europe. Knock-on effects, such as an inability to sign a certain level of player, could also be considered.
The likelihood is that an independent arbitration panel would sit and decide on level of payout, as was the case when Burnley won a £35m payout from Everton in June over the Toffees’ PSR breach.
For time purposes, it could be that all four cases would he heard at the same time, although each club may want their own situations to be dealt with individually.
Arsenal are one of four clubs who have reserved the right to seek compensation against City
Tottenham can feel most aggrieved – City denied them Champions League qualification four times in the nine-year period being investigated
Would compensation payments count towards future financial calculations?
It is highly unlikely, given that it would run the risk of creating a vicious circle in which City breach year after year, and be viewed as a double punishment.
Are there any grounds for UEFA to revisit their own City case?
UEFA will wait to see the result of the hearing in full before making a decision. But Daily Mail Sport understands it is highly unlikely they will revisit the case, despite the Premier League stating City were ‘significantly in breach’ of both their and UEFA’s rules.
The verdict obtained by City at the Court of Arbitration for Sport when they overturned their two-season Champions League ban in 2020 would be incredibly difficult to reverse given it upheld some of UEFA’s findings but not others, which it found were ‘time-barred’. City instead received a fine of €10m and had their ban rescinded.
Could the Premier League look at transactions post-2018 now?
They could. Whether they would want to, given the expense and effort that went into this case, is another issue.
At the moment, the feeling within Premier League Towers is one of vindication, and that will linger should City’s appeal fail. Would they want a second leg having won the first so convincingly?
How could City being put into the EFL work in practice? Would EFL clubs have a vote or just be told this is happening?
The EFL have declined to comment. However, there is a rule (11.6.2) that seems to exist for such situations.
Should City be given a points deduction that only sees them relegated to the Championship, then it is simple. They will be relegated. If, however, the sanction relegates them to League Two, it gets a little complicated.
First, they would need to apply to the FA to re-enter the pyramid. If that were successful, their absence would mean one more team would need to be promoted from each of the EFL divisions next season, to make up for the gap in the Premier League.
City could be kicked all the way back down to League Two – but would first have to apply to re-enter the pyramid
Could City’s auditors face any action?
BDO have audited City’s accounts for years, and still do. But the Premier League found City ‘filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of their finances from their auditors and football regulators’.
When contacted by Daily Mail Sport, BDO said they ‘remain bound by confidentiality so cannot comment on this occasion’.
Some would view the prospect of action against the firm as incredibly harsh, although we understand BDO could still face an investigation by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). Sources say the regulator is ‘aware’ of the situation and ‘looking into it to see if there is anything that falls under its remit’.
The FRC refused to comment.
BDO could argue they only acted on information they were given and point out that had it not been for the hacker Rui Pinto (rather than the Premier League’s compliance team) none of these details would have come to light.
What does this all mean for Omar Berrada?
The Manchester United chief executive joined them in 2024 from City, where he held a number of executive roles from 2011 including chief operating officer.
United have declined to comment. That said, it would be hard to imagine a world in which club officials did not carry out the relevant due diligence when Berrada was appointed in 2024 – almost a year after the City charges were made public.
