Manchester City have been found guilty on 114 of the 115 charges brought against them by the Premier League for breaches of the competition’s financial regulations, in what football administrators are describing as the biggest regulatory verdict in the history of English football.

According to The Athletic’s David Ornstein, an independent three person commission has upheld all but one of the allegations first laid against the reigning champions in February 2023. Sanctions against the club have not yet been decided, and Manchester City are widely expected to appeal the ruling.

Reacting to the reports, a Manchester City spokesperson told The Athletic that the Premier League process remained ongoing with significant elements still to be completed, adding that the club’s position was consistent with its original statement of February 2023, when it said it had respected due process for eight years on the understanding that the league’s board and executive would act as an independent and impartial regulator free from partisan influence.

The case traces back to the publication of leaked internal documents by German magazine Der Spiegel in late 2018, part of what became known as the Football Leaks trove.

Those documents triggered a four year Premier League investigation into City’s financial dealings between 2009 and 2018, a period that coincided with the club’s transformation into a dominant domestic and European force following Sheikh Mansour’s Abu Dhabi United Group takeover in 2008. Over that decade the club won three Premier League titles along with multiple domestic cups.

The charges accused City of failing to provide accurate financial information to the league, failing to fully disclose payments made to players and coaching staff, and breaching both UEFA’s Financial Fair Play rules and the Premier League’s own Profitability and Sustainability Rules.

Additional charges related to the club’s alleged failure to cooperate fully with investigators. An independent commission heard the case between September and December 2024 before reaching its verdict now, nearly two years later.

This is not the first time City’s financial conduct has come under regulatory scrutiny. In February 2020, UEFA banned the club from European competition for two seasons and imposed a multimillion euro fine, only for the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn the ban on appeal, ruling that much of the evidence against City was either unproven or too old to be considered, while still upholding a reduced fine over the club’s failure to cooperate with investigators. Unlike UEFA’s rules, the Premier League’s regulations carry no such time limit on evidence.

Manchester City now face a wide range of possible sanctions under the league’s rulebook, from a formal reprimand and a heavy fine through to points deductions or, in the most extreme scenario, expulsion from the Premier League altogether. Legal experts have suggested any points penalty would most likely be applied to a future season rather than retrospectively, since panels are generally reluctant to strip a club of a title already awarded through a legal process.

Under Premier League rule W.51.7, the commission is permitted to combine different punishments or design new ones suited to the case, though any sanction handed down must be proportionate to the breaches found, or City would have strong grounds to challenge it on appeal.

Everton and Nottingham Forest were both docked points in recent seasons for breaching the league’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules, though the scale and duration of the case against City, spanning nearly nine years of alleged breaches, is without precedent in the competition’s history. With an appeal now expected, final resolution of the case, and any punishment that comes with it, could still be some way off.

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