Man City guilty of 114 charges as Premier League confirms verdict

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Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 of the 115 Premier League financial charges brought against them, with the league confirming the independent commission's decision in a statement on Tuesday.

The Premier League said City were found guilty of "all charges related to serious breaches of the Premier League's financial rules over a nine-season period, and the majority of charges in relation to its failure to co-operate with the League's investigation".

The announcement follows reports last week, relayed by football.london, that the verdict had gone against the champions ahead of any official publication.

What the commission found

The Premier League set out four principal areas in which City were judged to have breached its rules. The first stated that the club "arranged 'sham' contracts (which misrepresented the true agreement between the parties) with a number of its commercial partners, as well as relying on 'sham' agreements with others, to artificially inflate the club's revenues and reduce its costs".

The league also found that City "filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators", and that the club "was significantly in breach of both the Premier League's and UEFA's spending limits".

On co-operation, the statement confirmed that City "committed multiple breaches of its duties of co-operation and utmost good faith towards the League", with three of the four alleged breaches upheld.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters described the ruling as the most significant in the competition's history. "The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period. It details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade," he said.

City to appeal — and sanctions still to come

City responded with a statement of their own, saying the club is "both disappointed and surprised by the opinion of the Premier League Commission" and insisting they are "innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League".

The club added that it will "pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe", while noting that "the Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements uncompleted".

Crucially for every other club in the division, no punishment has yet been determined. Masters confirmed that "there are elements of the case that remain to be decided, including, importantly, what sanction must follow for these breaches", adding that the league is "committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process".

The nine-season period covered by the charges includes years in which Arsenal were among the sides chasing City at the top of the table, with the Gunners finishing runners-up to the Etihad club in both 2022/23 and 2023/24.

City have until Friday 2 October to formally challenge the commission's verdict, with the question of sanctions the next stage of a case that has already run for eight years.