Man City 115 charges latest with timeline and new verdict claim delivered | Football | Sport

Manchester City and the Premier League remain in a state of uncertainty as they await the final judgment on the 115 charges levelled against the club for allegedly breaching financial regulations between 2009 and 2018. The hearing into City’s alleged breaches of Premier League financial rules, which the club denies in their entirety, concluded in December 2024 after a 12-week tribunal.

However, the independent commission is yet to publish its conclusions. It has now been 14 months since the tribunal finished, with the commission still deliberating, but football finance expert Kieran Maguire believes “we are probably into the final reaches of getting a decision.”

“We reckon there’s probably about half a million pieces of evidence that were presented by both the prosecution and the defence,” he said on The Overlap.

“The hearing finished in the second week of December. So we’re now 14 months with silence. So by the cases similar to a fraud case, I think we’re probably into the final reaches of getting a decision.

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“I think part of the challenge has been that because there are three very senior people who are on the court, who are making that final judgement. Getting those three together at the same time is actually very difficult.

“So that’s delayed the case. It should be resolved in the next few months. But we said this before, you know, Pep was saying last February that he was expecting something. There’s an awful lot of evidence to go through and this and the charges are very, very serious. So you’ve got to have enough evidence.”

He continued: “If it comes out the week before the end of the season, it would be catastrophic in many ways. From what I understand, both the Premier League and Manchester City will probably be given 24 hours notice of the verdict to allow their lawyers to go away and check the small print of it. It could be on the day of the World Cup final for all we know.”

When questioned about potential sanctions should City be deemed guilty, Maguire explained: “The Premier League cannot relegate Manchester City to League One or League Two because that is an EFL decision and Manchester City have not had any charges proven against them by the EFL. Therefore, it has to be a points deduction.

“If we take a look at precedence, we have had Everton and Nottingham Forest with six and four-point deductions for a single offence covering a three-year period. The accusations against Manchester City cover a nine-year period, so it is far bigger.

“The numbers involved we are not certain about but they are likely to be quite significant. I think you have to add a zero to what we’ve seen in terms of Forest and Everton, so somewhere between a 40 and 60-point deduction would be, on merit to be consistent with what we’ve seen with other decisions, would make a lot of logic.

“If they want to go further then we don’t know the severity. In the case of both Forest and Everton, they were to do with FFP purely. The accusations against Manchester City have already been hinted at, which is why it is taking so long.

“Corporate fraud is a very serious accusation. The board of directors would have to go. How can you be in a meeting room with other members of the Premier League, with the Premier League itself – of whom you are a shareholder – with this accusation being proven?

“If you take a look at what happened with Juventus in Serie A, the board had to resign when they were claiming things about player wages which were proven to be untrue. There is an honesty issue here that would mean if Manchester City are found guilty – City are massively confident, as are the Premier League – then the board has to go and that could be a complete restructure of the club.”

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