News · Wealth12 min read

Manchester City found guilty on 114 financial-rule charges: what the case was really about

Manchester City have reportedly been found guilty on 114 of 115 Premier League financial-rule charges. Here is a detailed breakdown of the accounting, sponsorship, remuneration, FFP and cooperation issues at the centre of the case — and what the ruling does and does not mean.

By David, editor of Compound / 25 September 2026

Aerial shot of Etihad Stadium filled with soccer fans in Manchester, UK.

News / Wealth

Photo: Mylo Kaye on Pexels · Illustrative image.

News analysis · 25 September 2026

Manchester City have reportedly been found guilty on 114 of the 115 charges in the Premier League’s long-running financial case, according to reporting by David Ornstein of The Athletic on 25 September 2026.

The sanctions have not yet been decided, the process remains ongoing, and Manchester City are expected to appeal.

That distinction matters. The verdict being reported today is potentially one of the most consequential regulatory decisions in the history of English football — but the final sporting consequences are not yet known.

It is also important to use the right language.

These are financial-rule breaches — not criminal convictions

The phrase “financial crimes” will inevitably be used online because of the scale and seriousness of the case.

But the Premier League proceedings are a sporting and regulatory process, not a criminal prosecution.

Manchester City have not, through this Premier League case, been convicted of fraud, false accounting or any other criminal offence in a criminal court.

What the club was charged with — and has now reportedly been found guilty of on virtually all counts — were breaches of Premier League financial and disclosure rules.

Those alleged breaches were, however, far broader than the shorthand “Manchester City spent too much money”.

The case went to the foundations of how a football club reports its finances.

The central questions included:

whether Manchester City supplied accurate financial information to the Premier League;
how sponsorship revenue was reported;
whether transactions involving related parties were properly represented;
whether all manager remuneration was disclosed;
whether all player remuneration was disclosed;
whether the club complied with UEFA Financial Fair Play rules;
whether it complied with Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules;
and whether it properly cooperated with the Premier League’s investigation.

That is why this case was so serious.

The 115 charges: what they were actually about

When the Premier League announced the charges on 6 February 2023, it grouped them into five broad areas.

1. Accurate financial information: 2009/10 to 2017/18

The first and most fundamental group concerned the requirement for a Premier League club to provide financial information that gave a “true and fair view” of its financial position.

The Premier League specifically identified:

revenue;
sponsorship revenue;
related parties;
and operating costs.

This covered every season from 2009/10 through 2017/18.

This is the core accounting issue.

A football regulator does not simply need to know how much money appears in a club’s bank account. It needs to know where the money came from, whether it is genuinely commercial revenue, whether connected parties are involved and whether costs have been fully recorded.

If the underlying financial information is wrong, every downstream financial-control calculation can also become distorted.

Why sponsorship revenue matters so much

Sponsorship is particularly important because it is one of the main ways a club can increase revenue.

And revenue matters because financial-control systems generally limit losses rather than simply placing a hard cap on spending.

A club with more legitimate commercial income can normally sustain more spending.

That creates an obvious regulatory problem: if an owner or an entity connected to an owner could simply inject money and label it as ordinary commercial sponsorship, the spending rules could become meaningless.

That is why football regulators scrutinise:

who the sponsor is;
whether the sponsor is related to the ownership;
how the deal was funded;
whether the commercial value is genuine;
and whether the accounting treatment fairly reflects the economic reality.

The Premier League’s original case expressly referred to sponsorship revenue and related parties.

2. Manager and player remuneration

The second major group concerned whether the club had disclosed the full details of remuneration paid under manager and player contracts.

For managers, the relevant period covered 2009/10 to 2012/13.

For players, it covered 2010/11 to 2015/16.

This sounds technical, but it goes directly to the integrity of a club’s reported wage bill.

If a club pays a player or manager £X through the contract it declares to the league, but some additional compensation is paid through another route and is not properly disclosed, the club’s officially reported costs may not reflect its true economic costs.

That would matter for at least three reasons:

it affects the accuracy of the accounts;
it can affect compliance calculations;
it can create an uneven playing field against clubs reporting all compensation through the required channels.

The Premier League’s charge sheet did not merely say City’s wage bill was high. It alleged breaches of rules requiring the club to provide full details of remuneration.

3. UEFA Financial Fair Play compliance

The Premier League also charged City with breaching rules requiring member clubs to comply with UEFA regulations, including UEFA’s Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play Regulations.

Those charges covered 2013/14 to 2017/18.

Financial Fair Play was designed to prevent clubs from accumulating excessive losses and to make spending more closely connected to the revenues generated by the football business.

The precise rules evolved over time, but the central principle was straightforward: a club could not treat unlimited owner funding as if financial constraints did not exist.

That meant the classification and legitimacy of revenue became critically important.

A pound of genuine broadcasting, ticketing or arm’s-length commercial revenue is economically different, for regulatory purposes, from a pound that is effectively owner funding disguised as unrelated commercial income.

That is why the sponsorship and disclosure allegations sit at the centre of the entire case.

4. Premier League Profitability and Sustainability Rules

Manchester City were also charged with breaches of the Premier League’s own Profitability and Sustainability Rules, or PSR, for the seasons:

2015/16;
2016/17;
2017/18.

PSR is often reduced to the phrase “the £105 million rule”, but that is an oversimplification.

The system works from adjusted accounting losses over a multi-year period, with various permitted deductions and adjustments.

The central concept is that clubs cannot simply lose unlimited sums in pursuit of sporting success.

Again, reported revenue and reported costs feed directly into that calculation.

If either side of the profit-and-loss account is misstated, the apparent PSR position can change substantially.

5. Cooperation with the Premier League investigation

The final major category concerned Manchester City’s duty to cooperate with and assist the Premier League’s investigation.

The Premier League said these alleged breaches ran from December 2018 onward.

Its 2023 statement specifically referred to obligations to provide documents and information in the utmost good faith.

This category is different from the underlying financial allegations.

A regulator can conclude that a club failed to cooperate even before reaching the substantive accounting questions.

Cooperation rules exist because financial regulation is extremely difficult if the regulator cannot obtain documents, contracts, correspondence and accounting records from the organisation being investigated.

The deeper issue: what counts as real revenue?

To understand the case, it helps to strip football finance back to first principles.

Imagine two clubs.

Club A

Club A earns:

£120m broadcasting;
£80m matchday;
£100m genuine commercial sponsorship.

Total revenue: £300m.

Club B

Club B earns the same £200m from broadcasting and matchday revenue, but its owner wants the club to spend far more.

If an owner simply contributes another £100m of equity, regulators can identify that as owner funding.

But suppose an associated company signs a £100m sponsorship contract.

Now the club appears to have £300m of operating revenue too.

The accounting and regulatory question becomes:

Is that genuinely a £100m commercial sponsorship entered into on normal economic terms, or is some of the money effectively owner support travelling through a different route?

That distinction can determine whether financial controls have any practical meaning.

This is why related-party transactions and fair market value rules have become so important across modern football.

What did Manchester City say?

Manchester City have consistently denied wrongdoing.

When the charges were announced in February 2023, the club said it was “surprised” by the Premier League’s action and said there was a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” supporting its position.

The club welcomed examination by an independent commission and said it looked forward to the matter being resolved.

Following the reported 2026 verdict, The Athletic reported that City maintained that the process remains ongoing and subject to confidentiality.

An appeal is expected.

That means the legal and regulatory battle is not necessarily finished.

Why 114 guilty findings would be extraordinary

A finding against a club on one accounting or disclosure issue can sometimes be framed as a technical regulatory failure.

A reported finding on 114 of 115 charges would be categorically different in scale.

The original charge sheet covered:

nine seasons of financial reporting;
four seasons of manager remuneration rules;
six seasons of player remuneration rules;
five seasons of UEFA compliance;
three seasons of Premier League PSR compliance;
and multiple seasons of alleged failures to cooperate.

The importance is therefore not the raw number alone.

The number 115 has become a meme in football, but counting charges can obscure what the case actually concerns.

The material issue is whether an independent commission concluded that Manchester City repeatedly breached multiple layers of the financial-regulation system over a prolonged period.

According to the reporting published today, the answer is overwhelmingly yes — subject to the precise written decision, the continuing sanctions process and any appeal.

Does this mean Manchester City’s titles will be stripped?

Not at this stage.

The Premier League says independent commissions have access to a range of sanctions, including:

fines;
points deductions;
and other sporting sanctions.

Exactly what punishment will be imposed in this case has not yet been decided publicly.

Online discussion has included relegation, expulsion, title stripping, transfer restrictions and enormous points deductions.

Those are possibilities being discussed, not confirmed sanctions.

The distinction is essential.

A verdict on liability and a decision on sanction are separate stages.

Could Manchester City be relegated?

Again: no sanction has yet been announced.

Premier League disciplinary powers can include serious sporting penalties, and previous league guidance has made clear that commissions have broad sanctioning powers.

But until the commission publishes its sanction, stating that City will be relegated would be speculation.

Even after a sanction is imposed, the expected appeal could affect the final outcome.

Could they appeal?

Yes.

Premier League disciplinary decisions can be challenged through the league’s appeal process.

The Premier League has previously explained that appeal boards are separately appointed and have wide discretion. They can uphold, vary or overturn decisions within the rules governing the process.

That is why the story is not finished simply because a liability verdict has reportedly been reached.

The likely sequence is now:

verdict → sanction → appeal → final outcome

The exact timetable is unknown.

Why this matters beyond Manchester City

This case is bigger than one club.

The Premier League is, economically, one of the most valuable sporting competitions in the world.

Its entire competitive model assumes clubs are playing under a common rulebook.

Financial regulation is meant to answer a basic question:

How much financial advantage can ownership wealth buy before the competition stops being meaningfully constrained by common rules?

There is no perfectly objective answer.

Too little investment can entrench historically wealthy clubs.

Too much unrestricted owner funding can allow a new owner to overwhelm competitors regardless of the club’s underlying commercial scale.

Financial rules are an attempt — imperfect, politically contentious and constantly evolving — to draw a line between those two extremes.

But once those rules exist, enforcement becomes fundamental.

If clubs believe regulations can be bypassed without meaningful consequences, the rules lose credibility.

If regulators impose disproportionate sanctions or apply rules inconsistently, the competition also loses credibility.

That is why the final written judgment and sanction matter so much.

The economic value of competitive success

There is another reason this case is financially significant.

Winning creates more than trophies.

Sustained success can generate:

higher broadcasting distributions;
Champions League income;
sponsorship growth;
bigger global audiences;
increased merchandise sales;
stronger player recruitment;
higher commercial negotiating power;
and a more valuable global brand.

Those gains can compound.

A club that spends heavily, becomes successful, qualifies repeatedly for Europe and grows its commercial operation can eventually create the very revenues that support future spending.

In other words, an advantage obtained in Year 1 can potentially create legitimate commercial advantages in Years 5, 10 and 15.

That compounding effect is one reason historic financial-rule cases are so difficult to unwind.

Even a very large fine today cannot literally recreate an alternative sporting history.

Why the case took so long

The charges were announced in February 2023 following a multi-year Premier League investigation.

The underlying financial periods went back as far as the 2009/10 season.

Cases of this type can involve:

thousands of financial records;
contracts;
sponsorship agreements;
emails and correspondence;
expert accounting evidence;
questions about related parties;
competing interpretations of rules;
and extensive legal argument.

Manchester City also vigorously contested the allegations.

That combination made this fundamentally different from a simple one-season PSR calculation.

What we still do not know

Despite today’s major development, several crucial pieces remain unresolved.

The full written decision

The detailed commission judgment will matter far more than social-media summaries.

It should explain which allegations were proved, what evidence the commission accepted and the reasoning behind its conclusions.

The sanction

No final punishment has yet been publicly confirmed.

The appeal

Manchester City are expected to challenge the decision.

The implementation date

If a sporting sanction is imposed, when and how it takes effect will be critical.

The effect on historic honours

There is currently no confirmed decision to strip titles or retrospectively reallocate trophies.

A note on the word “guilty”

“Guilty” is being widely used in reporting because the independent commission has reportedly found breaches proven.

But this remains a Premier League disciplinary case.

It is not the same thing as a criminal court finding a company or individual guilty of a criminal offence.

That difference is especially important in an article about finance.

The strongest fair description at this point is:

Manchester City have reportedly been found by an independent Premier League commission to have breached virtually all of the financial and cooperation rules charged against them.

That is an extraordinary finding in its own right. It does not need to be exaggerated.

The bottom line

The Manchester City case was never simply about whether a wealthy football club spent a lot of money.

It was about whether the financial picture supplied to football’s regulators was accurate, complete and compliant with the rules.

The allegations touched revenue, sponsorship, related parties, operating costs, manager pay, player pay, UEFA Financial Fair Play, Premier League PSR and cooperation with investigators.

According to reporting on 25 September 2026, the independent commission has now found Manchester City guilty on 114 of 115 charges.

The next question is no longer whether the Premier League’s case succeeded at first instance.

It is what sanction follows, what survives appeal, and what this means for the credibility of financial regulation in English football.

Until the sanction and full written decision are published, claims that City will be relegated, stripped of titles or expelled should be treated as speculation rather than fact.

Sources