Manchester City Reportedly Found Guilty on 114 of 115 Charges

For more than three years, Manchester City’s 115 charges have followed them everywhere. Opposition fans have sung about them, every trophy has brought them back into the conversation and the number itself has almost become part of the Premier League dictionary.

Now, according to The Athletic, there is finally something resembling an answer.

City have reportedly been found guilty on 114 of the 115 charges brought against them by the Premier League, with sources briefed on the decision saying the independent commission cleared the club on just one. No punishment has yet been announced and City are expected to appeal.

The Premier League has not published the commission’s judgment, while Manchester City insist the process remains ongoing.

A club spokesperson said:

“The Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality.”

It leaves plenty still unresolved, but after years of hearing about 115 charges, we are at least getting closer to understanding what they might actually mean.

What are the 115 charges actually about?

The number has probably made the case more confusing than it needed to be.

City were not accused of committing the same offence 115 times. The case covers several areas of the club’s finances across multiple seasons, from the accuracy of financial information and sponsorship revenue to payments made to managers and players, compliance with financial rules and City's cooperation with the investigation.

The first group covers the seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18. The Premier League accused City of failing to provide accurate financial information giving a true and fair view of the club’s finances, particularly around revenue, sponsorship income, related parties and operating costs.

Put into football terms, nobody needed an investigation to discover that Manchester City had become considerably wealthier after Sheikh Mansour bought the club in 2008. The argument is over how some of the money entering the club was recorded, where it came from and whether the accounts presented to the Premier League gave an accurate picture.

Payments are another part of the case.

City were accused of failing to provide full details of manager remuneration between 2009/10 and 2012/13, covering Roberto Mancini’s spell in charge, before similar allegations were made around player remuneration between 2010/11 and 2015/16.

There are also charges concerning UEFA’s Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play regulations between 2013/14 and 2017/18 and the Premier League’s Profitability and Sustainability Rules from 2015/16 to 2017/18.

By December 2018, the dispute had moved beyond what was in the accounts and into City's response to the investigation. The Premier League accused the club of failing to cooperate with its enquiries, including requirements around providing documents and information, through to the announcement of the charges in February 2023.

Put all of that together and the length of the case starts to make a little more sense. There was no single payment or accounting entry at the heart of it. The commission has had to work through years of financial information, sponsorship arrangements, payments, regulations and the conduct of the investigation itself.

From the takeover to the charges

To understand why sponsorship features so heavily, you have to go back to the Manchester City Sheikh Mansour bought in 2008.

City had finished ninth in the Premier League the previous season and had not won a major trophy since the League Cup in 1976. Three years after the takeover they won the FA Cup. A year later, Sergio Agüero scored that goal and Martin Tyler ensured nobody would ever pronounce his surname normally again.

The scale of what followed is difficult to overstate.

City went from chasing the established elite to becoming part of it, and eventually dominating it. Alongside the investment in players came a rapidly expanding commercial operation, which is where sponsorship and related parties become important to this case.

Football's financial rules distinguish between money a club earns commercially and funding provided by its owners. Sponsorship therefore matters because commercial revenue can support a club's spending calculations, while owner investment is treated differently.

The Premier League's case questions whether the financial information City provided accurately reflected those arrangements.

It is territory City have been through before.

In 2020, UEFA banned them from European competition for two seasons after its Club Financial Control Body concluded that City had overstated sponsorship revenue between 2012 and 2016 and failed to cooperate with its investigation.

City appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and had the European ban overturned. CAS found the allegations that the club had disguised equity funding as sponsorship contributions were either not established or, in some cases, time-barred. City were still found to have failed to cooperate with UEFA and were fined €10 million.

That case has often been dragged into discussions around the 115 charges, but the Premier League proceedings cover different rules, periods and allegations. The league was also not dealing with the same limitation issues that affected parts of UEFA’s case.

City winning at CAS did not settle what the Premier League was investigating.

So what can actually happen?

This is usually where a conversation about accounting standards takes the short journey to Manchester City playing Championship football.

We are not there.

Premier League independent commissions have broad powers when imposing sanctions. Fines and points deductions are among the available punishments, while the rules also allow for other sporting sanctions depending on the breaches established.

A significant points deduction, suspension or expulsion could therefore form part of the discussion around punishment. None has been announced.

There has also been no decision to strip City of previous titles, so Liverpool and Manchester United supporters can probably leave the trophy cabinet where it is for now.

Before any of that can be dealt with properly, the commission’s written judgment needs to provide the detail missing from the current picture: which individual breaches were established, how the panel reached those findings and what punishment follows.

City are then expected to appeal. An independently constituted Appeal Board can uphold, dismiss or vary a commission decision, meaning a case that has already survived several managers, governments and an alarming number of Chelsea signings may still have another round left in it.

Whenever the punishment arrives, it will also be imposed on a Manchester City that looks very different from the club covered by the earliest charges.

The Manchester City of 2026

The first financial-reporting allegations date back to 2009/10. City were only beginning to build the operation that surrounds the club today.

For 2024/25, Manchester City reported revenue of £694.1 million. Commercial income reached £340.4 million and broadcasting brought in another £278.6 million. The club recorded a £9.9 million loss, held net assets of more than £850 million and generated £95.2 million in profit from player sales.

The ownership structure has developed along the way. City now sit at the centre of City Football Group, with Sheikh Mansour’s Newton Investment and Development retaining majority control and American investment firm Silver Lake holding a significant minority stake of almost 17%.

Manchester itself carries plenty of evidence of that growth. The expansion of the Etihad's North Stand is taking the stadium beyond 60,000 seats as part of a much larger development around the campus.

The football side has already moved into another era too. Pep Guardiola left in 2026 after ten years, six Premier League titles and the club's first Champions League, with former City coach Enzo Maresca now tasked with following him.

The club accused of breaching Premier League rules between 2009 and 2018 was still becoming the Manchester City we know now. Any punishment arrives after that transformation has already happened.

That is what gives this case a significance beyond whatever number eventually appears beside City in the league table.

For years, English football has argued about 115 charges while City kept winning. Premier League titles arrived, the Champions League followed, the Etihad grew and City Football Group spread across the world. All the while, the argument over the financial foundations of that rise sat unresolved in the background.

We may finally be approaching an answer.

The number everyone knew was 115. The number being reported now is 114.

The next number is the one that could change everything.

How much will it cost them?