The verdict that football fans around the world had been awaiting for years is in - Manchester City are guilty. The club still insists it is innocent of the financial rule-breaking charges first brought against it by the Premier League in 2023, and can appeal, so the legal wrangling is far from over. And the verdict has unleashed some huge questions for both the near and long-term future.
BBC Sport has taken a look at the key issues in the case and what we know about each of them so far. The deadline for Man City to make their appeal is Friday. In previous instances - including the guilty verdicts and punishments handed out when Everton and Nottingham Forest breached spending rules - the appeal was heard and a decision made before the sanctions against the clubs was announced.
So precedent indicates that City's appeal will be considered and decided upon before punishments are declared. But how long that process - which will be heard by a new three-person commission - will take is unclear. Man City cannot make a further appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but could potentially claim the process was not impartial at the High Court.
The Premier League's statement, formally announcing the guilty verdicts read on Monday, said it wants the process to be "concluded as soon as possible". The phrasing may not offer any exact insight but the tone - of both the statement, and the strong language used in the independent commission's findings about the length of time the case has taken - is notable. "It has taken us much longer than we would have wished, and much longer than we had anticipated would be the case when the hearing concluded, to produce our decision," the commission wrote.
"That is regrettable." It is clear that those in charge want the matter wrapped as quickly as can be done. And it is arguably to the benefit of both Manchester City and all of the other clubs in the Premier League and English Football League to know where they stand sooner rather than later. City are top of the Premier League, having taken a maximum 15 points from their opening five matches, but whether they are genuinely in a title race will be unclear as long as players, fans, and club owners are in the dark about what their punishment will be.
Were the appeal and sanctions process to drag on beyond the end of the season, it would be possible that legal challenges could be brought by teams who finished below City in the table, or are relegated, or were knocked out by them in the domestic cups, which would be far less viable if the club's 'real' position is known before that point. The first is that one of the sanctions Manchester City are given is so significant a points deduction that they finish this season (or another future campaign, if the process takes longer) in the Premier League's bottom three and are automatically relegated to the Championship. The second scenario is that they are expelled by the Premier League, which would require 15 of their rival clubs to vote in favour of a motion decreeing so.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
