Manchester City are reported to have been found in breach of all but one of the 115 charges brought against the club by the Premier League (the “League”) in February 2023. The Athletic reported on 25 September 2026, citing sources briefed on the matter, that the independent Commission (the “Commission”) appointed under the Premier League Rules (the “Rules”) has upheld 114 of the charges, with sanction still to be determined. If confirmed, it is the most significant disciplinary decision in the history of English football’s top division.
Nothing has yet been published. The League has made no announcement, and the club has said only that the process “remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality”, and that its position remains that of February 2023, when it described the evidence supporting its case as “irrefutable”. The club is widely expected to appeal.
The charges span nine seasons and concern the foundations of financial regulation in the game: the accuracy of the information a club provides to its league, the disclosure of related-party arrangements and remuneration, and the duty to co-operate with an investigation. Their significance extends well beyond one club.
The decision also raises a wider legal question: how robust is the League’s disciplinary architecture when tested, at every stage, by a club with the resources and the appetite to challenge it, and which has already signalled doubts about the League’s impartiality?
This article considers how the decision was reached, whether it is legally sound and how it may be appealed, and the wider legal and commercial implications. It does so on the basis of what has been reported; the Commission’s reasons are not yet public.
Background: what was actually alleged?
The League announced the referral on 6 February 2023, following an investigation of more than four years prompted by the Football Leaks disclosures first published by Der Spiegel in November 2018. The charges cover the seasons 2009-10 to 2017-18 and fall into five groups:
- failing to provide accurate financial information giving a true and fair view of the club’s financial position, in particular as to revenue (including sponsorship revenue), related parties and operating costs (54 charges);
- failing to disclose full details of manager remuneration between 2009-10 and 2012-13 and of player remuneration between 2010-11 and 2015-16 (14 charges);
- failing to comply with UEFA’s financial fair play regulations between 2013-14 and 2017-18 (5 charges);
- breaching the League’s profitability and sustainability rules between 2015-16 and 2017-18 (7 charges); and
- failing to co-operate with the League’s investigation between December 2018 and February 2023 (35 charges).
On a strict count of the referral the figure is nearer 130, but “115” has passed into common usage. Which charge was not upheld has not been reported.
In substance, the League’s case was that sponsorship income from entities linked to the club’s ownership was in part funded by the owner and presented as commercial revenue; that certain manager and player remuneration was routed through third parties and kept off the club’s books; and that the club then obstructed the League’s investigation. During the period covered by the charges the club won three Premier League titles, two FA Cups and four League Cups.
The proceedings should be viewed against the club’s earlier dispute with UEFA. In February 2020, UEFA imposed a two-year ban from European competition and a €30 million fine on the basis of largely the same leaked material. Five months later the Court of Arbitration for Sport (“CAS”) set the ban aside, finding the most serious allegations either not established or time-barred, but upheld the finding of non-co-operation and imposed a reduced fine of €10 million.
That outcome shaped expectations. Most commentary assumed that the substantive allegations would prove as difficult to establish before the Commission as before CAS, and that only the co-operation charges would succeed; a smaller body of opinion predicted expulsion. Few anticipated a finding on all but one charge.
The process: how the decision was reached
The League is a company whose shareholders are its 20 member clubs. The Rules bind those clubs as a matter of contract, and disciplinary matters are dealt with under Section W. The League’s Board refers an alleged breach to a Commission of three, appointed by the independent Chair of the League’s Judicial Panel, Murray Rosen KC, and proceedings are confidential until the decision and written reasons are published.
The Commission’s jurisdiction is contractual rather than statutory, and it was tested in 2021, when the club’s challenge to the impartiality of the League’s arbitral panel and to the validity of its demands for documents failed in the Commercial Court. The Court of Appeal subsequently directed that the judgment be published.
The standard of proof under the Rules is the civil standard, the balance of probabilities, applied with the usual caution that serious allegations call for cogent evidence. Unlike UEFA’s regulations, the Rules contain no limitation period, so the five-year bar that disposed of much of UEFA’s case was unavailable to the club.
The hearing took place over some ten weeks from September 2024, with leading counsel on both sides and legal costs reported to run into the tens of millions of pounds. The Commission then took the best part of two years to determine liability, a delay the League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, acknowledged last month had “taken longer than expected”. The club’s reference to “significant elements to be completed” indicates that sanction remains before the Commission.
The legal position: is the decision sound?
On the information currently available, the decision appears to rest on firm legal foundations: contractual jurisdiction already tested in the courts, an independent appointment process, a lengthy hearing at which the club was represented by leading counsel, the correct standard of proof and, in due course, detailed written reasons.
Two further points are worth noting. First, the evidential foundation of the case was internal correspondence obtained through a hack. Improperly obtained evidence is in principle admissible before an English tribunal, as it was before CAS; the question is one of weight, which was for the panel that heard the witnesses. Secondly, delay is not of itself a ground of challenge: a club relying on the Commission’s protracted deliberation would need to show a serious irregularity causing substantial injustice, which is a demanding test.
The club’s statement is also instructive. It refers to the club having respected due process “on the basis the Premier League board and executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair minded regulator, free from partisan influence”. The complaint is directed at the League as regulator rather than at the Commission. That distinction matters: the League’s Board is the prosecuting party, whereas the Commission is appointed independently, and an argument of partisan influence would need to attach to the tribunal itself.
Why the club’s appeal still has force
None of this means that the club is without arguments. An appeal is unlikely to succeed on the facts: a finding on 114 of 115 charges after ten weeks of evidence leaves limited scope for a challenge on the basis that no reasonable Commission could have reached the same conclusion. The realistic battleground is sanction.
Three arguments can be expected. First, a single course of conduct has been charged several times over: the UEFA and profitability and sustainability charges rest largely on the same alleged misstatements as the accuracy charges, and the totality principle requires the overall sanction to reflect the conduct rather than the number of charges. Secondly, undue weight should not be given to non-co-operation, which CAS treated in 2020 as meriting a fine rather than exclusion. Thirdly, any sanction must be proportionate by reference to the League’s own precedents, and a disproportionate sanction is the element of the decision most likely to be disturbed on appeal.
The League’s recent record supports that focus: Everton’s partial success in 2024, which reduced a ten-point deduction to six, shows that an Appeal Board will correct errors of principle on sanction, and Leicester City’s jurisdictional challenge the same year shows that the process can produce outcomes adverse to the League.
Sanction: what the Commission can and cannot do
Sanction has not been determined and, on the reports, every option remains open. Rule W.51 confers wide powers, including a reprimand, an unlimited fine, a points deduction, an order for compensation and a recommendation to the League’s Board that the club be expelled, and Rule W.51.7 allows those sanctions to be combined, or others imposed, as the Commission considers appropriate.
The “sanctions framework” developed in the Everton and Nottingham Forest cases in 2023-24, with its three-point starting point for a single-season breach of the profitability and sustainability rules, was expressly confined to that category and offers little guidance where the finding is one of systematic misstatement over nine seasons compounded by four years of non-co-operation.
The Rules do not, on their face, confine a points deduction to the current or a future season, and a retrospective deduction, with the loss of titles won during the period in question, has been widely canvassed. The better view is that any deduction will be applied going forward: as James Hill of Onside Law told The Athletic in 2023, panels “don’t like deciding titles in a court process”. Whether historic titles should be regarded as tainted is likely to remain a question for the League and its member clubs.
Recent practice is for sanctions to take effect on publication of the decision. Everton’s and Nottingham Forest’s deductions were applied immediately, and an appeal did not operate as a stay. With the club top of the 2026-27 table after five wins from five, and having spent some £450 million in the summer window, a deduction applied in the current season would have an immediate sporting and commercial effect.
Appeal: the routes available to the club
Once sanction has been determined, the decision is appealable to an Appeal Board of three, again appointed by the Chair of the Judicial Panel, none of whom sat on the Commission. Notice of appeal must be given within the short period prescribed by the Rules. An appeal is not a re-hearing: the grounds are that the Commission misinterpreted or failed to comply with the Rules, reached a decision which no reasonable Commission could have reached, or imposed an excessive sanction.
Beyond the Appeal Board, the decision is final and binding. There is no route to CAS. The English courts’ role, if any, is confined to the narrow gateways in the Arbitration Act 1996 (want of jurisdiction, or a serious irregularity causing substantial injustice) or, if the process is characterised as a private disciplinary tribunal rather than an arbitration, to the courts’ restrictive supervisory jurisdiction over sporting bodies. The club’s experience in 2021 illustrates how high that bar sits.
A challenge to the Rules themselves under competition law, the approach which succeeded in part against the League’s associated party transaction rules before that dispute was settled in September 2025, appears unlikely to assist. Obligations of accuracy and co-operation owed to a club’s own regulator are not readily characterised as restraints of trade.
Points of wider legal interest
Compensation claims by other clubs
The Rules contemplate orders for compensation, and clubs which lost out over the nine seasons in question, whether in European qualification, prize money or Premier League status, are likely to examine their position, as a number of relegated clubs did following Everton’s deduction. Causation and quantum remain formidable obstacles; the finding of breach nevertheless clears the first hurdle.
Commercial agreements and financing
Sponsorship, broadcasting and licensing agreements commonly contain reputational, material adverse change and termination provisions, and financing arrangements contain covenants and information undertakings. Counterparties to the club and its parent group are likely to be reviewing those provisions now rather than after the appeal.
The Independent Football Regulator
The Independent Football Regulator established under the Football Governance Act 2025 will license clubs and apply tests of fitness to owners and directors. A finding of sustained misstatement to a club’s own league is the kind of material a regulator may be expected to weigh, on its own timetable rather than the League’s.
UEFA
UEFA’s 2020 case is closed and its regulations are time-limited, but its Club Financial Control Body is likely to read the Commission’s findings closely. Continued participation in European competition depends on the accuracy of what a club reports today.
Implications for stakeholders
Clubs should treat the decision as confirmation that the accuracy and co-operation obligations in the Rules will be enforced, and should review their related-party disclosures, remuneration arrangements and document retention practices accordingly.
Commercial partners, lenders and investors should review existing agreements for reputational, material adverse change, change-of-control and termination provisions, and factor regulatory exposure, including warranties as to historic compliance, into any due diligence.
Governing bodies and leagues should note both the vindication of the League’s rulebook and the cost of the process: a regime which takes more than three and a half years from charge to a finding on liability is robust, but not efficient.
What happens next?
The immediate next stage is sanction. Only once the Commission has determined it will the League publish the decision and written reasons, and only then does the club’s right of appeal arise. The Appeal Board’s decision is likely to take months rather than weeks, and any sanction will in the meantime take effect unless a stay is ordered.
Much will also depend on the published reasons. The findings on the sponsorship arrangements in particular will determine the strength of any compensation claims, the response of commercial partners and lenders, and the interest of the Independent Football Regulator.
If the reports are accurate, the wider consequence is that the League’s financial rules have been shown to be enforceable against the best-resourced club in the game. The circumstances which led to the reversal of UEFA’s decision in 2020 do not appear to be present here.
How Culbert Ellis can assist
Our Sports Law team advises governing bodies, leagues, clubs, commercial partners, investors and lenders on regulatory and disciplinary matters and on the commercial arrangements affected by them.
We assist clients with:
- regulatory investigations and disciplinary proceedings before league, national association and international bodies, including appeals;
- compliance with profitability and sustainability, associated party transaction and related-party disclosure rules;
- the review, negotiation and enforcement of sponsorship, broadcasting and licensing agreements, including reputational and termination provisions;
- financing and investment in clubs, including regulatory due diligence, warranties and covenant protection; and
- strategic advice to clubs, leagues and governing bodies on responding to regulatory developments, including the Independent Football Regulator.
As the financial regulation of football becomes more demanding and more rigorously enforced, the legal and commercial consequences of getting it wrong are increasing. Culbert Ellis combines commercial litigation, competition law and sector-specific sports expertise to help clients navigate these challenges.
How To Get In Contact
For further guidance on these issues and any Sports Law related matters, please contact Wing Ming Choi at wingming.choi@culbertellis.com or call +44 (0)204 600 9907.
Accurate at the time of writing. This information is provided for general information purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal advice.
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