The English Football Association has said the finding that Manchester City broke the Premier League’s financial rules carries implications for the integrity of the game, while stopping short of saying what action it might take.
In a statement on Friday, the FA said it was carefully considering the decision and its implications and would act where appropriate. It added that it would continue to monitor developments closely, but would not comment further while proceedings between the Premier League and the club remain ongoing.
The caution reflects where the matter now stands. An independent commission found City guilty of the majority of 115 charges relating to serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules over a nine season period, a verdict the Premier League confirmed on Tuesday, 29 September 2026. The league said the commission had also upheld the majority of charges that the club failed to co-operate with its investigation.
According to the Premier League’s statement, the commission found that City arranged what it called sham commercial deals with several sponsors as part of a disguised funding scheme, under which those companies paid only a portion of the sponsorship fees attributed to them. Richard Masters, the league’s chief executive, said the findings detailed how the club systematically broke the rules for nearly a decade.
City have rejected the ruling firmly. The club said it was disappointed and surprised by the commission’s verdict, maintained that it was innocent of the accusations, and said it would be relentless in pursuing an appeal. In a statement on Friday, 2 October, the club confirmed it had lodged a comprehensive appeal the previous evening, and repeated its claim that a body of what it described as irrefutable evidence supported its position.
The charges cover conduct between 2009 and 2018, a span over which City grew from a mid table side into the dominant force in English football. The Premier League referred the case to an independent commission in February 2023, following an investigation that first drew on leaked club emails and documents from 2018. The hearing ran for 42 days and concluded in December 2024, with the verdict arriving some 21 months later.
The question of punishment has not yet been settled. The Premier League said sanctions would be determined in a separate hearing before the independent commission, and no penalty has been announced. The range of possible outcomes discussed since the charges were first laid includes fines, points deductions and, at the most severe end, expulsion from the division, though removal from the league would require a vote by the other clubs and is widely viewed as unlikely.
The scale of the alleged breaches has been a central feature of the coverage. The commission was reported to have found that the club overstated its income by a substantial margin, with the figures running into hundreds of millions of pounds, and that it filed misstated accounts to conceal the true state of its finances. City dispute these conclusions and point out that the Premier League process remains unfinished, with significant elements still to be completed.
The reaction within the game has been divided. The former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher, speaking on Sky Sports, argued that any punishment should include stripping City of the titles won during the years covered by the charges, and that the club’s owners should be removed. City’s chief executive, Ferran Soriano, struck a very different note in a video message to staff and players, describing the verdict as the product of what he called a Premier League conspiracy theory.
The precedents offer some guide to what sanctions could look like, though none is directly comparable. In the 2023 to 2024 season, Everton and Nottingham Forest were docked points for breaching the league’s profit and sustainability rules, while Leicester City avoided a similar penalty after a successful appeal. Those cases turned on narrower financial questions and shorter periods than the City matter, which is far larger in scope.
For the FA, the difficulty is that its own remit sits alongside, rather than above, the Premier League’s disciplinary process. By saying the case has implications for the integrity of the game while declining to pre empt its response, the governing body has signalled concern without committing to a course while the appeal runs.
What happens next depends on the appeal City have now filed and on the separate sanctions hearing still to be held. Neither has a confirmed timetable. Until both conclude, the titles, records and standing built over the period under review remain intact, and the full consequences of the verdict cannot be known.