For the best part of four years, English football has been holding its breath over one question: were Manchester City’s titles honestly won? On the back of a ruling from an independent commission in the autumn of 2026, we finally have an answer. The club were found guilty of the majority of the 115 charges brought against them by the Premier League — and the verdict lands like a wrecking ball through the modern game’s most glittering era of success.
Let me be honest with you up front: this is not a happy story for City fans, and it should not be a triumphant one for rival supporters either. When the richest, most successful club of a generation is formally condemned for financial rule-breaking, nobody in football wins. But we have to confront what actually happened, because the details matter more than the noise.
So what exactly did the commission find? According to the Premier League, the panel ruled against City on charges relating to breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons — essentially a nine-year stretch. The findings describe what the league called ‘sham’ contracts and misleading accounts, part of a scheme the panel said was designed to disguise secret funding of more than £830 million. That is the single most damning figure in this entire saga, and it’s the one City will now spend the next chapter of this story trying to overturn.
The verdict, in plain English
This has been dragging on since February 2023, when the Premier League announced the charges. The commission — an independent body, not the league itself — has now spent the best part of three and a half years sifting through millions of pages of evidence. The result was a guilty finding on the majority of counts.
Here is what that means in practical terms:
- Timeline: the charges cover nine seasons, from 2009-10 through 2017-18 — the exact period in which City transformed from mid-table also-rans into serial title winners.
- The allegation: secret, undeclared funding of more than £830m, hidden through a network of contracts the panel described as ‘sham’.
- The response: City deny everything. They have appealed, and their statement calls the ruling “unsafe” and full of “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact”.
- The possible punishments: a substantial fine, a points deduction, a transfer ban — or, in the worst-case scenario, expulsion from the Premier League.
Those sanctions are not hypothetical. The league’s own fans’ article talked openly about the fear of a points deduction and even relegation. The mood among the club’s support — and the wider football world — has swung from defiant to terrified and back again in the space of a single fortnight.
What the trophies mean now
Here’s the uncomfortable bit for City fans. In that charged period, the club won the Premier League three times — including the unforgettable 2013-14 title when they pipped Liverpool by two points on the final day. It is hard, as a supporter, to hear that those achievements are now formally contested. One supporter, Rachel Herdson from Altrincham, a season-ticket holder since 1989, put it better than any pundit has managed:
“Last Friday, when I went to bed, I was a Manchester City fan. I woke up a City fan. And guess what? Even after the bombshell, the Premier League statement, I am still a City fan. But I think even if we go to the High Court and win any sort of appeal, it’ll still be tarnished.”
That is the reality. Rachel is not doing cartwheels, and neither is any sensible observer. Even a successful appeal — and believe me, the club will fight this all the way — leaves a stain. As she said, “it’s being lost what some of the achievements were. The likes of Kevin de Bruyne, David Silva… what they won in the game.”
Another fan, 41-year-old Steven McInerney, described the last two weeks as “one of the longest weeks of my life”, adding: “My mood’s varied between doomscrolling and catastrophising to suddenly feeling quite defiant.” Steven first watched City in 1994, back when they were just enjoying their third straight season in the newly formed Premier League under Brian Horton. He’s watched the lot — and he’s never seen anything like this.
Enzo Maresca’s impossible task
Now here’s where the story gets genuinely fascinating on a human level. This is not Pep Guardiola’s crisis anymore — he left in the summer. The man in the firing line now is Enzo Maresca, the 46-year-old Italian who succeeded Guardiola in June and is in his third spell at the club, having previously worked in the academy and as Guardiola’s assistant during the Treble-winning 2022-23 campaign.
Maresca has had a dream start on the pitch — he has won his first five Premier League games in charge — but the verdict has made his life infinitely harder. He is walking into Anfield on Sunday, City’s first match since the ruling, to face a Liverpool side whose fans will give them the most hostile reception the ground has produced in years. The travelling City support, around 3,000 strong, are reportedly planning an ‘old-school away day’ with retro shirts — defiance in the face of the storm.
And how has Maresca handled the question he cannot escape? Calmly. In a Friday news conference he said the club’s titles are “absolutely not” tainted, insisted he has “100%” trust in the ownership, and stressed that the right time to speak properly is “when we are going to win this appeal”.
“The reason I joined this club is that I completely trust, 100%, the owner, the CEO, the sporting director, all the organisation. So I don’t have doubt about that. For me, the players – we can control just the pitch side, the football side. So we are focused on that. This is what we can do and what we can control.”
I actually find that remarkably composed. Maresca would not even confirm whether he had read the commission’s findings, insisting the charges were never discussed during his conversations about taking the job. Whether that’s naivety or steeliness, I suspect we’ll find out at Anfield.
Guardiola’s ghost
Even though Pep has gone, he cannot quite leave the story behind. Guardiola — who joined City in 2016, most of the way through the very period the charges relate to — is still employed by City Football Group as a global ambassador, and he posted an emotional message to fans after the verdict: “Let me be clear: we will get through this together. I love you all.” He is expected to attend City’s Champions League tie against Paris St-Germain next week, the club’s first home match since the ruling.
It is a strange reversal. In 2019, standing in the aftermath of the FA Cup final, Guardiola reacted furiously when Sky News asked whether he had received separate, undeclared payments from the club, after the Football Leaks website published hacked information. Back then he told the journalist his question “deserved a better answer than this guy is going to say”, before insisting he trusted his chairman and CEO “100%”. In February 2020, asked about a Uefa case, he was bullish: “We appeal. When someone believes they are right, they have to fight. The club has to fight and I trust the club 100%.”
The irony will not be lost on you. The same trust, the same defiance, now wearing a black armband of uncertainty.
The appeal: where this actually goes
Here is a fact most people get wrong: Manchester City cannot appeal this to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. That’s the court that overturned their two-year European ban back in July 2020. The Premier League clubs signed a private agreement that all cases involving the league and its clubs are heard in England and Wales, under English law. So the final point of contest is the Premier League’s own arbitration panel — per sections W97 and X.2.4 of the league’s handbook — not Cas in Lausanne.
That matters. It means the process stays inside English football, away from the Swiss court that has a habit of waving through some of sport’s most controversial decisions. And it means this could take years. The case has already been running since February 2023; an appeal could easily take us deep into the next decade. In the meantime, there is the unanswerable question of what happens if the appeal fails — and, as the BBC’s own reporting flagged, clubs now privately fear political interference in the appeal process after high-profile comments from figures like Andy Burnham.
There’s also a knock-on effect nobody is talking about enough: the spotlight this verdict throws onto Manchester United’s finances, and indeed the finances of every club that has spent big in the last decade. If City are guilty of hiding £830m, the question every fan is now asking is simple: what else has been hiding in the accounts of the game’s biggest clubs?
What it means — and my prediction
Let me give you my honest read of where this lands. I think City will win some sort of reduction on appeal — legal teams of this scale rarely lose outright — but I do not think the verdict gets fully overturned. And I’ll go further with a bold prediction: before this saga is finally closed, the Premier League will introduce a genuine, independent financial regulator, and at least one other major club will face formal charges within five years. This is the moment the genie came out of the bottle.
The on-pitch reality is more immediate. Maresca’s City are top of the table and playing the best football in the division. A win at Anfield on Sunday would be a statement of extraordinary resilience — and would make Maresca just the fourth manager in Premier League history to win his first six league games in charge of a club. With Erling Haaland confirmed “ready” after his exertions for Norway during the international break in Marbella, they have every chance.
Takeaways
- The independent commission found City guilty of the majority of the 115 charges, covering financial breaches from 2009-10 to 2017-18.
- The panel described ‘sham’ contracts and misleading accounts hiding more than £830m in secret funding.
- Possible sanctions range from a fine and points deduction to a transfer ban and even expulsion.
- City deny everything, have appealed, and cannot take the case to Cas — the appeal stays under English law via the Premier League’s own arbitration panel.
- Enzo Maresca insists the titles are “absolutely not” tainted and City will get an even more hostile Anfield reception than usual on Sunday.
- Guardiola, now a global ambassador, posted his support — “we will get through this together” — and will be at the PSG tie next week.
- My prediction: the appeal trims the punishment but does not clear the club, and a regulator is coming.
