Potential penalties range from heavy fines to relegation as the club plans to appeal an unprecedented ruling spanning nearly a decade of financial breaches
Page S2From§Eachthe matinee edition — 29 September 2026
Manchester City found guilty on 114 charges, appeals a verdict its chairman insists did not happen.
Hot Mic Moment
February 2023 to September 2026. Forty-three months, this reporter counts, for an independent commission to rule on a hundred fifteen financial charges against one Premier League club. Somebody get this reporter to the political desk, because a regulator needing forty-three months to answer its own charge sheet is not oversight. It's a league checking its own homework and asking for an extension.
Gushis side
This reporter has the wire fresh: after eighteen months, the Premier League's commission found Manchester City guilty on all one hundred fifteen financial charges, spanning nearly a decade of alleged breaches. A clean sweep, folks — not one charge got away.
This reporter recalls City's last brush with football's governors: 2019, the Super League circus, City among the ringleaders before the whole scheme collapsed in a single weekend.
What City stands accused of, this reporter's told, is breaking UEFA's Financial Fair Play — the same rule that's kept Europe's big clubs honest for years.
Football fans can rest easy, though — whatever the penalty, we're talking a fine. The accountants dock the petty cash, City writes a check, everybody's back Saturday.
And you have to admire the chairman's fortitude — guilty findings in hand, and still confident in his innocence. That's Joe Namath guaranteeing the win before Super Bowl Four, pure swagger.
Trudyher side
Try three and a half years, not eighteen months — City were charged in February 2023, and the ruling landed September 25, per the Morning Star. And it wasn't a clean sweep: cleared on one of the hundred fifteen, guilty on the other hundred fourteen.
April 20, 2021 — all six English clubs pulled out that same day, and United's chief executive resigned over it. Different scandal, different year, and neither one is this one.
Wrong regulator. Every wire on this has it as a Premier League finding, not Financial Fair Play, not UEFA — Fox News and CBS Sports both call it the League's own charges.
Rest easy is the wrong instruction. CBS Sports lists fines, point deductions, or outright expulsion — severe sanctions, not petty cash. That's the whole season on the table.
Super Bowl Three, not Four — Namath guaranteed that one in January 1969 and made good on it. This chairman's guaranteeing an appeal of a verdict already reported final. Maybe it's time for the nap.
You don't get the political desk, sugar, you get your meds. But the arithmetic holds — charged February 2023, ruled September 2026, forty-three months, and CBS Sports counts a hundred fourteen guilty verdicts to show the wait found something.
“Three and a half years to add up a spreadsheet, and the headline out of the whole ordeal is the chairman calling himself innocent on the way out the door. That's not confidence, that's the playbook every deep pocket runs — lose the ruling, keep the trophies, let the appeal outlast the news cycle. The fans who bought the tickets get a footnote; the club just keeps playing.”
“A hundred fourteen findings doesn't mean anything actually happened — that's a process word, a paperwork word. The commission took three and a half years because they were being thorough, not because — okay, three and a half years is a long time. The club maintains its innocence, and if they didn't do anything wrong, why would they even need to — did I say maintains? I meant appeals. Appeals the finding. The one they deny ever happened.”
The receipts
· City ‘guilty’ of all but one financial rule breaches from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Premier League finds Manchester City guilty of more than 100 financial charges: report from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Manchester City chairman remains confident of innocence following Premier League finding of rules violations from the morgue, 26 Sep 2026
· Following a massive negative backlash from UEFA, FIFA, national football associations and football fans alike, all six English Premier League clubs involved in the project – Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpoo from the morgue, 20 Apr 2021
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.