115 FC Continued: Judgement Day

We all knew this day would come. For many, it was a long wait endured with increasingly frayed patience. Years of watching Agüero, Silva, De Bruyne and Haaland dismantle defences had left a foul-play-flavoured taste in the collective palate of Premier League fandom.

For City fans, judgement day loomed. Doubtless they tried to forget about the 115 charges. Perhaps it would just sort of go away? In fairness, the process dragged on so long they could be forgiven for hoping.

But no. Last week, the ruling finally came in: City is guilty of 114 of the 115 charges. If you ever feel useless, imagine being the lawyers who clawed back a consolation charge.

First things first. What are they actually guilty of?

The charges

It's a fairly murky business, so we shan't delve too deep. But, in a nutshell, City were found guilty of obscuring their finances, including player pay and revenue sources, and failing to cooperate with the investigation. Financial rules limit how much money a club can lose, and while sponsorship and ticket sales count as income, an owner simply writing cheques does not. The main source of contention was that City were dressing up owner funding as sponsorship to cover the exorbitant fees and salaries their rapid expansion required.

We don't yet know which one charge they got away with, although that will likely come out when the full written decision is published. So what happens next?

Most appealing

The appeal is a mainstay of any ruling, a judicial VAR, if you will, delaying results and giving the aggrieved a second chance to make their case. Considering what City have to lose, an appeal is a certainty – cue collective groans from those baying for sky blue blood. 

There is a little hope for a speedier resolution, however, with reports suggesting the appeal must be wrapped up within 12 weeks of being lodged. Even if this is true and the appeal fails, City's spectacular financial backing could lead to further cases, perhaps even taking the fight to the English courts, although this would be a stretch.

So it's probably not worth getting the popcorn out just yet, with sanctions still to be decided and a final ruling unlikely before the new year. Assuming all goes as expected, what kind of punishments could we be looking at?

Punishments

Many fans are probably concocting an assortment of sadistic punishments for their tormentors. Ten points deducted for every guilty charge? Drowning the entire organisation in crude oil? Dropping them down to the Isthmian League and only letting players use their weaker foot?

Realistically, option one seems closest to the truth. A points deduction has regularly been used as the ultimate stick to deter teams from falling foul of fair play. Everton were docked eight points across two cases, and Nottingham Forest four, for one-off breaches, so it's highly plausible that City's nine seasons of creative accounting, and petulance, could cost them anywhere from 40 to 80 points. The higher end of the scale would spell effective relegation.

The points deduction will almost certainly be accompanied by an eye-watering fine, at least into the tens of millions, maybe into the hundreds of millions. They may also need to pay legal fees, which, after a saga stretching back to 2018, could be ruinous in their own right.

Other options include suspension from the Premier League for a fixed period, extended transfer bans and, the holy grail, stripping City of their trophies. While removing honours is murkier, precedent exists: Juventus were stripped of two Scudetti and relegated to Serie B after the 2006 Calciopoli scandal.

Final thoughts

The entire saga has been frankly exhausting, so even a faint flicker of resolution on the horizon is welcome. Perhaps the reason the process has irked so many fans is that it is truly a battle for the soul of the beautiful game. City represented everything so many people came to despise about the Premier League: a shady foreign entity pumping money into the sport, flouting the rules, and cleaning up in the process.

Given City's shameless denials and attempts to cover their tracks, the punishments will certainly be severe. In fact, the Premier League may be the only body that loves the Citizens less than the fans.

Surely not long now for this sorry state of affairs to conclude.