Manchester City has lodged a comprehensive appeal against the independent panel’s ruling that found it guilty of extensive breaches of Premier League financial rules over nine seasons, taking the case into a new phase before potential penalties against the club are decided. The club said it filed its appeal at 7pm on Thursday 1 October 2026, before the deadline expired on Friday.
It described the appeal as comprehensive and directed against the panel’s ruling in the disciplinary case brought by the Premier League. Manchester City reiterated its firm position that the panel’s decision contains, on multiple grounds, clear and material errors of law, principle and fact, arguing that it cannot be relied upon.
The club added that it was innocent of the charges brought against it by the Premier League. It said it had a comprehensive body of evidence that it described as compelling and which supported all its positions in the case. It said it would continue to respect the legal process, but would be limited in what it could disclose until all stages of the proceedings had been completed.
Panel finds City guilty of 114 breaches
The Premier League published the independent panel’s ruling on 29 September. The panel found Manchester City guilty of all the charges relating to serious financial-rule breaches between the 2009-2010 and 2017-2018 seasons, and of most of the charges relating to a failure to co-operate with the investigation. Reports on the ruling said the panel upheld 114 of the 115 breaches.
According to the Premier League’s announcement, the panel found that Manchester City had entered into sham contracts with a number of its commercial partners and used other similar arrangements to inflate the club’s revenue and reduce its reported costs. It also found that the club had submitted inaccurate accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from auditors and football regulators.
The panel said some sponsors were required to pay only part of the recorded sponsorship fees, while the Abu Dhabi United Investment and Development Group, the club’s owner, provided the remainder. The ruling concluded that these arrangements inflated revenue and reduced costs by more than £900 million during the period covered by the case.
According to the panel’s ruling, recording the agreements in this way meant Manchester City did not accurately report its income and expenditure for the purposes of the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules and UEFA’s club licensing and financial fair play rules. The panel said recording the agreements as they actually stood would have shown that the club had exceeded its spending limits by a substantial margin.
The panel also upheld three of four major charges relating to duties of co-operation and good faith during the investigation conducted by the Premier League over four years. It said the club had made concerted efforts to halt and obstruct the investigation, a finding Manchester City rejects as it maintains its innocence and challenges the ruling in full.
Premier League describes breaches as systematic
Richard Masters, the Premier League’s chief executive, said the substantive ruling had established what happened at Manchester City during that period and detailed how the club had systematically breached the competition’s rules for almost a decade.
He described the case and the ruling as the most important in Premier League history, stressing the league’s responsibility to protect the integrity of the competition and enforce rules approved by the clubs. The Premier League began its investigation in December 2018, before referring a formal complaint to an independent panel in February 2023.
The panel held hearings lasting 42 days, which ended in December 2024. It said preparing the ruling took longer than expected because of the size of the case and the documents involved, including around 7,000 pages of transcripts of witness and expert evidence. The penalty has not yet been decided, as it will be considered at a separate, private hearing before the independent panel.
Appeal and penalties before independent bodies
The Premier League’s rules give the panel a broad range of penalties, including fines, points deductions and other sporting sanctions, while the league said it wanted to complete the process, including the appeal and publication of the relevant decisions, as quickly as possible. An independent three-member appeal board is expected to hear Manchester City’s challenge, with one member having previously held judicial office.
The rules allow the board to uphold, reject or amend the panel’s decision. They also require the appeal hearing to be completed within 12 weeks of its submission and limit hearings to no more than five consecutive days.
The Football Association said the independent panel’s ruling had significant implications for the integrity of the game and that it was considering the decision and its consequences, taking appropriate action if necessary. It added that it would continue to monitor developments closely while making no further comment as proceedings between the Premier League and Manchester City remained ongoing.
