Premier League Clubs Push for a New Man City Investigation Into the Post-2018 Years

Manchester City’s charges case was supposed to be entering its endgame. Instead, it may be acquiring a second act. An increasing number of English football executives are pushing for the Premier League to investigate City over the seasons since 2018, The Independent reports, asking the question that now hangs over the whole case: did the arrangements at its heart simply stop when the original charge period ended? No new charges have been brought and no new investigation has been announced. But the push itself, and the league’s dilemma over whether to act on it, is now part of the story, and it arrives while City’s appeal against the guilty verdict is still running.

What are the executives asking for?

They want the league to look beyond 2018. The original case covered nine seasons, from 2009-10 to 2017-18, and ended in September with an independent commission finding City guilty of 114 of 115 Premier League financial charges. According to The Independent’s Miguel Delaney, an increasing number of executives now want City investigated for the seasons since then, or potentially charged again, on the basis that the conduct found by the commission may not have ended where the charge sheet did. One source put the doubt in a single line that has been quoted everywhere since: what changed overnight? The point is about commercial income. If the sponsorship deals the commission found to be inflated simply stopped in 2018, the club’s commercial income should have shown it. Executives note that it was accounted as staying at the same level.

What is the legal basis they are pointing to?

The commission’s finding that City and its Abu Dhabi-based sponsors were related parties. That finding matters because it is not tied to a single season: if those relationships continued after 2018, and the arrangements were not disclosed or assessed at fair market value in subsequent seasons, there would be a basis for further allegations. Some executives also believe post-2018 commercial deals were already subject to associated-party rules and had been assessed at fair market value, which is why the push is contested rather than unanimous. The counter-argument, reported by Football365 from the same Independent piece, is that there are not the same clear grounds for another investigation without evidence like the leaked emails that underpinned the original case, which came from the Football Leaks documents published by Der Spiegel in November 2018. A second case without a second leak would be a different kind of case, and everyone involved knows it.

Why is the Premier League calling this a dilemma?

Because the timing punishes either choice. The current case is not finished: City lodged their appeal on October 4, calling the commission’s opinion unsafe and legally flawed, and the process sets out a 12-week window for the appeal to be heard plus an additional 30 days for the final judgment. Some executives argue the league should simply wait for that process to conclude in full before exploring anything further, and that a second investigation might prove unnecessary if the guilty verdict is upheld and the sanctions are appropriate, with meaningful sporting sanctions and focus on the hierarchy responsible. Others argue that waiting leaves eight seasons unexamined. The league itself has declined to discuss the case until it is fully concluded, which is why the entire debate is currently playing out through executive briefings rather than official statements.

What has City said?

The club have consistently denied wrongdoing and say they have irrefutable evidence to support their case, and they have maintained that position through the verdict and into the appeal. That stance is why the appeal timetable matters so much: leading sports lawyer James Severn told BBC Sport that City must identify a material error of law, principle or fact, or serious procedural unfairness, which materially affected the commission’s decision, in order to win. If they win, the conversation about a second investigation likely collapses with the first case. If they lose, the sanctions question takes over, and the post-2018 question becomes the next fight rather than a footnote. The fans, meanwhile, have been living with the verdict since September, as Enzo Maresca acknowledged when he said City’s supporters had suffered most over the case, with rival fans treating the club as cheats while the appeal runs. The Anfield fixture at the centre of that row also produced the red-card argument over Ryan Gravenberch’s dismissal, which is a reminder of how much of City’s season is now played out against a legal backdrop.

What punishments are actually on the table?

None yet, officially, and the speculation should be labelled as such. Fines, transfer bans, points deductions, expulsion and stripped titles have all been discussed since the verdict. Football Insider has reported a single-season points deduction of around 40 to 50 points as the likely course if the charges stick after appeal, while talkSPORT host Alan Brazil claimed he had been told 60 points. Both are reported claims, not decisions, and the gap between them shows how little is actually settled. The sanctions stage is where the case stops being about history and starts being about the current table, which is why the wider financial fair play record, including how City’s case compares with other clubs’ punishments, is now being read so closely. English football has a recent template for punishment arriving in two stages, the FA closing Southampton’s spygate case with a suspended ban months after the EFL acted, but the City case is orders of magnitude larger and its second stage has no date.

What is the separate FRC strand?

It runs alongside the football case rather than inside it. The Financial Reporting Council, an independent regulator, plans to examine City’s financial audit after Liam Byrne, the Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North and chair of the Government’s Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee, wrote asking why it had failed to discover the breaches before the Premier League’s investigation. Byrne posted the regulator’s response and claimed it exposes gaps in its ability to compel evidence from the club and pursue directors who fall outside its disciplinary rules, raising serious questions about the powers available to hold companies and directors to account. That strand does not decide anything about football charges, but it widens the circle of institutions now asking how the arrangements at the heart of the case went unexamined for so long.

What happens next?

Three tracks, none with a fixed date for the public. The appeal runs on its 12-week-plus-30-day timetable. The sanctions decision follows the appeal. And the post-2018 question now sits with the Premier League as a dilemma it has not resolved: act while the first case is live, or wait and risk being accused of leaving eight seasons alone. The executives pushing for a new investigation have made their argument in the simplest possible terms, that nothing obviously changed overnight in 2018. City’s answer, through the appeal, is that the original verdict itself is wrong. Until one of those positions breaks, the case that was supposed to be ending will keep generating its own sequels.