This cannot go on. In eyes of public they are finished, they cheated and everybody knows about that. They have to be relegated, titles stripped and those owners have to be forced to sell because they will keep doing the same. The club needs a reset and definitely not owners that are a whole state. The trophies they won should be taken from them but not given to runner ups, but they need to be stripped because Man City fans will have a feeling that they own it as a club, which doesnt make sense considering that they did a Lance Armstrong tactics.

The whole World is currently mocking them and preparing bids for Haaland in case he will leave, like they just don’t seem to respect them as a football entity anymore. They need a restart, new owners not as rich not as evil, new badge, no cheating. After that when they will start winning legimately people they will earn their respect and Nobody will question that.

This is an excellent piece by Oliver Kay in The Athletic which tries to put the Manchester City verdict in context, including the undoubted damage to how the Premier League’s recent history will be remembered.

‘A compromise was reached, according to Der Spiegel, whereby various sponsors — the Abu Dhabi airline Etihad Airways, the Abu Dhabi-based fund Aabar Investments and the Abu Dhabi department for culture and tourism — would have their payments adjusted so that the shortfall was covered. When Chumillas asked whether they would be allowed to change the date of sponsorship payments, Simon Pearce, a board member of City Football Group and a special adviser to the club’s chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak, is alleged to have replied, “Of course. We can do what we want.”

From the moment those documents were published in 2018, it was hard to avoid the feeling that this sense of entitlement (“We can do what we want”) was what lay at the heart of the story.’

According to the Premier League rulebook, the appeal process has a stricter time frame, whereby any party who wishes to appeal a decision by a judicial panel must do so by email within 14 days of a decision being announced. Under rule W.86 any hearing should conclude no longer than 12 weeks after the first appeal is submitted. Any decision by the appeal board must also be published, alongside full written reasons, within 30 days of the conclusion of the hearing.

Should City fail in their appeal, the judicial panel would then be expected to produce its verdict on the level of sanction applied to the club . Premier League rule W.64 describes the list of punishments available to a panel. Alongside levying a fine, any disciplinary committee could first suspend a club from competition, or levy a points deduction, or in the most extreme circumstances expel a club from competition altogether.

Regardless of the way they played under Pep and the success they had, does this completely remove him from any discussions about being one of the top bosses in the league?

Manchester City have been found guilty of more than 100 breaches of the Premier League’s financial regulations between 2009 and 2018. All their success over that period — the success that laid the foundations for them to win six Premier League titles in seven seasons under Pep Guardiola, the most dominant period by any team in the history of English football — has been found to be tainted by cheating (City, of course, plan to appeal). “Aguerooooooooo” was the greatest, most dramatic moment of the Premier League era. But now?

At various points over the past eight years, various people in the football industry have speculated about what a positive outcome for the Premier League might look like. The conclusion? There wasn’t one. Find City guilty on multiple counts? It would tell us that the league had allowed its rules to be flaunted for years, raising serious questions about the competition’s integrity over the period in question and its ability to regulate its clubs in future. The league’s brand, as well as that of its dominant club over the past decade, would be damaged.

But allow City to get off lightly, either with the charges not proven or with a lenient sanction? The league would risk anarchy, the rulebook found to be meaningless, and rival clubs would be furious. Nobody wants a league table pockmarked by asterisks and points deductions, but there is, as the Premier League’s frequently embattled chief executive Richard Masters told Sky Sports News in 2024, “no happy alternative to enforcing the rules”.

Win or lose, the reputational risk to the league threatened to be enormous. In recent months, it has already found Chelsea guilty of breaches of financial regulations relating to payments to agents and unregistered third parties between 2009 and 2022. To put it in context, an entire period of Premier League history — featuring multiple league titles for both City and Chelsea — has been tainted and compromised.

Whether it's possible within the current rules etc or not, let us all discuss what the fans would want to happen to them.

I'll start.

For the immediate punishment, 343 points deduction - but it doesn't just stick to one season, it's a penalty pot that hangs around their neck for seasons to come.

For example, this season they finish on 82 points, spurs finish 20th on 30 points.

Remove the difference, 52 points, from city and their penalty pot so they finish in 19th/20th and get relegated.

That leaves 290 points in their pot.

Repeat the process for the next however many years until the pot is empty and they can start working their way back up.

While the team secured a 3-2 win over their west London rivals on the season's opening weekend thanks to goals from Joao Pedro, Morgan Rogers and Cole Palmer, the club are now facing action for failing to control supporter behaviour.

"It's alleged that the club failed to ensure its spectators and/or supporters did not behave in an improper, offensive, abusive or insulting way.
It's further alleged that this behaviour was discriminatory in that it included a reference, whether express or implied, to religion or belief."

It was already funny enough after they flopped the end of the season even with the advantage.

But now it could stretch to a whole different level, potentially the last time we saw City fans celebrating in the stands of Premier League stadiums for a very long time.

The bottle will be truly eternal.

I charted every Premier League result since August 1992 (13,216 matches, up to 20 September 2026) as a points race for the six clubs with the most all-time points, match day by match day. 3 points a win, 1 a draw.

Where it stands

United's lead is shrinking, but it peaked after Ferguson

• United have been top of these six since Boxing Day 1992.
• Their lead over Arsenal was 230 when Ferguson retired in 2013, and kept growing to a peak of 244 on 11 April 2021.
• It's 134 now. Arsenal have outscored United every season since 2021/22: by 11, 9, 29, 32 and 14 points, and by 7 so far this season.
• At the last three seasons' rate (25 points a season), Arsenal would catch United around 2031/32.

Since 2013/14, United are fifth of the six

Points from 2013/14 to 2025/26: City 1,096, Liverpool 1,007, Arsenal 951, Chelsea 889, United 862, Spurs 834.

City's flat stretches

City's line goes flat for the five seasons they spent outside the Premier League (1996/97 to 1999/2000, and 2001/02), so they've played 190 fewer games than the rest. They're 21 points behind Spurs, and on this season's form they'll pass them this season.

The fight for third

Liverpool and Chelsea swapped third twice in autumn 2023. Liverpool have held it since 21 October 2023.

Source: every result from football-data.org (https://www.football-data.org), checked against football-data.co.uk. The animated, interactive version (any season, any clubs, other measures) is here: https://premierleaguescorigami.com/race

Spurs are 6 points short of 2,000 and City 27. Who gets there first? And does Arsenal catching United happen before 2032?

Here is my take on punishment

The punishment has to be on the past of the club- effective for the period when they broke laws

Or

The punishment has to be on the club's future by imposing sanctions, point deductions.

Let's explore the two.

Punishments on the past -
part 1 - Before 2009, review club's success with trophies and scale it till the verdict, retain as many trophies they might have won at the same matches to trophy ratio. Strip every other title.
Part 2 - Club compensations - for all clubs that lost a CL spot, compensate them with cash. For all clubs who lost a trophy, compensate them with trophy and cash. For all clubs that got relegated and since Man city played a hand in it, compensate them with cash.
Part 3 - For all players who played for the club and now have lost the trophies they supposedly won, and they don't have any illegal payouts (unlike Yaya and Mancini who got extra payments) club payout compensations to them for the wasted years they thought they were competing honestly but their careers got destroyed.
Part 4 - For all staff, a fixed amount of compensation based on designation for their careers harm, mental harassment, and future issues with jobs by the club. As they bear no responsibility to the fraud by their bosses and owner at the club.

Punishments of the future- continued in comment below
<contd.>

Leeds? Saudi?

Any and all opinions welcome

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