Manchester City FC has expressed deep disappointment and surprise following the publication of the Premier League Commission’s opinion on Tuesday, 29 September 2026.
Maintaining total innocence against all Premier League accusations, the club insists it holds a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence to support its position. Club leadership has promised a relentless and proactive defense across all appropriate regulatory and legal forums to clear its name.
“The Club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case. The Club will therefore be relentless, and where necessary proactive, in any and all appropriate regulatory and legal forums.”
The Premier League process remains far from over, with significant elements of the case still uncompleted. Manchester City will immediately pursue all open appeal avenues, aggressively arguing that the commission’s opinion is completely unsafe and packed with clear, material errors of law, principle, and fact.
This explosive ruling follows eight years of diligent cooperation by the club. City officials emphasized that they respected due process on the strict assumption that the Premier League Board and Executive would act as an independent, impartial, and fair-minded regulator free from partisan influence. While the club is heavily restricted in what it can say further, it remains steadfast that this ongoing battle is only entering its next legal chapter.
This comes after Premier League said an independent Commission has found Manchester City FC guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules over a nine-season period.
The reigning champions were also found guilty of the vast majority of charges relating to their failure to cooperate with the league’s multi-year investigation, with the panel concluding that the club had “made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate” the probe.
The independent panel concluded that between the 2009/10 and 2017/18 seasons, Manchester City systematically manipulated its financial standing. The club engaged in arrangements that misrepresented true agreements with multiple commercial partners. By using these disguised funding schemes, sponsoring companies were only required to pay a fraction of their agreed fees, while the rest was secretly covered by the club’s owner at the time, Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd (ADUG).
Furthermore, ADUG funded additional hidden arrangements to help the club record lower operating expenses than it actually incurred. This included a circular transaction involving Fordham, an entity that bought the team’s image rights. Investigators determined these combined operations artificially inflated revenues and reduced visible costs by more than £900 million.
Richard Masters, Chief Executive of the Premier League, said: “The core decision establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period. It details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade.
“It also vindicates the Premier League’s decision to pursue this case against Manchester City. While the process to date has been both long and difficult, the League has remained determined that the facts be established independently.
“It is a key responsibility of the Premier League to ensure that the Rules, approved by the clubs themselves, are upheld to protect the integrity of the competition. It is paramount that the League remains competitive and fair for all clubs and for the fans. We take that role extremely seriously.
“This disciplinary case, and this decision, are the most significant in Premier League history. There are elements of the case that remain to be decided, including, importantly, what sanction must follow for these breaches. Now we have the Commission’s decision, we are committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process, to provide certainty for the League, our clubs and fans.”
The club has the right to appeal the independent Commission’s findings and has until Friday 2 October to exercise that right.
