Manchester City have been found guilty on 114 of the 115 charges against them. They were found to have defaulted in all but one. Let me take you through what they actually did, what it can cost them, what history says, and what it means for City and for English football. Let us start with the rules they actually broke. The 115 charges sound like 115 separate crimes. They in fact are not. They fall into five groups, stretched across nine years, from 2009 to 2018. The first was failing to give the Premier League accurate financial information that showed a true and fair picture of the club. That is the biggest block, more than fifty of the charges on its own. The second was failing to fully disclose payments to their manager and their players, including money that reportedly reached Roberto Mancini through a separate consultancy. Third was breaching UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules. Fourth was breaching the Premier League's own Profitability and Sustainability Rules. And five, failing to cooperate with the investigation, dragging it out for years, which alone accounts for around thirty-five charges. If you strip away the legal language, you will find that the accusation is simply that City allegedly made their books look like something they were not. They got related-party money from Abu Dhabi, dressed up as ordinary sponsorship, so the club could appear to live within the rules that bound everyone else while actually spending beyond them. Second is the punishments on the table. Under the Premier League's own rules, the commission has a menu, and it can mix and match as long as the total is proportionate. It could be a reprimand, an unlimited fine and/or points deduction, this season or spread across seasons, suspension of players, matches ordered replayed, compensation paid directly to other clubs, cancellation of player registrations and even at the extreme end, a recommendation that City be expelled from the Premier League entirely. There could even be a catch-all phrase to make any other order it thinks fit, which is the only door through which title-stripping could theoretically walk. The most likely sporting punishment however is a points deduction. How big, nobody knows, cos there is no case this size to measure it against. Some analysts have floated forty to sixty points. Those are guesses tho. Third, the precedent. And this one cuts both ways. For the punish-them camp, look down the table. Everton were docked ten points last season for a single breach, cut to six on appeal, then hit again. Nottingham Forest lost four. Both for far smaller, single-season breaches than the nine-year picture City just lost on. In Italy, Juventus were docked ten points in one season and, in the Calciopoli scandal, stripped of titles and relegated. So titles can be taken. Points can be docked. It has been done. But on the other end, look at City themselves. In 2020, UEFA banned them from the Champions League for two years and fined them thirty million euros for almost identical accusations. City appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and won. T he ban was thrown out, the fine slashed to ten million, and most of the charges were ruled either unproven or time-barred. Only the failure to cooperate survived. That is the ghost hanging over this whole case. City have already beaten a case that looked just as damning, and they beat it on the ground that matters most in these fights: how old the alleged conduct is, and how high the standard of proof sits. Which brings us to what it means. For City, this is not full time. It is half time. The verdict is on liability only cos no sanction has been set. City are expected to appeal, both sides have fourteen days, and an appeal sends it to a fresh commission, then potentially to arbitration. This could run for many more months. Nothing is final until every appeal is exhausted. But if the sanctions land and survive, we are talking about the heaviest punishment in Premier League history, a possible rewriting of who really won the 2010s, and a serious dent in the most dominant project the English game has ever seen. For the league, this is the bigger story. The Premier League has effectively put its own credibility on trial. Everton and Forest were punished quickly and heavily for far less, and their fans have not forgotten. If City escape lightly, the message to every other club is that the rules only bite those who cannot afford the best lawyers. If City are punished hard, it proves the league can hold even its own champion to account. Either way, this is the strongest argument yet for an independent regulator in English football, and it will reshape how every financial case is fought from here. Now where do I stand? Simple- I am a fan of restorative justice. Go figure. So no. It is not over. It has only just begun. My name is Ajoje. I am a FIFA Licensed Agent and International Sports Lawyer. I write on the Law and Business of Football, a lot. Repost and Follow if you want to read more posts like this.