Manchester City have already been found guilty. That part is over. In late September an independent commission upheld 114 of the 115 charges, every financial charge proven, across nine seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18. Richard Masters said the verdict "details how the club systematically broke Premier League rules for nearly a decade." The only thing anyone is still waiting on is the bill.
What could possibly be severe enough? The punishment reportedly on the table, a points deduction big enough to send City down, maybe a second one to keep them stuck in the Championship for two years, plus a large fine, doesn't cover it. A club that ran a "disguised funding scheme" and used "sham" contracts to inflate its revenue by somewhere around £830m to £900m over nine years can treat two seasons in the second tier as a toll booth. They go down, they spend, they come straight back. The owners who bankrolled the whole operation don't feel a demotion the way a normal club would. They have the deepest pockets in the sport, and the sport is proposing to punish them with a trip they can afford.
Think about what the cheating actually bought. Fifty-four charges covered inaccurate financial information. Fourteen covered hiding payments to players and managers. Thirty-five, more than a quarter of the whole case, covered simply refusing to cooperate with the investigation. That's a decade of building a squad, winning trophies and banking the commercial glow that comes with winning, all while lying about how it was paid for. You can't hand that back by sitting out a couple of Octobers at Championship grounds.
The only sanction that matches the crime spans years the way the offending did: a fine that actually stings a state-backed balance sheet, a deduction severe enough that the climb back is genuinely hard, and restrictions on how they rebuild once they're down. Full expulsion is reportedly seen as too disruptive to risk, but if the governing body is already flinching at the one punishment that would actually mean something, it has answered the question of whether it has the stomach to finish this.
City are appealing, lodged the night of October 1, and insist they are "innocent of the accusations." No sanction is confirmed, and relegation remains speculative pending an actual decision. The appeal gets heard. But it can't appeal guilt back out of existence. It already exists. The comparison that should embarrass everyone is Everton and Nottingham Forest, both docked points for a single breach in a single year over an overspend of no more than £20m. Nine seasons and the better part of a billion pounds should cost more than two years and a cheque.
A lot of people have already decided nothing real will happen, because the punishments being floated look like exactly the kind a rich club survives and laughs off. Meanwhile City sit top of the table under Enzo Maresca, who through his first seven league games had won every one. The winning hasn't paused for the verdict for a second.
If the Premier League lands on a sanction City can buy their way out of, it will prove the only thing worth proving in this case: cheating for a decade was worth it.
