Man City have 115 charges hanging over them for financial breaches, but the verdict for any punishment would only come in 2025, at the earliest!
Earlier this year, Man City were charged for 115 instances of rule breaches, the majority concerning the club’s finances.
The charges are over a sustained period of time from 2009/10 up until 2017/18. It took four years of investigations before the Premier League published the unprecedented charges.
Any sanctions were always going to take time considering the volume of evidence and the sheer number of breaches, plus the legal white tape and any and all attempts to delay proceedings.
But with Everton having recently been docked 10 points for their breach of financial rules, the demand for City’s day of judgement has grown ten fold.
As per the Mail‘s Mike Keegan, though, a hearing with the independent panel overseeing the case has reportedly been “initially scheduled” for late 2024, with a verdict then only expected in the summer of 2025!
These can only be tentative dates as delays will be expected, and a subsequent appeal will be anticipated should Man City not like the outcome of any one of their 115 charges.
Obviously, Everton‘s case was on a much smaller scale and their verdict could be handed down a lot faster, but by the summer of 2025, Pep Guardiola’s current contract will have expired.
That would certainly test his stance that he would not leave if City were punished with relegation!
He recently claimed: “Absolutely I will not consider my future [if] it depends on being here [Premier League] or being in League One. Absolutely.”
There will be plenty of aggrieved clubs if even a number of charges stick, probability suggests so, and that will not just be Liverpool, but clubs at both the bottom and top of the table during the years of their transgressions.
For the Reds, they had two title tussles with City from 2009/10 to 2017/18 – a verdict cannot come soon enough but 2025 feels a lifetime away.
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