Man City title stripping unlikely despite guilty verdict, but panel decision looms

Manchester City has been found guilty of the majority of 115 charges for breaching Premier League financial rules during the period from 2009 to 2018—a span that coincides almost exactly with the club's most successful era. The question now consuming football discourse is whether eight trophies won during those years should be stripped from the club's record. On social media, rival fans openly hope for such an outcome. But behind the scenes, according to reporting from BBC Sport, neither the Premier League as an organization nor its member clubs have shown much appetite for taking titles away from City.

The decision, however, does not rest with them. An independent panel will hold a sanction hearing to determine what punishment City faces, and that panel has not yet convened. Title stripping cannot be ruled out entirely, though a points deduction, a substantial fine, or possibly expulsion from the league are considered more probable outcomes. The Premier League rulebook does not explicitly list title stripping as a sanction—fines, points deductions, and expulsion are the named options—but the rules do grant a disciplinary panel authority to impose penalties "as it shall think fit," language broad enough to theoretically encompass the reallocation or removal of past titles.

The argument for such a drastic step rests on a straightforward premise: if City gained an unfair competitive advantage through financial rule breaches, then the titles they won during that period were not truly earned. City stands accused of inflating sponsorship revenue from connected companies and making off-the-books payments designed to circumvent football's financial regulations. The club has always denied wrongdoing, but the guilty verdict changes the calculus. Some will contend that the scale and nature of the breaches—spanning nearly a decade and multiple seasons—warrant the most severe punishment available. Others point out that if titles were to be reallocated, they would go to the runners-up: Manchester United in 2012 and 2018, Liverpool in 2014, and others in cup competitions. Jose Mourinho, who managed United when they finished second to City by 19 points in 2018, joked nearly two years ago that his former club might yet receive that title.

But opening that door raises complications that extend far beyond Manchester. Chelsea won multiple trophies in the 2010s while later being found to have made secret payments to agents between 2011 and 2018. If City's titles are stripped on the basis of financial rule breaches, the logic would seem to demand the same treatment for Chelsea. There is also the question of scope: City stands accused of failing to cooperate with Premier League investigations between December 2018 and February 2023, a period during which Liverpool finished runners-up to City twice by a single point each time. Should those titles also be subject to retrospective action? And if so, where does the punishment end? Some argue that the early rule breaches laid the foundation for all of City's subsequent success, including the 2023 Treble, raising the question of whether that era too should come into scope.

Football has precedents for title stripping, though they are rare. Juventus had Serie A titles from 2005 and 2006 revoked following the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal; the first was left blank, the second reallocated to Inter Milan. In Britain, Elgin City was stripped of the 1992-93 Highland League title for fielding ineligible players. Other sports have gone further: Lance Armstrong lost seven Tour de France titles for doping, and athletics has routinely reallocated medals when doping violations emerge years after competition.

Yet the case against City differs in important ways. Financial rule breaches are not the same as match-fixing or doping, and many observers argue it would be fundamentally unfair to punish players and fans who had no involvement in any wrongdoing by erasing their achievements from the record. There is also the matter of diplomatic sensitivity: relations between the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom could face serious strain if the titles won by a club owned by Abu Dhabi billionaire Sheikh Mansour were taken away. On Friday, former City midfielder Rodri dismissed the possibility of title stripping, saying that what the team accomplished on the field cannot be removed, that it was earned through effort and daily commitment.

More likely than title stripping are compensation claims. Several clubs are known to be considering legal action against City for lost earnings—prize money, European qualification, sponsorship revenue—stemming from the competitive disadvantage created by the rule breaches. But even that path opens a vast and potentially destructive legal frontier. One lawyer told BBC Sport that the question is not whether clubs can sue, but where the line of potential claimants ends: clubs that missed out on qualification or survival, players who lost bonuses or contract extensions, staff who missed bonuses, agents who lost uplift on player deals. The cascade of claims could be endless and destabilizing to the entire football ecosystem. Whatever the panel decides in its sanction hearing, further division and disruption appear certain.