Foul Throw The Man City 115 Charges Explorer← Back to the explorer

Over the limit

The independent Commission found that City’s owners put £830.69m into the club disguised as sponsorship; City is appealing. Take that money out and, the Commission found, City broke the Premier League’s spending limit. So which players could City actually have afforded?

Pick the squad City could have afforded within the Premier League limit

No player is accused of anything; this is about the club’s spending.

The XI with the most league appearances that season. Shirt: squad number. Badge: league appearances, red while City cannot afford him, green once it can. Ball: league goals. Hover over a player for his details, or tap him on a phone.

Rest of the squad · hover for details, click to drop· tap a name for details

Select the players yourselfThe full list of everyone who played from 2013/14 to 2017/18, by signing date, with fees and the transfer fee each saves. Untick a player to drop him.

How the picker works

Transfer fees

The rules spread a fee over the player’s contract. So a dropped player saves a fifth of his fee for each season from 2013/14 to 2017/18 that it still counted. We assume 5-year contracts, because contract lengths are not published. Any fee City later got for selling him is not counted.

Wages

Individual pay is not public. To work out the tests, each season’s wage bill is shared among the players by their share of league appearances. That is not any player’s actual pay, so we do not show it player by player; the tests along the top show only the total. The wage bill also pays staff who are not players, so this overstates the saving. We assume whoever played instead cost nothing.

Goals and results

A dropped player’s league goals are taken out of the matches he scored them in, and the whole table is recalculated, including other clubs’ points. This assumes whoever played instead scored nothing and the rest of each match stayed the same. It ignores defending, assists and goalkeeping, so it is a rough measure, not a prediction. Appearances, goals and scorers are Premier League only, from each season’s Wikipedia article.

Europe

City takes the European place that its new league position actually received that season, as in the explorer. Cup results are not changed, so where City won the League Cup it keeps that Europa League place.

Auto Pick

Auto Pick goes through City’s signings in the order they were made. It starts with the players City already had: those signed before 2009/10, free transfers and academy players. It keeps each new signing only if all three tests can still pass, counting his fee and his future wages. Once there is no room, later signings could not have been afforded and are dropped.

The detail

What the Commission found

Words used on this page

PSR (Profitability and Sustainability Rules)
The Premier League’s spending limit, which applied to City from 2015/16. A club may lose no more than £105m over three seasons, and only if its owners cover the losses by putting money in as shares; otherwise the limit is £15m. The test is run every season, over that season and the two before it (Commission decision, paragraph 43; Nottingham Forest decision).
Financial fair play (UEFA’s break-even rule)
UEFA’s spending limit for clubs playing in European competitions, which applied from 2011/12. A club must roughly break even: it may lose €5m over three years, or up to €45m (€30m from 2015/16) if the owners cover it (UEFA).
Owners’ money
Money from Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), which the decision describes as City’s owner in these seasons. An owner may put in as much as it likes, but it must be recorded as the owner’s investment. The spending limits do not count it as income.
Sponsorship income
Money from companies paying to have their name on the shirt, the stadium and so on. It counts as income under the spending limits, which is why recording owners’ money as sponsorship made City’s losses look smaller.
The four charges
Charge 1: false accounts, 2009/10 to 2017/18, including pay to the manager and players kept out of their contracts. Charge 2: breaking UEFA’s rules, 2013/14 to 2017/18. Charge 3: breaking PSR, 2015/16 to 2017/18. Charge 4: not cooperating with the Premier League’s investigation, December 2018 to February 2023. The Commission found them all proven except one part of Charge 4, 4(B) (Premier League, 6 February 2023; Commission decision, paragraphs 38 to 45).
The Commission
The independent panel the Premier League appoints under its rules (Section W) to hear a case and decide it. It also decides any sanction, at a separate hearing. Its decision can be appealed to a new panel, the Appeal Board; City lodged its appeal on 1 October 2026.
Spreading a transfer fee
Clubs do not count a transfer fee all at once. They spread it over the player’s contract: a £50m fee on a five-year contract counts as £10m a year. Accountants call this amortisation.

The spending rules, and when they applied

Before these rules, an owner could put in as much money as they liked, as long as it was recorded as the owner’s money. The rules limited how much a club could lose, whoever paid for it.

  1. 2010UEFA approves financial fair play. Clubs in European competitions must break even: spend no more than they earn (UEFA).
  2. 7 Feb 2013Premier League clubs agree their own rules on profitability and sustainability (Premier League).
  3. May 2014UEFA’s first break-even check, covering 2011/12 and 2012/13. A club may lose €5m over three years, or up to €45m if the owner covers it. The €45m falls to €30m from 2015/16 (UEFA).
  4. 16 May 2014City settles with UEFA, after UEFA challenged City’s figures for 2011/12 and 2012/13 (Commission decision, footnote 11). €60m withheld from its prize money (€40m of it returnable if City met the terms), a 21-player Champions League squad for 2014/15, limits on losses and transfer spending (UEFA).
  5. 2015/16Premier League limit applies: losses of no more than £105m over three seasons (Commission decision, paragraph 43).
  6. 14 Feb 2020UEFA bans City from Europe for two seasons and fines it €30m, finding it overstated sponsorship revenue between 2012 and 2016 (UEFA).
  7. 13 Jul 2020The Court of Arbitration for Sport lifts the ban. It found most of the alleged breaches “either not established or time-barred”, and cut the fine to €10m for failing to cooperate (CAS).
  8. 6 Feb 2023The Premier League charges City. The charges include breaking UEFA’s rules in 2013/14–2017/18 and the Premier League’s in 2015/16–2017/18 (Premier League).
  9. 29 Sep 2026The Commission finds the charges proven. With the owners’ money taken out, City did not meet UEFA’s break-even rule or the Premier League’s limit in any of those seasons (Commission decision, paragraphs 149 and 153).

Why disguise it?

The rules count sponsorship as income, but not money from the owners. Owner money is “ignored for the purposes of determining (1) the Club’s annual profit and loss, and (2) compliance or otherwise with FFP rules” (Commission decision, footnote 6). So £100m from the owners leaves a club’s loss unchanged. Call the same £100m sponsorship, and the loss falls by £100m.

The Commission found this gave City four things. The references are to its decision, which is published in full (PDF) with some names blacked out.

What difference did it make? Not the cash. Declared honestly, as the owners’ investment, the same money would still have paid City’s bills, wages and transfer fees.

But the spending limits would not have counted it. On paper City’s losses would have been far bigger: over UEFA’s limit from 2011/12 and over the Premier League’s (PSR) from 2015/16. To stay within the rules, City would have had to spend much less on players and wages, or face sanctions.

Recorded as sponsorship, the money counted as income. That let City keep spending as it did while appearing to stay within the rules. The squad picker shows what spending within the limits would have meant.

How the numbers are worked out

Three steps, each using the one before. The squad picker at the top uses the result.

  1. Sponsorship City declared. How much of it the Commission found was really the owners’ money.
  2. Profit or loss without it. Take that money out of City’s published accounts, season by season.
  3. Against the limit. Compare the result with the Premier League’s £105m limit, and with other clubs that went over.
Step 1 of 3

Sponsorship City declared

City declared this as sponsorship income. The Commission found that the sponsors paid only part of it, and City’s owners paid the rest. These are the Commission’s findings, which City is appealing. The decision gives only the total; the season-by-season figures are as reported by BBC Sport, The Times, The Telegraph, ESPN and Football365.

Step 2 of 3

City’s profit or loss, with and without the owners’ money

The reported profit or loss is from City’s published accounts. The Commission found the owners’ money was counted as income, so taking it out lowers the result by the same amount.

Step 3 of 3

Against the Premier League limit

From 2015/16 a club could lose no more than £105m over three seasons (Commission decision, paragraph 43).

Other clubs that went over

Clubs the Premier League has sanctioned for going over the limit. Each case was one three-season period.

Chelsea: two deals

Chelsea has been punished twice for financial breaches, both times by agreeing a deal instead of contesting a hearing.

The contrast with City: Chelsea’s Premier League case was about hidden payments that did not take it over the limit, and Chelsea admitted it. City’s case, the Commission found, was about hidden owner money that did take it over the limits, and City denies it and is appealing.

A commission starts with 3 points for going over, adds points for how far over, then adjusts for anything that makes the case better or worse. The extra points have not grown in step with the amount: Forest was almost twice as far over as Everton and started from the same 6 points. City’s sanction will be decided at a separate hearing, and also covers the other charges, so these cases do not give a figure for City.

This is our calculation from City’s accounts, not the Commission’s; its own figures are in Appendix 30, which has not been published. The rules let clubs leave out spending on youth teams, women’s football, the community and facilities. Those amounts are not in the accounts, so the true figure is somewhat lower. 2016/17 covers 13 months, because City changed its year end.

Before 2015/16

Transfers, 2009/10 to 2017/18

For reference. Reported fees from each season’s Wikipedia article; free transfers, releases and undisclosed fees count as £0.

Sources

These are also listed, with every other source the site uses, on the Sources page.