Man City sent 100 points warning as Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham await Premier League decision
Manchester City could conceivably receive a triple-figure points penalty if they are found guilty of all 115 charges in their independent hearing over the next several weeks.
The trial starts somewhere on Monday, but there is an expectation that a decision will not come until the new year. Fines, points deductions, and even expulsion from the league are the potential punishments the Premier League could impose should they be found guilty of the most significant alleged rule breaches.
Those include allegedly failing to provide accurate details for player and manager payments. City, though, denies all charges brought against them.
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Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has hypothesised that the worst-case scenario for City could be a 100-point deduction, mathematically ensuring relegation to the Championship. Maguire told talkSPORT : “It can’t really be a financial punishment because that would make everybody think the whole thing was a waste of time.
“If you look at the hearing for both Everton and Nottingham Forest, the commissions of both said, ‘this was a minor breach of the rules’, now if the allegations against Manchester City are proven, that surely has to be a major breach of the rules, effectively that the club misrepresented the money coming into the club. The club also has been accused of disguising payments to players and managers, effectively being paid by third parties offshore, being paid by Abu Dhabi for services provided by members of staff, and that is also completely against the rules, one would think, although it could be that it’s within the Premier League rules.
“So we would have to be looking at a very significant points deduction. If all 115 charges are proven, then you’d have to imagine that the points deduction would be somewhere in the region of 60 to 100 points - on the basis that they would want the club to have suffered enough to be heading out of the division.”
Maguire added: “They’ve got to rule on all the 115 charges separately as to whether or not they believe Manchester City to be guilty. If they are guilty of all of them, then it’s got to be so severe that any club thinking of going down that route again will realise that it would be a very detrimental thing for that club’s future.”