All the Titles Man City Stand to Lose If Found Guilty in Landmark Case

An inquiry that kicked off nearly four years ago has finally delivered a long-anticipated outcome: Manchester City have reportedly been found guilty of 114 violations of the Premier League's financial rules.

News of their financial wrongdoing broke on Friday, naturally sparking widespread speculation about what appropriate penalties the club should face.

Any sanctions will be subject to City's expected appeal and could range from a massive points deduction and forced relegation to, in the most extreme scenario, the stripping of past Premier League titles.

But how many honours could City actually lose following their guilty verdict?

Every Trophy Man City Could Forfeit for Financial Breaches

City's financial violations took place between 2009 and 2018, meaning the assumption is that only Premier League titles claimed during that window are at risk of being stripped. Whether the FA Cup and three League Cup titles won during that same period would also be surrendered remains uncertain.

The Cityzens claimed the Premier League on three occasions across that nine-year stretch, with their first triumph coming via that iconic Sergio Agüero strike in the dying moments of the 2011–12 season. They then lifted the title again in 2013–14 and 2017–18.

Should those three titles be taken away, City would be left with just five league championships, all of them secured under Guardiola. Both Roberto Mancini and Manuel Pellegrini would no longer hold the distinction of being Premier League-winning managers, while club legends like David Silva and Vincent Kompany would see three of their four titles erased.

Another question is whether the clubs that finished as runners-up to City during those guilty seasons would be retroactively handed the titles.

Manchester United came second in both the 2011–12 and 2017–18 seasons under Sir Alex Ferguson and José Mourinho respectively, while Liverpool icon Steven Gerrard would finally receive the Premier League medal that escaped him, as the Reds were City's closest challengers in 2013–14.

Will Man City Actually Lose Three Premier League Titles?

While the possibility of City being stripped of three Premier League titles remains on the table, it appears an increasingly unlikely outcome despite the gravity of their offences.

James Hill, a legal director at Onside Law, indicated that such severe penalties seemed improbable when commenting on City's charges back in 2023.

"I would expect that if there is a points deduction, it would be applied going forward," said Hill. "Generally, panels don't like deciding titles in a court process. Doing it that way does not give a real tangible punishment to the club."

There is precedent for such a penalty in Italy, however, with Juventus stripped of their 2004–05 and 2005–06 Serie A titles in the wake of the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal. The Turin club were also demoted to Serie B for the 2006–07 season. The first of those campaigns was left without a champion, while the second was retroactively awarded to runners-up Inter Milan, much to the fury of supporters not dressed in blue and black.

However, that involved a very different set of circumstances with direct on-pitch manipulation, and a substantial points deduction looks like the more probable outcome for City.

"If we take a look at precedence, we have had Everton and Nottingham Forest with six and four-point deductions for a single offense covering a three-year period. The accusations against Manchester City cover a nine-year period, so it is far bigger," soccer finance expert Kieran Maguire explained back in February.

"The numbers involved, we are not certain about, but they are likely to be quite significant. I think you have to add a zero to what we've seen in terms of Forest and Everton, so somewhere between a 40 and 60-point deduction would be consistent with what we've seen with other decisions."

Within the upper echelons of the Premier League, some executives suggested to The Athletic that more "creative" punishments could be on the cards for City, with the possibility of spreading a large points deduction across several future seasons to hinder their European qualification prospects rather than dragging them into a relegation fight.