Manchester City could line up in next season’s Champions League while playing their domestic football in the Championship. That is not a hypothetical posed by a supporter message board — it is a scenario senior figures across English football now privately regard as a live risk, and one they have no obvious mechanism to prevent.
An independent commission found City guilty on 29 September of 114 of the 115 charges brought by the Premier League, concluding that the club inflated sponsorship income by more than £830m through disguised funding arrangements between 2009-10 and 2017-18, and concealed roughly £90m in expenses. The commission determined City would have breached profitability and sustainability rules in all nine of those seasons without the adjustments. The club lodged its appeal on 1 October, maintaining it holds “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” supporting its position.
A separate sanctions hearing will set the punishment. The options available to the commission run from a points deduction to a transfer embargo, expulsion from the Premier League and forced relegation. Several clubs want a deduction severe enough to send City down. The concern is what happens to City’s European place if it does.
The licence that is difficult to refuse
Every club entering UEFA competition needs a licence. In England the FA holds that responsibility and delegates the administration to the Premier League. Crucially, the licence is assessed on a club’s current financial position at the point of application — not on historical misconduct, and not on sanctions imposed by a domestic competition.
The grounds on which a licence can be withheld are narrow and specific:
- Overdue payables to players, staff, other clubs or tax authorities
- A conviction for match-fixing within the previous 10 years
- Integrity conflicts arising from multi-club ownership
Accounting breaches from a decade ago appear nowhere on that list. “Licences are granted on the basis of current financial performance, so the grounds for refusing one are unclear,” one source told BBC Sport. City, backed by Abu Dhabi United Group and now generating genuine commercial revenue at the top of European football’s income table, would comfortably clear the financial thresholds.
Nor is there an automatic mechanism to remove a club that has qualified on sporting merit. If City win this season’s Champions League, they enter next season’s edition as holders regardless of where they finish in the English pyramid. That is the specific route worrying executives at rival clubs, who believe it “would not be acceptable” for a club convicted of systematic financial deception to collect the prize money that follows.
Why the calendar may decide this
Timing is doing as much work here as regulation. City’s appeal will be heard by a three-person panel; the process can run for up to 12 weeks, with a ruling expected within 30 days of its conclusion. A verdict is anticipated before the end of the current campaign, but sanctions cannot be enforced until the appeal is exhausted — and any relegation would realistically bite from 2027-28 rather than immediately.
That gap leaves the sport exposed. A club could be relegated in the spring, qualify for Europe through results already banked, and then have its licence application assessed under criteria that ignore the very offences that relegated it. UEFA has raised the issue internally but has not opened its own investigation, preferring to wait for the Premier League process to conclude before considering secondary European sanctions.
The ghost of 2020
European football has been here before, and the precedent cuts against intervention. UEFA banned City from its competitions for two seasons in February 2020 and fined the club €30m. The Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ban five months later and reduced the fine to €10m, finding that the central charges were either unproven or time-barred. The procedural ground City won on then has now been removed — a domestic commission has made findings of fact after a hearing that ran more than 1,300 days from charge to verdict.
Domestically, the comparators are thin. Everton and Nottingham Forest both took points deductions in 2023-24, but neither case involved findings of concealment or witnesses giving evidence a commission judged to be untrue. No Premier League title has ever been stripped.
UEFA could amend its licensing criteria to cover sanctions imposed by national competitions, but rule changes are rarely retrospective and almost never quick. On the current framework, the body that tried hardest to exclude Manchester City from the Champions League may find it has no lawful basis to do so a second time.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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