Kieran Maguire has set out a stark possibility for Manchester City as the Premier League\u2019s lengthy probe edges closer to a conclusion. He told The Overlap that, if the most serious allegations are upheld, the club could face a deduction in the region of 40 to 60 points rather than relegation.<\/p>\n
The independent investigation concluded in December 2024, and 14 months of silence have followed while figures including Pep Guardiola have grown increasingly weary when pressed on timings. The Premier League alleges City artificially inflated revenues to bypass financial fair play rules across nine seasons (2009\u201318).<\/p>\n
Maguire suggested the most likely immediate finding could relate to non-cooperation. He believes it is \u201cfairly likely\u201d City will be found guilty of \u201cnon-cooperation,\u201d a charge that makes up a large portion of the case, and warned that \u201cthey are likely to get a significant fine because that is what we saw happen with UEFA and the deductions there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The club point to UEFA\u2019s earlier proceedings. UEFA imposed a two-year European ban in February 2020, later overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which cleared City of \u201cdisguising equity funds as sponsorship contribution\u201d while also stating many alleged breaches \u201cwere either not established or time-barred.\u201d UEFA applies a five-year limitation that the Premier League does not.<\/p>\n
Among players, Erling Haaland has already committed his long-term future after private discussions with the club. He said: \u201cI spoke with the bosses, and in the end, I believe them. It\u2019s such a tricky situation for me to even sit there and speak about, because I wasn\u2019t really involved in it. So I think the club knows what they\u2019re doing. They will sort it out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maguire was clear on sanctions. \u201cThe Premier League cannot relegate Manchester City to League One or League Two because that is an EFL decision and Manchester City have not had any charges proven against them by the EFL,\u201d he said. \u201cTherefore, it has to be a points deduction.\u201d He referenced precedent \u2014 Everton and Nottingham Forest received six and four-point penalties over three years \u2014 and added: \u201cThe 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\u2019ve seen in terms of Forest and Everton, so somewhere between a 40 and 60-point deduction would be, on merit to be consistent with what we\u2019ve seen with other decisions, would make a lot of logic.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also warned that, if corporate fraud were proven, there could be \u201ca complete restructure of the club.\u201d Maguire added: \u201cI think we\u2019re probably into the final reaches of getting a decision. I think part of the challenge has been that because there are three very senior people who are on the court, who are making that final judgment. Getting those three together at the same time is actually very difficult. So that\u2019s delayed the case. It should be resolved in the next few months.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maguire: a 40-60 point deduction is plausible if serious FFP breaches are proven; relegation option.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7099,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1056,172],"tags":[1317,1162,1379],"class_list":["post-7100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-man-city","category-epl","tag-accounts-2025-26","tag-analytics","tag-club-structure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}