Morning all. There’s only one place to start this morning, and that’s with the story that Man City have been found guilty on all but one of the 115 charges that have been pending for so long. First, what a scoop it is from David Ornstein. EXCLUSIVE: Manchester City found guilty on virtually all charges relating to breaches of Premier League financial regulations. #MCFC expected to appeal against verdict issued by independent commission. Sanctions undecided, process ongoing @theathleticfc.bsky.socialwww.nytimes.com/athletic/704… — David Ornstein (@david-ornstein.bsky.social) 2026-09-25T13:46:26.790Z Secondly, when it’s 114 of 115, there’s no room to play it down. They’re not just a little bit guilty, and when you consider the length of time this has been going on and the vast resources they will have spent on their army of lawyers and barristers, it’s a slam-dunk for the Premier League and its legal team. City will, of course, appeal. When they had previous legal issues with UEFA, over which they were found guilty but escaped with minor sanctions on technicalities, their in-house lawyer laid out the position of Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chairman of the City Football Group, saying, “He would rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue [UEFA] for the next 10 years.” In this instance though, as much as I’m sure they would love to do something similar, the time-frame appears to be much more limited. The Guardian report, “According to the Premier League rulebook, the appeal process has a stricter time frame, whereby any party who wishes to appeal a decision by a judicial panel must do so by email within 14 days of a decision being announced. Under rule W.86 any hearing should conclude no longer than 12 weeks after the first appeal is submitted. Any decision by the appeal board must also be published, alongside full written reasons, within 30 days of the conclusion of the hearing.” Nevertheless, this has been a long process, and I can only imagine within that time City have done everything they possibly can to get away with what now looks like the single biggest case of financial cheating in English football history. I’m sure their legal team will have gone to the very limits to defend themselves, but ultimately have fallen short and now we await sanctions. Various reports say that could still be months away, but the potential ramifications are points deductions, relegation, a transfer ban, or even expulsion from the Premier League. Then the questions begin about how their cheating has not just put an asterisk beside their successes, but what it has done to football more generally, and how other clubs and teams will respond. City’s titles could be stripped from them, but what of the teams that finished second to them in the years they won? What of the teams who didn’t get into Europe? The teams who were relegated? It’s going to be an absolute minefield, and the BBC reports this morning that clubs are already seeking legal advice around compensation claims. This meme has been doing the rounds: But jokes aside, I suspect that’s how it would play out. Lance Armstrong was stripped of his Tour de France wins because of his cheating, but no new winners were announced. If City’s wins were taken from them, it would probably open up too many legal issues if they were to officially change second place to first, because the ripple-effects of that would be just too huge. That in itself, however, really tells you something about the scale of this and how it has impacted the sport. 9 Premier League titles since this ownership took over, a Champions League, multiple domestic cups. City built incredible teams with one especially brilliant manager, and on a sporting level they were the best around, but like Armstrong, they were doping. Financial EPO drove their successes, and like the riders that strove to keep up with the American but found it almost impossible to do so, the same applies to clubs in England and in Europe. The sporting cost of their cheating is essentially immeasurable. What they did so smartly though was present this facade where they weren’t always the biggest spenders around. Other clubs had to really push the boat out to try and compete, while City would lay out decent money for players, but what we understand is that so much went on behind the scenes with those deals in terms of the overall packages. They could also afford to spend and for signings not to work. It didn’t matter, because their finances were basically bottomless. Like many of you, I’m sure, I’m a bit surprised that they were found so guilty. I expected some of the charges to be proven but not 99% of them, and as such I hope whatever sanctions are applied reflect that. This is cheating on an industrial scale, and while as Arsenal fans we feel connected to it strongly because they’re the team we’ve battled against for the last four or five years (I avoid the use of the word rivalry very deliberately), you can’t help but think of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool teams who scrapped with them over the years too. It’s why I never understood that cohort of their fans who preferred City to win the league than see us as champions. Talk about turkeys voting for Christmas. I know we live in an era of hyper-inflated partisanship because idiots need it to bolster their tedious YouTube views, or to spend all day baiting other morons on Twitter, but if you can’t look beyond that to stand against an organisation that has caused you sporting pain because they have literally cheated you out of titles and trophies, then there’s something really wrong with you. So now we wait and see. I don’t think there’s any other option than to punish Manchester City to the fullest extent possible. This isn’t a little ‘Ooops, sorry about giving a couple of back-handers’ here. It’s enormous. It has been the foundation of everything they’ve won, and it has come at the cost of everyone else. They have undermined the credibility of the Premier League and football more broadly, and the only way to regain some of that is to demonstrate that that kind of cheating won’t be tolerated. Finally, a word from Rui Pinto, the man who, via Football Leaks, untangled City’s web. He uncovered a massive corruption that ran deeper than people thought, and he has done the game a service despite the attempts to smear him (and I think we all know where they have come from). I’ll leave it there for now. Have a great Saturday. The post Rui Pinto has done football a service appeared first on Arseblog ... an Arsenal blog.