Pep Guardiola's Man City exit comes with their 115 charges still looming. What's the latest?

Manchester City continue to have the 115 Premier League charges case hanging over them Kate McShane/Getty Images Pep Guardiola is leaving Manchester City after 10 years -- a decade in which he led them to six Premier League titles, three FA Cups, five League Cups, a Club World Cup (old, annual version) and a Champions League, the latter capping their 2022-23 treble. In many ways, it marks the end of an era for English football's top flight. When Guardiola arrived from Bayern Munich in summer 2016, he walked into a division where his managerial counterparts included the likes of Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho. By the time his departure was confirmed, he had outlasted them all, including his greatest rival of all, then Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp. But there are other matters that Guardiola has outlasted, too. City were less than three seasons into the Catalan's reign when UEFA began investigating allegations they had previously breached its financial regulations, which led to the club initially being banned from European competition for two years, before that decision was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in July 2020. The Premier League, subsequently, announced in February 2023 it had charged City with 115 breaches of its own financial rules. More than three years later, after a lengthy hearing at the end of 2024, a verdict has still not been handed down. City have steadfastly denied wrongdoing from the start of the whole process. As the 55-year-old leaves, and a new era begins in the blue parts of Manchester, City's ongoing legal proceedings are thrown into sharp relief once more; a decision which threatened to shape Guardiola's legacy will now hang over the man the club turn to next -- which The Athletic has reported is expected to be Enzo Maresca. Broadly, the Premier League have accused City of repeatedly breaching profit and sustainability rules (PSR), which govern the losses that clubs are able to incur over a rolling period. According to the Premier League, City both artificially inserted money into the club by disguising payments from ownership as sponsorship money, and hid outgoings, by providing undeclared salaries or bonuses to players and managers. The 115 charges against City have sometimes been alternatively described as 129 or 130 charges -- it depends whether breaches which allegedly occurred over multiple seasons are counted separately, or bundled together across campaigns. Functionally, however, the charges boil down to five categories: The Athletic has produced a detailed breakdown of the exact allegations here, including specific emails which have formed the cornerstone of both UEFA's and the Premier League's cases. The Premier League first launched an investigation into City in March 2019, following the publication of dozens of the club's internal emails by German newspaper Der Spiegel the previous year. It then took almost four years before the league reached a decision on whether to pursue sanctions -- announcing it had charged City with 115 breaches of its financial rules in February 2023. The Premier League has not engaged with the media over any aspects of the case since then, with CEO Richard Masters stating at the start of the 2025-26 season: "I really can't comment, and there are very good reasons for that. As you know, our rules are very clear. I can't talk about the process in any aspect between the period when allegations and charges are announced until a decision is handed down." It took over 18 months for the in-person hearing to begin, which took place in London between September and December 2024. City were represented by Lord Pannick KC, one of the most experienced and expensive lawyers in the country. The process is being run by a three-person independent panel, whose identities are currently anonymous. All proceedings are effectively being run on their schedule, rather than adhering to any publicly announced timeline. Initially, there had been an expectation within both City and the Premier League that a decision might come within six months, by the end of last season. Even with the understanding that the case is exceptionally complicated -- charges of a single PSR breach against Everton and Nottingham Forest in 2023-24 still took multiple months -- the length of deliberations has still been unprecedented. According to sources representing both sides of the case, who, like all of those spoken to for this article asked to speak under the condition of anonymity because they did not have the authority to discuss private legal proceedings publicly, the panel are still working on their judgment, almost 18 months on from the hearing's conclusion. These sources have not been informed of when any decision might be expected. When it eventually comes, their decision will be one of the most scrutinised rulings in UK legal rulings, with lawyers involved in the case having indicated to The Athletic that appeals are likely from whichever side does not receive a favourable judgment. The lack of information provided by the Premier League, as well, means that the nature of the judgment is also unclear. It has not been confirmed, for example, whether the judgment will contain any recommended punishment or only answer the question of guilt -- and it is unknown whether that punishment, such as a points deduction, would be applied immediately or subject to further appeals. People with knowledge of the situation told The Athletic that the football regulator will have to be informed before a judgment is handed down. Not all charges are created equal. The charges of "failing to cooperate with Premier League investigations" are effectively misdemeanours, related to the disciplinary process rather than the alleged offences themselves. To some extent, as well, the charges of having breached both Premier League and UEFA sustainability rules are dependent on whether the panel finds that City did knowingly fail to provide accurate financial information. As The Athletic previously described these offences, City were expected to release this information in order to demonstrate their adherence to PSR. Charged with 54 offences in this category, in essence, City are alleged to have breached five or six clauses every year for nine years. The key question is whether City accurately reported the true revenue they were gaining from sponsorship deals with companies linked to their ownership, or whether they only declared part of it -- and if they did accurately declare the amounts, whether they would have breached PSR limits. It is expected, for example, that the panel will closely examine emails previously published in the UEFA ruling which appeared to show City executives discussing cashflow between sponsors and the football club, as well as what they were expected to show for auditing purposes. This is one of the nubs of it. One of the Abu Dhabi-linked sponsors was a telecommunications company called Etisalat -- with the initial UEFA adjudicatory chamber finding they were "comfortably satisfied" that City "did not truthfully declare their sponsorship income as payments purportedly made by sponsors were in reality payments from (owners) ADUG or (Sheikh Mansour)." However, after City appealed to CAS, the appeal committee ruled that the evidence related to alleged payments from Etisalat could not be admitted because they were time-barred -- stating that City "cannot be prosecuted on the basis of financial information that was first submitted outside the limitation period". CAS reached a similar conclusion over another sponsor, the airline Etihad, who remain City's front-of-shirt sponsors, ruling that this evidence was partially time-barred. However, the Premier League operates under a different regulatory framework. Based on conversations with several legal experts with knowledge of the case, the Premier League is unlikely to be blocked by time-barring rules in exactly the same way UEFA was -- but that does not preclude City's legal team from attempting to challenge that evidence. Other sources have also indicated that the disclosure process resulted in the Premier League gaining additional documents than those possessed by UEFA -- potentially giving them access to a wider range of arguments in favour of prosecution. This has been an exceptionally secretive process -- with lawyers involved in the case having stated that proceedings have been governed by the tightest anti-disclosure laws they have ever encountered in their careers. It means that details of the exact lines of arguments pursued by both parties have not been made public -- and full awareness of their positions will not emerge until the independent panel release their judgment, subject to potential redactions. In part, this is because of the sensitive political implications that may arise from the case. For example, a key part of the case related to the identity of a mysterious 'Person X', who was named in several key emails as having facilitated the alleged wrongful sponsorship payments to City. The Athletic subsequently revealed in March 2025 that 'Person X' was an individual named Jaber Mohamed, a key aide of Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (MBZ), now the ruler of Abu Dhabi. At the time, Mohamed worked as the general director of the Crown Prince's Court (CPC), an Abu Dhabi government body that runs MBZ's public affairs. Another key figure at City, former board member Mohamed Al Mazrouei, is listed as working at the CPC as the organisation's undersecretary. He and Mohamed, at the time of the payments, were the two most senior employees of the CPC, raising uncomfortable questions not just about the source of the funding for the alleged sponsorship payments, but also as to whether these were known about within the highest seats of power in the UAE. Neither Mohamed, the CPC nor City responded to multiple requests for comment.