UEFA has confirmed it is keeping a close eye on Manchester City's ongoing disciplinary proceedings in the Premier League, and will hold off on any decision regarding its own potential action until the English football authorities have concluded their process.

The charges against City

An independent commission has found Manchester City guilty of breaching the Premier League's financial regulations across a nine-year period, from 2009 to 2018. Among the charges upheld, five relate specifically to failures to comply with UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules — regulations that required clubs to broadly spend within what they earned under strict break-even requirements.

The commission concluded that City's owners channelled £830 million of their own funds into the club and disguised it as sponsorship income over those nine seasons, with the club also arranging what the commission described as "sham" contracts with commercial partners to artificially inflate revenues. The commission found that City broke "well over 100" Premier League regulations and failed to co-operate fully with investigators.

City's appeal and their defence

City have firmly denied any wrongdoing and lodged a formal appeal, insisting they hold a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that will clear their name. The club's lawyers are expected to argue that the additional sponsorship funding originated from the Abu Dhabi government rather than from the club's private ownership. That argument was put forward and rejected during the 2024 hearing, with the independent commission ruling it was an explanation "concocted well after the event" to conceal the true nature of the funding scheme. City intend to persist with the argument regardless.

In a statement following the guilty verdict on September 29, City said the ruling contained "clear material errors, of law, principle and fact" and described the process as having lacked the impartiality they had expected from a regulator. City said they had "diligently respected due process for eight years" and would pursue all available appeal avenues.

How long could the appeal take?

Under Premier League rules introduced this season, an appeal must be completed within 12 weeks of being filed, with the hearing itself limited to five days in a single block. City filed their appeal on a Thursday evening, which — under the accelerated timeline — would bring proceedings to a conclusion in the week before Christmas, with the appeal panel then having 30 days to deliver a verdict. That would push a final ruling into the third week of January.

However, City's lawyers may challenge the applicability of the new rules altogether. The original charges were filed in 2023 and the hearing took place in 2024, before the accelerated appeal rules were added to the Premier League Handbook. A legal expert told Sky Sports News that City would have a strong case for arguing the new rules should not apply — a successful challenge could push the entire process into 2027.

UEFA's history with City

This is not the first time UEFA has pursued Manchester City over Financial Fair Play concerns. In 2014, City entered a settlement with UEFA that included a £49 million fine — £32 million of which was suspended. In 2020, UEFA found City guilty of further breaches, imposed a €30 million fine, and handed down a two-year ban from European competition.

City appealed that ban to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which overturned it. CAS found that UEFA had not sufficiently established that the club's owners had disguised equity funding as sponsorship contributions, and that other alleged breaches were time-barred. The fine was reduced to €10 million — covering only City's failure to co-operate with the investigation.

Crucially, UEFA operates a five-year statute of limitations on financial rule breaches. The Premier League has no such limit, which explains why the English authorities were able to pursue conduct dating back to 2009. The UEFA investigation was itself triggered by internal City emails leaked to German magazine Der Spiegel in 2018 — documents City described as "out-of-context materials purportedly hacked or stolen" as part of a deliberate effort to damage the club's reputation.

Both Manchester City and UEFA were approached for comment.