One hundred and fifteen charges were laid. One hundred and fourteen were upheld.

I have spent a decade writing about football in Malaysia, and I have never read a headline like that. The Premier League’s independent commission found Manchester City guilty on every count but one, a failure to cooperate during part of the proceedings, and the league called it the most significant disciplinary decision in its history. If you love this game, you cannot scroll past it. This is not about one club. It is about whether the rulebook means anything. [Al Jazeera]

What the commission found

Let me be careful, because the facts deserve it. According to the league, the commission found that City arranged “sham” sponsorship deals in which sponsors paid only part of the fees, with the rest funded by the club’s Abu Dhabi owners, and that these schemes distorted the club’s accounts by more than £900 million across nine seasons, from 2009-10 to 2017-18. [Al Jazeera]

City rejected all of it. The club says it is innocent, calls the findings unsafe, and will appeal to a new three-person panel. Sanctions will be set at a separate hearing, and the range runs from a fine to expulsion. So the commission has ruled, the appeal is live, and nothing is final. This is not a verdict from me. It is a question. [Al Jazeera]

Three kinds of heartbreak

If you support City. None of this is a verdict on you. You never signed a sponsorship deal. You fell in love with a team, and love doesn’t come with an audit. It is fair to say the appeal hasn’t been heard. But ask yourself the hard question: if the club in the dock were the one you can’t stand, what would you want the rulebook to do? Loving your club and wanting the rules to hold are not opposites.

If you support a club on the other side of those seasons. For you, it’s personal. Tony Pulis, whose Stoke side lost the 2011 FA Cup final to City, said he doesn’t expect trophies to change hands, yet he still feels cheated. Every table, every final and every European night is somebody’s season, somebody’s contract, somebody’s dream that ended a place too early. Money has already shown what that looks like. Burnley successfully argued it would have survived relegation in 2021-22 had Everton been punished sooner, and Everton were ordered to pay more than £35 million. Rivals’ grievances now come with precedent. [Al Jazeera] [Al Jazeera]

If you support everyone else. The danger for you is the shrug. “They’re all at it.” It sounds wise, but it is surrender. A sport only works if people believe the contest is fair, and a shrug hands the game to whoever can afford the cleverest accountant.

Why “anywhere” is the right word

Here is what unsettles me most. The Premier League charged City in February 2023, after a four-year investigation. The hearing ran from September to December 2024. The verdict arrived in late September 2026. That is the system at full strength, against one of the richest clubs on earth, with years of time and armies of lawyers on both sides. If it takes all that to catch a giant, ask what slips past everyone else. [insidersportgoal]

Timing now adds a second problem. Rival clubs are pushing for a decision before the season ends, and new fast-track rules could make that possible. But if sanctions come before the appeal, City could be punished and then cleared. If they come after, City could keep points that cost others their place in Europe, or in the league. Both paths cost somebody a season. [Sportsmole] [Al Jazeera]

Now look at the other end of the scale. Everton were docked a record 10 points in 2023, later cut to six, for overspending in a single three-year period, and Nottingham Forest lost four. Smaller breaches, faster punishments. Enforcement bites hardest where it is easiest. [Al Jazeera]

And we don’t need to look to Manchester for a warning. Malaysian football lived through its own integrity storm in 2025, when FIFA sanctioned the FAM over the documentation of heritage players. Whatever your view of that case, it proved these problems are not confined to the Premier League, or to rich clubs.

An amanah, not a product

We have a word in Malay for what football really is to those who love it: amanah. A trust. Something placed in your hands that isn’t yours to ruin. None of us built this game. Somebody drew the first lines on a padang, somebody taught us the rules, somebody made us stand up for a goalkeeper who’d been fouled. We borrow the game from those before us and owe it to those after.

That is why this matters to every supporter, whatever shirt you wear. So what can we actually do?

• Hold your own club to the same standard. The moment we excuse “our” side, we hand the game to whoever cheats best.
• Read beyond the headline. Read what the commission actually found, and what the appeal actually argues. Hot takes travel faster than facts, and the game is poorer for it.
• Stand with supporters’ voices. Fan groups and trusts ask the questions boards would rather avoid. Ask how long these processes take, who decides, and why.
• Refuse the shrug. “It’s all rigged” doesn’t make you wise. It tells honest clubs there’s no point in being honest.
• Start where you stand. On the padang, in the league you can actually touch: honest registration, honest ages, honest books. Integrity is a habit, and habits are learned young.

Where we stand

None of us knows how the appeal will end. Maybe City will be vindicated. Maybe the punishment will be historic. Either way, the question stays.

Football taught most of us our first idea of fairness: the same ball, the same pitch, the same rules for both sides. Every scandal tests that idea a little. Whether it survives depends less on commissions than on us.

Football is something we inherit, and every inheritance carries a duty to leave it no worse than we found it. So the next time a club’s name hits the headlines for the wrong reasons, don’t only ask whether your side is safe. Ask what kind of game you will hand down. Then protect it like it was handed to you. Because it was.