Update (Saturday 3 October). Manchester City lodged their appeal on Thursday 1 October at 7pm UK time, a day before the deadline, and the Premier League confirmed it on Friday. The club maintains that the decision “contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe”, and chief executive Ferran Soriano described the whole case as “a single false accusation”. The appeal will be heard by a new three-person panel whose chair must have held judicial office. It is not a full rehearing, but a review of the commission’s decision and City’s grounds for challenging it.
What it means for timing: under league rules the appeal hearing should take place within 12 weeks of being lodged, so before Christmas, with a decision within 30 days after that. According to Sky Sports, that points to mid-January at the earliest. City may, however, argue that these faster rules should not apply to a case brought in 2023. The sanctions hearing still has no date. For your FPL team nothing changes: City players score points as normal, and the next real decision is the captaincy for the trip to Anfield. One thing has changed since Wednesday: O’Reilly, who we say below has no flag, was given a 75% chance of playing in the game on Thursday.
On Tuesday 29 September the Premier League officially confirmed what the British press had been reporting since Friday: an independent commission has found Manchester City guilty of serious breaches of the league’s financial rules. The club says it will appeal, and no sanction has been set yet. For FPL managers there is one question that matters: do you need to sell Haaland and the rest of your City players now? The short answer is no, not because of the verdict. Here is why, and what is actually worth checking before Gameweek 6.
What the commission found
The case covers the seasons from 2009/10 to 2017/18. According to the Premier League statement, the commission found all the financial charges proven. City:
- arranged “sham” contracts with commercial partners to artificially inflate revenue and reduce costs,
- filed misstated accounts, concealing the true state of their finances from auditors and regulators,
- significantly breached Premier League and UEFA spending limits.
Of the four alleged breaches of the duty to cooperate with the investigation, the commission upheld three. It also found that the club made “concerted efforts” to stop and frustrate the investigation. Outlets including CBS Sports count this as 114 of the 115 charges.
The scale: according to the Premier League, revenue was inflated and costs reduced by more than £900m in total. Some outlets (Sky Sports, ESPN) quote £830m. That is not a contradiction, just a different measure: according to ESPN, City declared £949.94m in revenue from Abu Dhabi partners, of which the partners themselves paid only £119.25m. The difference is around £830m, and the reduced costs come on top of that.
Premier League chief executive Richard Masters said the decision “establishes the facts of what happened at Manchester City during this period” and “details how the club systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade”. He called it “the most significant in Premier League history”. The league has published a redacted version of the decision.
The charges were brought in February 2023, the hearing ended in December 2024, and the verdict took more than a year and a half.
City’s response
The club said it was “disappointed and surprised”, that it “is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League” and that “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions”. City will appeal, “on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors”, and says it will be “relentless” in every available forum.
What happens next: appeal, sanction and dates
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Friday 25 September | first British media reports of the verdict |
| Tuesday 29 September | official Premier League statement |
| Friday 2 October | City’s deadline to lodge an appeal |
| date unknown | separate commission hearing to decide the sanction |
| Saturday 10 October, 11:00 UK | FPL Gameweek 6 deadline |
League rules allow points deductions, fines and even expulsion. There is no set tariff, though. For comparison: in 2023/24 Everton lost 8 points in total for two separate financial breaches and Nottingham Forest lost 4. Each of those cases concerned a single breach of the loss limit, not more than a hundred. Football finance expert Kieran Maguire has suggested a sanction of 40–60 points. That is his estimate, not information from the commission.
The biggest unknown is timing. Nobody knows whether a sanction would apply before the appeal is heard or only after it. The league only says it wants to conclude the whole process, including any appeals, “as quickly as possible”. The context is remarkable: City top the table with a perfect 15 points from five games, three ahead of Arsenal.
What it means for your FPL team
In FPL, points come from what a player does on the pitch: goals, assists, clean sheets, minutes and bonus. A points deduction in the league table does not change a single one of Haaland’s FPL points. The game would only be affected if City stopped playing matches, and nothing suggests that today: there is no sanction yet and the club is appealing.
Managers are not panicking either. This week more people are buying City players than selling them:
| Player | Owned by | Bought | Sold | Our rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Haaland | 73.8% | 76.6k | 19.3k | 88 — Buy |
| Cherki | 28.4% | 120.0k | 87.0k | 85 — Buy |
| Gvardiol | 26.8% | 144.3k | 52.6k | 83 — Buy |
| Guéhi | 18.2% | 23.0k | 49.9k | 88 — Buy |
| Semenyo | 15.3% | 124.5k | 63.6k | 87 — Buy |
| O’Reilly | 10.9% | 5.2k | 69.3k | 79 — Hold |
Haaland is in 73.8% of almost 11 million teams, more than 8 million squads, and this week four times as many managers bought him as sold him. The only player being clearly sold is O’Reilly, and that is because of an injury, covered below. Our AI rankings do not react to the verdict either, because they rate what happens on the pitch: minutes, numbers and fixtures, not disciplinary proceedings.
Could the verdict affect the players’ form? There is no way to measure that. England lost 3-2 to Spain at Wembley on Saturday, a day after the first reports. Guéhi, O’Reilly and Anderson all started, and Guéhi and O’Reilly both made mistakes. England manager Thomas Tuchel denied the verdict was the reason: “Not for me but I can imagine maybe for the Manchester City players.” He added: “I didn’t feel they were distracted.”
The real question before Gameweek 6: Anfield, not the courtroom
If you are going to think about your City players, think about the fixtures. In Gameweek 6 City travel to Anfield to face Liverpool (Sunday 11 October, 16:30 UK). It is one of the hardest matches of the round. That is why Haaland is only sixth in our captain picks (risk 48, upside 68), with Guéhi fifth. The best profiles right now belong to Mbeumo and Bruno Fernandes (risk 33, upside 89–90, Manchester United at home to Tottenham), although Bruno has the injury we covered on Tuesday.
After Anfield, City’s fixtures get easier:
- Gameweek 7: Ipswich at home (difficulty 2),
- Gameweek 8: Aston Villa away (3),
- Gameweek 9: Brighton at home (3),
- Gameweek 10: Nottingham Forest away (3).
The full picture for every club is in our Gameweeks 6–10 fixture analysis. Selling Haaland for one hard fixture rarely pays off. If anything, it is the captaincy where another option is worth considering.
What you do need to check before the deadline are three City squad issues:
- Semenyo has a 75% flag in the game with an ankle injury. We covered the details here.
- O’Reilly missed England training on Monday and was ruled out of the Czechia game, with Rio Ngumoha called up in his place. He has no flag in the game.
- Foden is suspended until 17 October after his red card in the Manchester derby.
On the other side, Liverpool are likely to be without Gakpo. The club confirmed he left the Netherlands squad with an ankle injury, and Dutch journalist Rik Elfrink reports he will be out for several weeks.
What to do, in short
- Do not sell City players because of the verdict. FPL points stand, there is no sanction yet and the club is appealing.
- Your Haaland decision before Gameweek 6 is about Anfield, not the courtroom, and it is mainly about the captaincy.
- Check Semenyo and O’Reilly on 8 or 9 October, once players are back from international duty.
- We will come back to this when the commission announces the sanction and explain what actually changes.
Based on the Premier League statement of 29 September, Manchester City’s statement and reporting by Sky Sports, ESPN, CBS Sports, NBC News (Reuters) and Al Jazeera. Fantasy Premier League data read on 30 September. Ratings come from our own AI-based model. We are not affiliated with the Premier League or Fantasy Premier League.