Justin C

Man City have won all 7 games this season and they're in first place. There's a real chance they get relegated anyway, and by the Premier League's own math, that would be them getting off easy. A couple years ago, Nottingham Forest got docked 4 points for losing £34.5M more than the rules allow. Last month City were found guilty of passing off £830M of their owners' money, about $1.1 billion, as sponsorship deals. Charge City what Forest paid and it comes out to 96 points. City have cleared 96 points in a season exactly twice. One of those was 2017-18, which happens to be one of the nine seasons they were just found guilty for. And Forest is the gentle comparison. Everton got hit with 10 points for going £19.5M over, which got knocked down to 6 on appeal. Use that rate and City are looking at around 255 points. If you won every single game for a whole season, you'd get 114. Here's how the scheme worked. From 2009-10 to 2017-18, City booked £949.9M in sponsorship money, and the sponsors actually paid £119.2M of it. The owners quietly covered the rest, so about 87% of City's "sponsorship" came from the guys who own the club. The panel said that without it, City would have posted the biggest one-season loss in Premier League history back in 2009-10. To be fair, the comparison is rough, and City's lawyers will hammer it. Everton and Forest got caught overspending, and the panel never put a single overspend number on City. It did say City would have blown past the limits "by a very substantial amount" if they'd reported honestly. Then there's the cooperation piece. Forest got 2 points taken off their punishment for "exceptional cooperation." City got found guilty on 34 counts of not cooperating, and the panel said several of the club's key witnesses gave false evidence. City won three league titles in those nine seasons, including the 2011-12 title Manchester United lost on goal difference and the 2013-14 title Liverpool lost by two points. The appeal is supposed to be heard by January, and the league can't hand out any punishment until it's done. So there's a real scenario where the team sitting in first at Christmas gets relegated in May. If the panel prices this anything like it priced Forest and Everton, relegation is probably the best deal on the table for City.