The independent panel of three judges hearing the Manchester City case has still not made a decision, and sources with knowledge of the process say it could continue for at least six more months. The club had already said in its annual accounts in December that the judges had not yet ruled.
Any first decision is expected to focus on liability rather than final punishment, leaving the biggest questions for later if Manchester City lose. People close to the situation expect the club to appeal hard against any unfavorable outcome, while other sources say appeal grounds under Premier League rules would be narrow and could take no more than a year unless there were considerable flaws in the league’s case.
The delay matters because the dispute has already run for years. It reaches back to the Football Leaks disclosures of November 2018 and to the charges announced in February 2023, and it has now stretched through a period in which Manchester City kept winning. During the span covered by the case, the club collected five Premier Leagues, one Champions League, three FA Cups and four League Cups. Since the charges were announced, it has added a treble, one more league title, one more FA Cup and one more League Cup.
Manchester City insist on their innocence. The club also went into January 2026 still spending at the top of the market, signing Marc Guehi from Crystal Palace for £35m and Antoine Semenyo from Bournemouth for £62.5m, a reminder that the uncertainty has not stopped the football side from moving forward. That spending sits against legal costs believed to be into the tens of millions for both sides, and against a case that has already outlasted the hearing itself, which concluded in December 2024.
The slow pace also reflects the scale of what is being decided and the fact that the judges have been dealing with other cases as well. But the larger risk for the Premier League and the club is that an initial ruling would not end the matter. If the decision goes against City, the appeal process could push the dispute deeper into another year, extending a saga that has already become one of the most consequential in English football.
