Manchester City are set to receive a punishment this season after being found guilty of breaking Premier League financial rules and failing to cooperate with the division's investigation. Premier League rivals are pushing for the sanctions to be rapidly imposed.
City intend to appeal the verdict, and a sanction for their indiscretions has not yet been decided. A separate hearing will be held to decide the club's punishment.
Appeal timeline and new regulations
The appeal must be filed by Friday, October 2, and Premier League sides are pointing to new regulations agreed in June that should fast-track the process, reports the Sun. According to those rules, any hearing should be concluded no later than 12 weeks after filing of the appeal.
That timetable would mean the appeal would need to be resolved by Christmas Day, but given the timing, the appeal could be heard from December 14. From there, the board would have 30 days to produce a verdict.
The Premier League have said that they 'are committed to moving swiftly through the remainder of the process, to provide certainty for the League, our clubs and fans'.
High chance of resolution this season
There is a 'very high chance' that Manchester City's situation is resolved by the end of this season to avoid additional problems unfurling in the future, according to Football Finance expert Kieran Maguire.
Depending on the deduction, waiting until next season would give teams who have missed out on Europe or been relegated the opportunity to argue that their fortunes would have been greater if the punishment had been administered sooner.
Maguire added that applying a punishment is often a swifter process than the initial hearing, as seen with points deductions for Nottingham Forest and Everton.
Maguire told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I think there’s a very high chance it will be resolved because if it isn’t we end up with a situation like that of Burnley and Everton where a club could be relegated, Manchester City are not given a deduction this season and it’s given next season instead and the club which finishes 18th could say had the deduction been applied sooner we would not have been relegated so that adds to the complication.
“Looking at the Premier League’s press release it does seem it is keen for this to be resolved as quickly as possible. If you take at the length of time it took in respect of Forest and Everton, once they had heard the evidence, actually applying the tariff was the quick part of the equation. It is listening to the evidence which is the torturous period which we have had up to now.”
Potential legal challenges
Even after the announcement of any sanction, Manchester City are likely to exhaust every avenue they can to overturn the verdict. Maguire believes that City will have a greater chance of success trying to take the case outside of Premier League jurisdiction to the High Court.
Any argument is more likely to be successful if it attacks the people involved rather than the evidence in his mind. City have previously been successful in fighting a verdict when they were initially kicked out of the Champions League before seeing a two-year ban overturned.
“If they were going to appeal against the initial verdict they have to prove that the composition of the panel was flawed, either in the selection process or they have been able to identify bias in the individuals concerned,
