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THE VERDICT

Manchester City were reportedly found guilty on almost every charge, and Tottenham kept the receipts

On Friday 25 September The Athletic reported that the independent commission had found Manchester City guilty on all but one of the Premier League's 115 charges, which cover the club's finances from 2009-10 to 2017-18 and years of alleged failure to cooperate. Nothing has been published officially, City say the process is still going, and an appeal is expected. But The Independent reports, and the BBC has repeated, that Tottenham Hotspur are one of at least four clubs that quietly preserved the right to claim compensation. We kept the receipts, and I am going to read them out.

A closed brown leather ledger on a dark wooden desk beside a bundle of paper slips tied with string, loose sheets, a paperclip and a fountain pen under a green desk lamp
Joshua
Joshua28 September 2026

Let me say the honest part first, because I always do. None of this is official yet. The Premier League has declined to comment, the commission's decision has not been published, and Manchester City have neither confirmed nor denied a word of it. The newspapers cannot even agree how many charges there were: The Athletic, the Telegraph and the BBC say 115, the Guardian says 134, and Sky says the actual number is believed to be 130. City's chairman wrote to their supporters on Saturday that "nothing has changed". The appeal is expected, the punishment has not been decided, and I would be lying if I told you any of it is settled.

And there is one more honest part, because I am a Tottenham supremacist, not a fantasist. In three of the nine seasons the financial charges cover, we finished above them anyway. We beat them to fourth in 2010. We finished above them in 2016 and again in 2017, the season we took 86 points. I am proud of every one of those. But they were the exceptions, and I have spent all the years since being told the rest was just the way football goes. On Friday I found out what was reportedly in the books.

What has actually been reported about the City verdict?

The story broke on Friday afternoon. The Athletic reported that City had been found guilty on all but one of the 115 charges, citing people briefed on the decision. The Telegraph followed soon after, saying several sources had told it the same thing. The BBC's report says it understands the majority of the charges have been upheld, and that it has been told City will appeal.

Then comes the detail that tells you everything about how this sport is run. According to the BBC, a select group of club directors received the decision by email, and they had to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they were allowed to read it. Club directors were handed a verdict on seasons their own clubs had played in, on condition that they kept quiet about it. Sit with that for a second.

City's statement on Friday said that "the Premier League process remains ongoing, with significant elements to be completed, and subject to strict confidentiality." Their chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, followed up with an open letter to fans on Saturday, saying the club's confidence and intent in proving its innocence is as strong as when this began. They are entitled to say that. I am entitled to say I have heard it before.

What were Manchester City charged with?

The charges were announced by the Premier League on 6 February 2023, and the league's own statement sorts them into five groups:

In the period the case covers, the BBC counts eight trophies for City, including three Premier League titles. Those three titles were 2011-12, 2013-14 and 2017-18. Remember those years. We are about to come back to them.

Where does Tottenham come into it?

Here. The Independent, citing sources, reports that at least four clubs preserved their right to claim compensation from City under the league's rules: Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur. The BBC names the same four and says they reportedly did it two years ago. The Independent says any claim can only start once the whole case, appeals included, is finished, and that Spurs declined to comment when it asked. Both outlets point to the roughly £35m that Burnley were awarded against Everton in June, which is itself under appeal, as the kind of claim clubs can bring against each other under the league's rules.

Tottenham have said nothing publicly. As I write this, there is not a word about it on the club's website. Good. That is exactly what you do when you have a claim to protect and you know the other side has the better-paid lawyers. You keep the paperwork, you keep your mouth shut, and you wait.

Meanwhile, look at what our own club was doing this summer. After the Villa game on 19 September, Roberto De Zerbi was asked about the lack of a new number nine, and his answer, in the club's full transcript, included this: "We had to respect the financial fair play." We had to. We did. I wrote about a financially prudent club recruiting well when we went out and got Omar Marmoush, and I called it financial fair play with a broken heart on 13 September, twelve days before anyone reported a verdict. We are bottom of the league this morning, and one reason is that this club lives within the rules. If the reports are right, that is more than City did for nine seasons.

We spent all those years respecting the rules and being laughed at for it. It turns out we were keeping score honestly, and we were keeping the receipts as well.

Which seasons should Spurs fans care about?

These are the final league positions for Spurs and City in the nine seasons the financial charges cover, from the Premier League's own records:

Start with 2010-11, because that is the one that still hurts. On 10 May 2011 City beat us 1-0 at their place, and the BBC's report from that night records that Peter Crouch's own goal sent City into the Champions League for the first time. The year before, on 5 May 2010, Crouch had headed the winner on that same ground to clinch fourth place, as the BBC's report of that night records. One year we beat them with a clean sheet and a header. The next year they beat us. Both seasons sit inside the period of the charges City have reportedly been found guilty on, and nobody will ever convince me that either night was played on level terms.

Then 2011-12. City won the league on goal difference. We finished fourth, and then had our Champions League place taken away when Chelsea, who finished sixth, won the whole competition. Then 2012-13, when we took 72 points, which the BBC said at the time was our highest Premier League total, and missed fourth by a single point. City finished second that year. Harry Redknapp, who was our manager in 2010-11 and 2011-12, wrote in his column for The Sun at the weekend, as football.london reported, that "Tottenham fans will not be alone in feeling that they were, in some way, cheated across those seasons." I think Harry has undersold it.

I am not going to sit here and hand you a new version of every table, because nobody can, and that is precisely the point. When one club's accounts are reportedly wrong for nine seasons in a row, every table from those nine seasons becomes a question. How many players did they sign that they could not honestly afford? How many of those players ended up in games against us? How many times did the race for the last Champions League place get decided by a squad that should never have existed in that form? I do not know the answers. What I know is that the people who could have given us those answers took more than three and a half years to reach a verdict, and then required a promise of silence before club directors could read it.

Who benefits from keeping it quiet?

Ask it plainly. The hearing itself finished in December 2024, according to Sky Sports. The decision reached the clubs in September 2026. For all of that time, and all the years before it, the story in this country about Tottenham Hotspur was that we were the soft touch, the nearly men, the club that bottled it. The story about City was dynasty, genius and inevitability. Every one of those City titles was sold to broadcasters around the world as the greatest league on earth. Every one of our near misses was a joke on a panel show.

Who benefits from that story staying intact for as long as possible? The league, whose product it was. The broadcasters, who paid billions for it and filled their studios with people who, as far as I ever heard, never asked how the books balanced. The rival fans who were happy to point at us and say "Spursy" while the actual scandal sat in a legal file with a confidentiality clause wrapped round it. Even the Prime Minister was asked about it on Friday, and his advice, according to the Guardian, was not to jump to conclusions. I have been told not to jump to conclusions about this club's bad luck for my entire life. I jumped years ago. I am still waiting to land.

And look at the week it lands in. The first week in which the rest of the country has had to consider that our fifth places and sixth places might not have been entirely our fault is the same week our men are bottom of the league. As I wrote in my piece on why the league does not want us to win, the timing is never an accident. The one piece of news that might have changed how people look at Tottenham's recent history arrived when we were least able to enjoy it.

What happens next?

City are expected to appeal. According to the Guardian and Sky Sports, an appeal has to be lodged within 14 days of a decision, and Sky says a new appeal board is appointed to hear it in private. The punishment still has to be decided. Any compensation claim, ours included, has to wait until the appeals are over, as The Independent reports. None of this will be quick, and none of it puts a point on our table before we go to Old Trafford on Saturday 10 October.

But the club kept the paperwork, and so have I. This blog exists because I got tired of the record being written by people who were happy to look the other way. I have written down every disallowed goal, every kickoff time and every silence. I will write this down too, season by season, for as long as it takes.

They can appeal for another three years if they like. They can tell us it was all within the rules, or that it was a long time ago, or that we should let it go. I will not. We played those nine seasons honestly and we were laughed at for it. When the bill for those seasons is finally written, I want Tottenham Hotspur's name at the top of it, and I will be right here to read it out.