In September an independent commission found Manchester City guilty of breaching the Premier League's financial rules. What nobody yet knows is what happens to them because of it, and the answer will be shaped in part by five people most supporters could not name.
The Premier League board is the body that prosecutes rule breaches, and it will recommend a punishment. A separate three-person commission decides. City, who maintain their innocence, have appealed, and no date has been set for a sanction hearing. A fine, a points deduction, expulsion and the stripping of past titles have all been mentioned as possibilities. The league has called it the most significant disciplinary case in its history.
Who sits on the board
The board is made up of the chair, the chief executive and three independent non-executive directors. No club representatives sit on it, by design.
Alison Brittain has been chair for almost four years, the first woman in the role. She came from senior roles in hospitality and financial services and has kept a low profile. At a university alumni event in September she admitted she had been sceptical about applying because she had never worked in sport, and said two club executives, the former Arsenal chief executive Vinai Venkatesham and the ex-Villa chief executive Christian Purslow, talked her round by telling her the league was not looking for a super fan. "We're looking for the exact opposite," she recalled them saying. She grew up a Manchester United supporter because of her family and now follows Brentford. In 2025 all twenty clubs backed her for a second three-year term.
Richard Masters, chief executive since 2019, is the recognisable one. When the commission's core decision landed in September he said it "vindicates the Premier League's decision to pursue this case" and that the league has "a key responsibility to ensure that the rules, approved by the clubs themselves, are upheld". In 2024 he told a parliamentary committee that the board applies the rules consistently, "irrespective of the club in question".
The three non-executives are Mai Fyfield, a former Sky executive who led the company's bidding across three Premier League television cycles and now sits on the board of BBC Commercial; Dharmash Mistry, a technology venture capitalist who chairs the league's audit and finance committee and represents it on the FA board; and Matthew Ryder, a senior barrister and part-time judge, formerly a deputy mayor of London, who chairs the league's legal advisory group. The Premier League declined to comment when BBC Sport approached the board.
Commissions do not simply rubber-stamp
This is the part City's lawyers will have noted. In 2023 the league pushed for a 12-point sanction against Everton; the commission settled on ten, and an appeal cut it to six. In 2024 it argued for eight points against Nottingham Forest over a bigger overspend and got four. This year it wanted a 12-point deduction applied to Leicester City in the Championship, and the commission recommended six.
Three cases, three recommendations, three reductions. Whatever number the board arrives at, recent history suggests the final figure will be lower.
There is another route
Earlier this year the board reached a sanctions agreement with Chelsea rather than fighting it out. Chelsea admitted making £47m in secret payments to unregistered agents and third parties over transfers between 2011 and 2018, and took a £10m fine and a suspended transfer ban. The league pointed to the club's self-reporting, its admissions and what it called exceptional co-operation as mitigating factors.
That is not the posture City have adopted. Brittain has spoken about competitive balance as the thing that makes the league work, saying someone has to care about keeping it because the clubs themselves would rather win every week. Asked whether that was her job, she said: "Absolutely. That's my job." How that philosophy translates into a number is the question hanging over Manchester.
Case context: Manchester City were found guilty by an independent commission in September 2026 of breaching Premier League financial rules. The club denies wrongdoing and has appealed. No sanction hearing date has been set. Reporting: Dan Roan, BBC Sport.
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