The table without the money

How a season is computed

• If the owner hadn't put the money in removes every disguised pound, plus the concealed payments by default, from City's squad spending. It is spread over a contract length because players bought with it keep playing. Every pound of income City lose from finishing lower is also taken out of later spending, pound for pound, so lost money never comes back. The owner's other, legal funding stays as it actually was.
• If City had declared it honestly counts the money as owner investment, so the owner can put in only as much as the rules allowed. Before FFP, that fully replaces the disguised money. From FY2012, City must pass UEFA's break-even windows (€45m, then €30m, then the €60m football-earnings rule and squad-cost ratio), and from 2015-16 the PL's £105m three-year PSR limit. Squad cost is cut to comply, pro rata across each window and capped per year; anything beyond the cap is shown as a breach. A cut squad can only be rebuilt as fast as contracts run out.
• Squad cost turns into expected points through β, fitted on 317 club-seasons of accounts wages against points (2009-10 to 2024-25). Dynamic (default): 19.8 short-run plus 0.32 of last season's points gap carried forward, about 29 in the long run. Pooled: 27.9 ± 1.8. Within-club: 21.2 ± 6.0. β is drawn fresh for every replay.
• Every real match is replayed with City's strength shifted. Bookmaker odds set how close the match was and the real result is the starting point, so a 3-0 win rarely flips and a coin-toss 1-0 often does. Points City drop go to the actual opponents. City can never do better than they really did; other clubs can.
• The new finishing position sets PL merit money that season, and European places (with each season's real rules, including cup-winner slots) and UEFA money for the next. A weaker City in the Champions League earns less there.
• Cups are replayed too. Each FA Cup, League Cup and European tie City really played is replayed at their weaker strength, with base chances from ClubElo ratings. If City go out earlier, the club that beat them takes their place. The new winner gets the prize money, the trophy bonus and, for domestic cups, the European place.
• Rivals are treated the same way as City: extra PL money, European places, UEFA money, gates and better sponsorship, spent on their squads, so gains compound. Clubs that gain can push others down, so some clubs lose out too.
• Lost money comes out of squad and staff pay, which covers players, coaches, analysts, medical and academy staff. City's other costs are mostly fixed or tied to revenue. Spreading the loss across all costs instead would make City's squad cut about 30% smaller.
• Also counted: City's profit on player sales falls with the squad cut; UEFA's 10-year ranking money (about €2m a year per extra Champions League season in the previous ten); documented sponsor bonuses (about £3m for a title, £4m for a Champions League win, roughly £10m a season for a big club outside the Champions League); and sponsors' memory of success over all past seasons.
• Money is in the pounds of each season. "Today's terms" scales each season by how much average Premier League club revenue has grown since (2024-25 = 1). On that basis the £830.69m is about £1.7bn.

Limits to keep in view

• No sanction is included. The real tables are as played, and the club figures are not estimates of any compensation a club might claim.
• Wages are a proxy for squad quality. The biggest effects on rivals aren't money and can't be modelled: players City signed might have joined other clubs, City pushed up wages for everyone, and a poorer City might not have attracted Guardiola in 2016.
• The declared-honestly world's early seasons rest on figures the Commission kept unpublished; we estimate FFP-exempt costs and use UEFA's investigators' view of 2011-12 and 2012-13 (losses of about €180m), not City's own claim at the time.
• Promotion, relegation and cup results not involving City stay as they happened. Building projects (the academy, stadium expansions) are left out.
• Some of the hidden money reached other clubs as transfer fees. Without it they would have received less, so the model slightly overstates rivals' gains.
• The concealed payments' seasons come from the 2023 charge list; the split within them is an assumption. Cup strength ratings are ClubElo's twice-monthly snapshots.

Sources

• Independent Commission, redacted Core Decision (29 Sept 2026), footnote 8 to ¶72: premierleague.com PDF; appeal: Premier League statement, 2 Oct 2026
• Manchester City Football Club Ltd accounts FY2010 to FY2025, Companies House 00040946: filing history
• League-wide wages and revenue: Deloitte Annual Review of Football Finance and the Guardian's club accounts surveys
• Match results and bookmaker odds: football-data.co.uk; strength ratings: ClubElo
• PL central payments; UEFA financial reports; UEFA CLFFPR and CLFSR; PL Handbooks; FA Cup prize fund; Man Utd 20-F filings and New Balance v Liverpool [2019] EWHC 2837 for sponsor clauses
• Cross-checked against Valuball's analysis of City's accounts and the decision: every figure matches