What Would Happen to Manchester City's Squad if the Club Loses Its Appeal in the Financial Case

Picture this for a second: a group of players worth more than one billion pounds in transfer fees suddenly hits the open market all at once, every one of them scrambling to find a new club. It sounds like science fiction, but it's exactly the scenario that opens up if Manchester City fails to overturn the ruling that found it guilty of systematically breaching Premier League financial rules over nine seasons.

The club has already said it disagrees with that conclusion and filed its appeal on Friday. But if that appeal doesn't succeed, European soccer is about to witness something it has never seen before: a collection of champions and superstars hitting the market all at once, something like a soccer version of Supermarket Sweep, with the continent's biggest clubs racing to grab bargains out of Etihad Stadium.

Premier League CEO Richard Masters himself put it bluntly not long ago: City "systematically violated Premier League rules for nearly a decade." With that statement on record, the odds of harsh sanctions if the appeal fails look high. There's talk of expulsion from the league, with the club forced to request readmission from the very bottom of English soccer's pyramid, or of a points deduction so severe that relegation to the Championship would be unavoidable.

A hole of more than 240 million pounds

Dropping just one tier, into the Championship, might seem like the least painful outcome. But nobody should fool themselves into thinking City could ride out the storm with the squad intact and bounce right back to the top flight. Championship clubs receive barely £5.7 million a year from the EFL's TV revenue sharing. Last season, City brought in £248.9 million in prize money (£165.5 million from the Premier League and £83.4 million from the Champions League). That gap, more than £240 million, would show up immediately on the club's books.

And that's not where the problem ends. City's most recently published wage bill, for 2024-25, stood at £408.4 million, and with signings like Gianluigi Donnarumma, Rayan Cherki, Antoine Semenyo, Marc Guehi, Elliot Anderson and Enzo Fernandez, that figure is now closer to £450 million a year. Could Sheikh Mansour and his Abu Dhabi United Group simply cover that gap out of pocket? No, because that would once again break the rules. The same goes for commercial income, £340.4 million in 2024-25: good luck finding sponsors willing to pay those kinds of numbers for a club outside the Premier League and the Champions League, with a schedule that would include trips to Lincoln City, Preston North End or Millwall.

So if anyone thinks Erling Haaland is sticking around for a match against Bolton Wanderers on a cold December night, think again. And even if he wanted to stay, the club simply wouldn't be able to afford him.

Selling fast, losing money

A former Premier League sporting director explained to ESPN just how difficult it would be to offload high-earning players without taking a loss:

It's not easy to get rid of players on high wages. Clubs would first have to sell their own players to create financial room before they could sign anyone from City, but City would absolutely lose market value in the process. Unless a club is willing to take on their current contracts, and trust me, they won't be, City would have to cover the gap. If a player is earning £200,000 a week at the Etihad and the new club only offers £150,000, City would have to put in that extra £50,000 to make up the salary.Former Premier League sporting director

The club would find itself stuck with no way out: lowering transfer prices to shed high earners from the squad, but with no real cushion, since its latest accounts show it carrying a net transfer debt of £327.6 million. It would have to pay off what it owes and, on top of that, subsidize the wages of departing players, keeping very little, if anything, from that wave of sales.

It could even lose players for nothing if a breach of contract is established following the verdict. Lawyer Paul Gilroy, speaking to The Overlap, explained it this way:

Every employment contract, whether it belongs to a footballer or someone working in a shop, carries an implied term: mutual trust and confidence between employer and employee. A player could say, "You broke that term, you are my employer and you acted in breach of that trust, so I'm entitled to terminate my contract and leave." It's a real possibility, though it depends on a lot of things: what the club tells the players, how it's handled financially. But it's absolutely a possibility.Paul Gilroy

Rivals won't exactly be sympathetic. Arsene Wenger himself recalled how City, at the start of its Sheikh Mansour era, "bought all of Arsenal's players," taking advantage of the Gunners' financial fragility after building the Emirates Stadium, snapping up Emmanuel Adebayor, Kolo Toure, Samir Nasri and Bacary Sagna. Aston Villa also lost three of its best players, Gareth Barry, James Milner and Fabian Delph, following the money to the Etihad.

If City loses its place in the Premier League, the mix of soccer ambition and financial reality would trigger a massive, rapid exodus from much of the squad. And even though Transfermarkt values that roster at a combined £1.22 billion, the market won't be forgiving: no club will pay that price for players desperate to leave, and rivals across England and Europe will be more than happy to scoop up whatever bargains turn up.