Liverpool and Manchester City: £830m verdict exposes lost era

An independent commission has ruled that Manchester City used sham contracts worth £830m to inflate commercial revenue between 2009 and 2018. The Premier League published the panel’s findings in a redacted report running to 40 pages, and the breach remains subject to an appeal City has already lodged.

For Liverpool supporters, the Liverpool Manchester City verdict reopens a decade of title races settled by single points and contested by centimetres. It is a reminder of how fine those margins were, even though the ruling carries no promise of retrospective trophies.

Manchester City verdict: how the £830m breach was ruled

The commission examined sponsorship arrangements City signed between 2009 and 2018, years in which the club’s commercial income rose sharply through Gulf backed partnerships. Investigators concluded the deals did not reflect fair market value and were used to disguise extra funding as commercial revenue, inflating turnover by as much as £830m while City still met the division’s spending rules on paper.

You can read our full report on the Manchester City verdict for the panel’s complete findings. The Liverpool Echo carries further details of the independent commission report, including how the 40 page document was redacted before publication to protect commercially sensitive information.

City deny any wrongdoing. The club has confirmed it will appeal, and no sanction has been applied while that process continues.

The expert angle: dishonest conduct and circumvented rules

The Liverpool Manchester City verdict did not arrive in gentle language. The commission’s report describes City’s conduct as ‘dishonest’, and concludes the sponsorship contracts were ‘clearly intended to circumvent the Premier League rules’ designed to keep spending in check across the division.

No single season will resonate with Klopp’s Liverpool more than 2018-19, when City won the title by a single point. In January 2019, John Stones cleared the ball off Liverpool’s goal-line at the Etihad Stadium with just 11mm to spare, a margin that effectively decided where that trophy went.

Officially, Liverpool are only due potential retrospective recognition for the 2016 Carabao Cup final, a modest footnote rather than a rewriting of history. The verdict does not hand the club any Premier League titles, whatever supporters might hope.

Klopp left Liverpool in the summer of 2024, ending a trophy laden nine years that included the 2019-20 championship. He returned to football duties at the start of 2025 as Red Bull’s global head of soccer, before succeeding Julian Nagelsmann as Germany’s national coach after the World Cup.

What happens next: legal compensation and City’s appeal

Liverpool are among the clubs involved in an ongoing legal compensation debate that has followed the case, with rival sides weighing what financial redress might look like if the ruling survives appeal. No settlement has been reached, and nothing is confirmed about how, or whether, compensation would be paid.

Manchester City continue to deny all wrongdoing and have an appeal pending. Until that process concludes, the £830m finding stands as a ruling rather than a final judgement, leaving supporters on both sides waiting to learn what, if anything, changes for the record of the Klopp era.

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