Wait no

Right, so avoiding relegation this season would be easier, but it wouldn't change promotion this season. Just next season.

In the past when situations like this have happened in other leagues, they don't relegate four and promote four. They just take the team that got forced relegation and put them in last, and relegate the bottom three, and have the league below promote as normal.

If they do that here, it wouldn't make promotion any easier this season, just harder next season.

200 million is nothing, but retroactive punishments feel hollow. They hand back a few trophies and then keep going? Let them represent England in the Champions League next season? Swear they're following the rules this time?

I feel like future punishment is a more firm deterrent. Relegate them. Preferably down a few divisions. Make them prove they can make their way back to the Premier League by operating the club within the rules (and with a much smaller budget) for a few years.

It would certainly be a huge deterrent for other clubs to think about doing the same.

I don't know, as a fan I don't know if I'd want my club to be awarded a "retroactive title". Feels just kind of hollow. Like if Leicester had their 2015-16 title stripped, would I really want Arsenal to claim that title? Meh.

There are so many ripple effects that would have occurred had City not been cheating this whole time. It's hard to say that second place just gets the title and that's that.

They might have to pay, like, 5 million pounds! That'll teach them to try to funnel their unlimited money into the league.

It's extremely likely most, if not all, of their top players force a move if they are relegated.

One, City probably wouldn't be able to afford their current salary bill in the Championship with no Champions League, especially now that they're actually under FFP scrutiny and a lot of the remaining legitimate sponsors will try to distance themselves from this scandal. TV money is also a ton less in the second division. Tickets sell for less, and they will likely sell fewer of them. They will sell less merch. They would probably be deemed ineligible for parachute payments. We're talking a huge drop in revenue.

Two, players don't like "wasting" a season in a lower division than where they should be playing. Not to mention there's no "guarantee" it will only be one year... if one key player jumps ship the rest will soon follow and promotion might prove to be harder than expected when you're trying to integrate a bunch of new players. Especially since if they are relegated, it means a minimum of two seasons without Champions League. They'd likely have to have a fire sale to offload their highest earners and guys who simply don't want to play in the Championship and miss Champion's League.

If they could manage to hang on to their important players for that season, then yes it kinda fucks over the teams that are in the Championship as it's basically a guaranteed promotion spot gone, leaving the rest of them to fight over the remaining two.

Also allegedly kept some salaries off the books by having outside companies pay staff and/or players as "consultants" or "advisors", when they didn't really do anything outside of their normal duties for the club.

So not only did they fake revenue, they also hid expenditures.

Gee, I wonder how they consistently showed record profits year after year...