New Man City 115 charges timeline emerges as nightmare scenario prospect given

A fresh warning has arrived that a verdict for Manchester City's alleged 115 breaches of the Premier League's financial rules could not arrive until the approach of the 2025/26 campaign.

With , and considered amongst their biggest rivals, it is a state of play that could only make the challenge of next season that much more difficult if Etihad Stadium chiefs are able to commit to a 'business as usual' outlook.

In February 2023, the charged its then-champions with 115 alleged financial discrepancies spanning nine seasons between 2009 and 2018.

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These included accusations of failure to provide accurate financial information and failure to cooperate with investigations, all of which has been strongly denied and fought back against by in a trial last year.

This has left the Premier League's 19 other members in the dark over an outcome, as it will most certainly have drastic repercussions on their major rivals if they are indeed punished, not to mention the league as a whole.

This saga has taken place with no end date ever specified due to the unprecedented nature of what is happening. As the trial concluded last December, spring 2025 was marked as a possible end point, and comments from even heightened expectations.

But now Maxime van den Dijssel, a sports and litigation lawyer at Brandsmiths speaking to , has claimed that it risks spilling over into the summer, towards the start of the new season.

"There is such a big media frenzy around it that people have almost forgotten that this is what happens quite regularly in arbitration," she explained.

"Arbitrators won’t necessarily pay attention to the frenzy around it [the case]. They’ll have a lot of material to get through, the stakes are very high and they need to cover all bases.

"They won’t want to leave any room for either side to argue there is procedural unfairness.

"They will take that little bit longer to render a decision. It doesn’t necessarily indicate it’s going one way or another, it’s more a matter of them doing their job as carefully as possible."

Even though an end date is closer than ever before, throughout the process the possibility of appeal from the losing side has remained very realistic and could prolong any outcome even further.

Van den Dijssel concluded: "It does lead us into a position where we might not have a decision until leading into next season and then, subject to appeals, there’s going to be a lot of uncertainty about their placement in the league, how it impacts other clubs in the competition, so there is a lot we still don’t know.

"I’m not surprised it’s taking this long," she commented. "It’s common for things to take this long. They have to all effectively sit in a room and decide and go through it, and when there’s that much material, it makes sense that it would take this long."

This is not ideal for the parties directly involved trying to put this case behind them, and as alluded to, it is not in other clubs' best interests either.

Arsenal will be expected to once again challenge for the Premier League title, as will Man City, after both take to the open transfer market and fix their problems.

Meanwhile Chelsea, also in the Champions League qualification battle, may hope to kick on and join that fight too.

Spurs will finally wish to rejoin the fight for European qualification at the very worst after a disappointing season stranded in the Premier League's bottom half.

That bracket is one being breached by , and this season and has been done by in previous years.

But the i's report here outlines that Man City, under Guardiola's coaching and the backroom leadership of new sporting director Hugo Viana, have plans in motion to rebuild their visibly ageing squad.

Having spent £180m over the most recent January window, this does not appear as if it will stop, as Kevin de Bruyne is amongst senior stars set to depart. Nottingham Forest's Morgan Gibbs-White and Bayer Leverkusen's Florian Wirtz are named as high-value targets.

So, the Premier League could expect to see a revitalised Man City before a verdict of their charges even arrives.