Exactly three years ago, 10 paragraphs on the Premier League website set the cat among the pigeons. Under the nondescript heading “Premier League statement”, football’s richest and most popular domestic competition announced unprecedented disciplinary charges against Manchester City, champions of the two previous seasons (and the two to come). We are still waiting for the outcome.

The estimated 134 charges covered years of alleged wrongdoing but broke down into a couple of key chunks: accusations that City had failed to provide “accurate financial information” to the league and to properly “cooperate … and assist” with the subsequent investigation. Precious little new information has followed.

The league has steadfastly refused to comment. City have gone no further than a statement that “welcomed” the appointment of an independent panel to consider the charges, and nodded towards “the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of [City’s] position”. The public and the football industry find themselves in the dark.

The reasons for silence are obvious: until a verdict is known, neither party wants to be seen to be prejudicing an outcome or putting pressure on the three-person disciplinary panel led by Murray Rosen KC. But the absence of an update, or even guidance on how long the process may take, has meant a flood of speculation filling the void.

Accusations of a cover-up or a stitch-up are common, as are claims that the process may have been botched by the Premier League or obstructed by City. Speculation on when a verdict may come ranges from “imminently” to “years away”.

The hearings at the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London, where Rosen’s panel sat in front of two large teams of lawyers, finished in December 2024. The hearings began a year after the charges, which followed a four-year investigation into City by the league, were made.

Why has a verdict not been announced? The explanations posited veer from one extreme to the other: on the one hand a suggestion that the panel is assessing each piece of evidence with a fine-tooth comb to ensure a sound verdict. On the other, rumours that the delay has been caused by the panel members needing to partly return to their day jobs.

The question being asked within the game is: why has it been allowed to drag on for so long? “I genuinely think everybody is sitting there thinking: ‘What is the commission up to?’” said one senior figure in English football. “It’s outrageous, the case is not that complicated. You also have to ask: why so many charges? Some are more serious than others but the same resource will inevitably have been thrown at fighting the most trivial and the most complex.”

According to the individual, who has experience of developing Premier League rules, the process should have been time-limited. “It needs a disciplinary system that matches the natural rhythm of the sport; it needs cases heard quickly,” they said, pointing to changes made by the league in 2023 to ensure charges relating to profitability and sustainability breaches were resolved “in-season”.

That the league has been under scrutiny over the City case is obvious from any skim of the reams of media coverage. Pressure on its chief executive, Richard Masters, was intense at the time of the hearings, with concerns within the organisation that his position was in jeopardy. (There has been no such pressure on City’s leadership, who have continued to challenge the Premier League rulebook while spending about £450m to buy players in the past four transfer windows.) But the mood has changed somewhat over the past 12 months.

Masters ended 2025 by agreeing a new set of financial regulations for the league, ending two years of bickering between clubs and the executive. His position had been bolstered and the dynamics within the boardroom had changed too, with two of the loudest voices – Tim Lewis of Arsenal and Tottenham’s Daniel Levy – leaving.

The mood among shareholder clubs in 2026 is more apathetic than antagonistic. There is fatigue relating to the City case and legal activity more broadly, with the league’s spending on litigation in 2024 alone running to £45m. There is a feeling too among some clubs that whatever happens to City in this case will not affect them much.

If there is a sense that the Premier League and its shareholders would rather put this all behind them, there is still a keen public interest in the outcome. An incredible run of success may forever have an asterisk alongside it; the foundations of the Premier League as a competition could also be upended. The longer the case drags on, the more a compromise verdict feels plausible; one in which City are found guilty on some charges, but not others, and any sanction is tangible but not transformative.

Three years on, though, and no one is any the wiser as to what will happen. The nature and scale of the case against City has never been seen before in English football. Almost as striking, however, is the extent to which any information about it has stayed hidden.