Manchester City come out swinging after leaked guilty verdicts on vast majority of charges

The Premier League has yet to officially confirm Friday's leaked news that Manchester City have been found guilty of the vast majority of more than 100 charges, but it is already clear the ramifications will be far-reaching and potentially endless. Enormous fines, relegation, multiple giant asterisks, staggered points deductions and even demotion to the North West Counties League have all been mooted as possible punishments.

Given the club has protested its innocence throughout the entire investigation into its financial shenanigans, all but the most delusional City conspiracy theorists could be forgiven for presuming the club might now prostrate itself before the beaks and beg for some modicum of mercy. Instead, on Saturday they came out swinging haymakers.

“The Premier League process still has a long way to run, and our confidence and intent in proving the club’s innocence is just as strong as when this began,” huffed the club chair, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, in a letter to fans.

While Martin Tyler and Sergio Agüero mournfully contemplate the fact that the goal they made more famous than any other scored in Premier League history may ultimately be consigned to the big dustbin of Didn’t Happen, it remains to be seen what effect the guilty verdicts will have on the current City team. While they lead the Premier League, costly mistakes made by Nico O’Reilly and Marc Guéhi in England’s defeat at the hands of Spain suggest the potential for apocalyptic sanctions could prove quite the distraction.

Not everyone expects the harshest punishment to be applied, however. “I don’t think automatic relegation will be applied,” said the football finance expert Kieran Maguire, a man currently getting more radio airplay than Taylor Swift. “We’re at the end of September and if we do that at the end of September, what’s Manchester City going to do until next August?”

Appeal any judgments against them, is the general expectation – and ideally in a process that can’t be hurried.