What do Manchester City's FFP breaches mean for Arsenal?

Recently news has broken that after a four year investigation, the Premier League and FA have found Manchester City to have broken the Premier League’s financial fair play rules around 100 times between 2009 and 2018, as well as breaking UEFA’s financial fair play rules over a five year period. Manchester City won the league three times in that span but what could the club face in terms of punishment and what does that mean for Arsenal?

Put as simply as possible, the Premier League’s financial fair play (FFP) rules are a set of guidelines that ensure club’s only spend what they earn, restricting a club’s owner(s) from buying their team an advantage with a mass influx of money.

There are many rumours and allegations being thrown around as to what the club are guilty of, however there are not many concrete facts at the time of writing. In February 2020, Manchester City were banned from European competitions for two seasons by the governing body UEFA and also fined €30m. City took the case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) who then overturned the penalty to just a €10m fine, as many of the allegations had occurred too long ago for UEFA to take any action.

The Premier League’s FFP rules, however, do not include a time restriction, meaning that any breaches that City may or may not have committed are all open.

So what does this mean for Arsenal’s title charge?

There are many punishments that the independent commission can impose on a club, including:

- Suspension from playing league games

- Points deductions

- Recommendation to the board that league matches be replayed

- Recommendation to the board that the league expels the respondent club

- Order compensation

- Cancel or refuse registration of players

- Conditional punishment

- Order the club to pay costs

- Make such other order as it seems fit

The most enticing of all of these as an Arsenal fan – a points deduction. There is no word yet on how severe the deduction could be but even a 5 point penalty would extend Arsenal’s lead at the top of the table to double digits, even with a game in hand.

There is surely more developments to come in relation to this news but at the moment, everything seems to be slightly up in the air.