It's time to end this live text.

I'll leave you with what we know tonight:

• Manchester City arranged "sham contracts" with a number of its commercial partners as part of a scheme to disguise secret funding of more than £830m, the Premier League says.
• The League confirmed that City have been found guilty of all charges related to breaches of Premier League financial rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.
• An independent commission found that, during that time period, the club arranged the "sham contracts" as well as "relying on sham agreements to artificially inflate the club's revenues and reduce its costs".
• City continue to deny any wrongdoing and have until 2 October to submit an appeal.

Read the full story here.

Luke Edwards
Daily Telegraph writer & Premier League Review podcast

Manchester City are going to be relegated a long way down the football pyramid aren’t they?

Former Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney says his former club do not deserve to be awarded Premier League titles if rivals Manchester City are stripped of them for breaching financial rules.

Rooney was part of the United side that finished runners-up to City in 2011-2012 but does not want to be awarded the title retrospectively.

Speaking on the Stick to United podcast, external, he said: "I wouldn't feel comfortable about accepting another Premier League medal if I'm being honest, because I don't think we deserve it. We didn't do enough that season to win the league.

"I'm thinking as their players, they're there doing everything they can to win the Premier League title and in their minds they've done it.

"And, if those players have got no understanding of what's going on above them, then if that happened to me - if all of a sudden Manchester United have been doing the same and I'm getting my Premier League medals taken away from me - I'd be absolutely devastated.

"They might take them away but I wouldn't want it because I don't feel as a team we deserved it that year because we obviously didn't finish first."

Read more here.

Kieran Maguire
Football finance expert on X

Definition of 'Sham': Spurious, fake, false, not genuine, meant to deceive, fraud, hoax.

BBC Radio 5 Live

Stefan Borson, Head of Sport at lawyers, McCarthy Denning on BBC Radio 5 Live: "Clearly vast amounts of money. I think the comments that are made about the witnesses by Manchester City are quite extraordinary.

"I think it's relatively straight forward to be honest, if they fail the appeal the Independent Football Regulator will have things to say. And this will bring into question the roles of the directors inevitably, and I don't think there is much controversy there.

"The appeal will not be a re-trial or re-hearing, it will be a review of this decision in full, we do not have the full review, we have the edited highlights. It will be a review in front of a more senior set of judges, probably former Supreme Court Justices. City will focus in on the sponsorship payments. I think City will say the process and arrangement have been misunderstood by this independent commission."

Former Premier League winger Andros Townsend, speaking on the Monday Night Club: "We all want the right thing to be done, but I do worry about the integrity of the league if the past 10 years are wiped out all of a sudden.

"The Premier League would become a laughing stock, but obviously the right thing has to be done in a legal sense."

Manchester City

Image source, Getty Images

Kieran Maguire, Football finance expert on X: "The Premier League commission accuses some witnesses of giving false evidence and being dishonest."

Mark Ogden, senior writer for ESPN on X: "The wording of the Premier League statement is so brutal that if Manchester City fail to win their appeal, the sanctions will be enormous."

Former Manchester City chairman David Bernstein on Radio 5 Live: "It is damming beyond belief. My immediate thoughts are, should the board continue? Should the people involved be suspended immediately?

"Very, very serious. I think it's really terrible. There's a school of thought with lawyers that is deny, deny, deny, but this is a football club that is part of a league and the whole credibility of the league is at stake here.

"The sanctions cannot just be financial, so it's got to be way beyond that. If the appeal fails, Manchester City cannot stay in the league, they have to suffer. And I say that as a supporter and a fan."

Manchester City fan and host of the Blue Moon podcast, David Mooney on BBC Radio 5 Live: "The book needs to be thrown at the club at this stage. If they are not successful on appeal, they've lied to the fans, the football bodies, everyone. The outcome of that is that everyone has the right to be angry at them."

BBC Radio 5 Live

Culture, Media and Sport Secretary, Lisa Nandy, speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live: "It's very serious, it's hard to overstate how serious it is and the scale of the findings. It is important to say that Man City contest those findings and they have the right to a fair process, but the implications are serious if they are upheld and serious for football as a whole.

"For the sake of the fans, who need to have confidence in the integrity of the game, it's important that the Premier League concludes this process as swiftly as possible.

"We created the independent football regulator to put the fans back at the heart of the game. I do think it is right that we look at the rules that the Premier League sets itself to see if they are fit for purpose."

In explaining the length of time it had taken to provide the parties with a decision, the independent commission wrote: "It has taken us much longer than we would have wished, and much longer than we had anticipated would be the case when the hearing concluded, to produce our decision. That is regrettable."

The commission added there were 7,000 pages of transcripts from witness interviews to go through, alongside other documents, which in total amounted to "tens of thousands of pages".

Manchester City

Manchester City have just posted on X.

"Vote for your September Goal of the Month"., external

Manchester City

If you're just joining us, here's a run down of the breaking news in the last couple of hours:

• Manchester City arranged "sham contracts" with a number of its commercial partners as part of a scheme to disguise secret funding of more than £830m, the Premier League says.
• The League confirmed that City have been found guilty of all charges related to breaches of Premier League financial rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.
• An independent commission found that, during that time period, the club arranged the "sham contracts" as well as "relying on sham agreements to artificially inflate the club's revenues and reduce its costs".
• The club continues to deny any wrongdoing and have until 2 October to submit an appeal.

Read the whole story here.

Premier League

The word "sham" is used eight times in the 40-page Premier League report.

"The club knew that the annual accounts that it was submitting to the Premier League in each season did not provide a true and fair view of the club’s financial position, alternatively the club was reckless as to whether those annual accounts provided a true and fair view."

Ben Croucher
BBC Sport journalist on the BBC News Channel

Manchester City have been answering 115 charges, they have been found guilty of all of the financial breaches and a majority of the total breaches against them which include failing to co-operate with the Premier League investigation between December 2018 and February 2023 when they were charged by the Premier League.

The scale of this is absolutely unprecedented, not necessarily just within the Premier League, not just necessarily within English football but indeed all of sport. That is how significant and how serious this is.

Image source, Getty Images

What on earth is Pep Guardiola thinking tonight?

Manchester City

Manchester City fan and host of the Blue Moon podcast, David Mooney on BBC Radio 5 Live: "The book needs to be thrown at the club at this stage. If they are not successful on appeal, they've lied to the fans, the football bodies, everyone. The outcome of that is that everyone has the right to be angry at them."

Dale Johnson
Football issues correspondent

If you had the impression that the saga over Manchester City's 115 charges was almost over, think again.

Two years since the hearing began, the Premier League has confirmed that City have been found guilty of all charges related to breaches of its financial rules between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.

City have said they are "innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League" and would pursue "appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe."

It appears the chaos and uncertainty is only going to increase now.

City fans, and the rest of football, are left to guess what the punishment might be. And when this all might reach a definitive conclusion.

Ben Croucher
BBC Sport journalist on the BBC News Channel

The Premier League want to act decisively and show that there is a real cost to the actions that Manchester City have undertaken but they also need to protect the integrity of their competition as well.

If they stripped Manchester City of their titles during that period that would look very bad for the Premier League. If they kicked out one of their biggest clubs, that would look very bad on the Premier League.

There is a very fine line that the Premier League will need to tread over the course of the next few months and the next few weeks potentially.

You suspect all of that will wait with Manchester City signalling their intention to appeal.

Manchester City

• November 2018: Football Leaks allegations emerge with Der Spiegel publishing claims Manchester City breached financial fair play rules.
• March 2019: Uefa launches a formal investigation off the back of Der Spiegel's findings.
• May 2019: City criticise the investigation and launch an appeal process.
• November 2019: The Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas) deems City's appeal inadmissible.
• February 2020: Uefa announces a two-year ban for City from European competitions and a €30m fine.
• July 2020: City's European ban is overturned after an appeal to Cas.
• July 2021: City lose a jurisdiction ruling that allows the media to report the Premier League is continuing to investigate the champions for alleged financial breaches.
• April 2022: Der Spiegel publishes a fresh report claiming the Premier League has been investigating the club for three years, providing detailed claims.
• February 2023: The Premier League charges City with 115 financial breaches.
• September 2024: The start of a 10-week hearing between the Premier League and City on the 115 charges.
• February 2025: City manager Pep Guardiola says the club expect to learn the verdict "within one month". Guardiola left the Etihad at the end of last season.
• 25 September 2026: Reports emerge that a verdict has been reached, with sources telling the BBC that City have been found guilty of breaking the majority of the charges.
• 29 September 2026: Premier League releases its findings via an independent commission and confirms the guilty verdicts.