Welcome to the season when everything might change, or nothing might change, for the most popular football league on the planet. In the coming months, the hearing against Manchester City for their 115 alleged breaches of Premier League regulations will begin and a verdict is expected before the end of the campaign.

On Tuesday, in a season-opening interview with journalists, the Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Masters, insisted the competition organisers “actually have a pretty good working, operating relationship” with Manchester City. Yet that is a polite veil over an increasingly peculiar and toxic landscape for English football in which City, who have won four Premier League titles in a row, were “surprised” to find themselves accused by the Premier League of having cheated their way to the summit.

This summer, during numerous conversations with owners and executives who work or have worked within the Premier League, many speaking anonymously to protect relationships, the divergence of opinions and expectations has been revealing. The matter has been discussed informally between ownership groups within the Premier League and it is the subject of gossip in matchday boardrooms. Naturally, they speculate.

Some are so worn down by the decade-long pursuit of City that they fear Manchester City’s case may result in a financial settlement rather than a sporting penalty. Then some rival executives consider this outcome to be impossible and utterly outrageous, and say it would cast the death knell for financial sustainability not only within the English game but across European football.

As one Premier League club executive says: “The collective view I’ve heard is that an appropriate sanction would have to be a points deduction so substantial – we are talking here between 70 and 80 points — that it guarantees City a season in the Championship.”

Another of the sport’s leading figures suggests the punishment ought to be more creative, that many points could be deducted from City in each of the next three seasons, meaning the club’s chance of Champions League qualification would be severely restricted. Another compares the City case to that of the English rugby union side Saracens who, when Premiership champions in 2019, were deducted 35 points, hit with a £5.36 million ($6.9 million at current rates) fine and relegated to the second division owing to non-compliance with the league’s salary-cap rules.

A coach who came up against City has simply made his mind up about their guilt and argues they have not achieved their success with the same level of discipline as their rivals, but suspects it is too late now to truly remedy the matter. At the same time, there are fears that a failure to convict and punish City poses major questions about the Premier League’s ability to run itself, particularly with the prospect of an independent regulator still looming next year.

Numerous club executives say their incentives to follow the rules would be greatly diminished if the Premier League proves toothless on City.

At this point, we should remember that Manchester City are contesting the charges. Upon learning of their alleged breaches in February 2023, City said they were “surprised” by the development. They also said they have a “comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence in support of its position” and added that they “looked forward to the matter being put to rest once and for all”. The alleged breaches are extensive and serious, relating to a period between 2009 and 2018 in which City won three Premier League titles and emerged as one of Europe’s strongest teams, as well as hiring Pep Guardiola, the most in-demand coach in world football, to lead the club from 2016.

City stand accused of failing to provide accurate financial information, “in particular with respect to its revenue (including sponsorship revenue)”; failing to disclose managerial payments during the Italian coach Roberto Mancini’s time at the club between 2009 and 2013; and breaching Premier League rules on profit and sustainability (PSR) between 2015 and 2018.

The Premier League also argued City did not comply with UEFA – European football’s governing body – regulations around financial fair play in 2013-14 and between 2014-15 and 2017-18. The Premier League also claimed City did not cooperate fully with investigations in “the utmost good faith”.

Manchester City have been down this road before. They were banned from European competitions for two years by UEFA for alleged breaches of financial regulations in February 2020. Yet the sanction was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in July of the same year when the court ruled “most of the alleged breaches were either not established or time-barred (outside of the organisation’s five-year statute of limitations)”. City were fined €10 million (£8.6 million or $11 million) for not cooperating with the investigation.

In English football, nobody is prepared to put their name to quotes about the City case. That is not the same for La Liga president Javier Tebas, who has been a longstanding critic of the impact of clubs linked to nation-states. City always insist they are not owned by the state of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the deputy prime minister of the UAE and the minister of presidential affairs. He is the majority shareholder in City via Newton Investment and Development, a company he wholly owns and which is registered in Abu Dhabi.

Tebas tells The Athletic: “It is difficult for me to say what is proportionate in England because I don’t know so well the English rules and law. But I can refer to what happened at UEFA… then what happened at CAS — in a resolution I would describe as a joke — is they took the sanction away. It was a very controversial decision to take away that sanction. Now, let’s see, I won’t dare to predict, but I am aware that there is a lot of concern among many clubs in the Premier League about what happens with City. What happens with Man City is a before and after moment for the Premier League itself.”

The important thing to remember here is that the view of Tebas, or the many clubs in the Premier League to which he refers, will not be a factor in the final verdict. The Premier League has accused City of 115 alleged breaches, but the matter is now referred to a three-person independent commission for assessment. They are not known to the public but have been chosen by Murray Rosen KC, the barrister who is the head of the Premier League’s independent judicial panel.

A seasoned Premier League executive explains: “It is not the clubs that are prosecuting Manchester City. Unlike the American system, the clubs do not sit around in judgment of each other. They don’t decide whether to approve a new owner or not, like some American leagues. If you’ve got a case to answer, you’re going to have your day in front of an independent commission.”

While clubs will not have an input on the independent commission, The Athletic has previously reported how, in the years leading up to City being charged, rival clubs at both ownership and chief executive level would seek to impress onto the Premier League the need for progress on that matter. Sometimes it would be informal phone conversations, while legal letters and requests for information would also be sent. Very occasionally, clubs would seek an update within shareholders’ meetings, but for the most part, this became a topic executives pretended did not exist when sat together around the boardroom table.

Whenever they did ask for updates, clubs would be told by the Premier League that the case remained under investigation and nothing further could be said. Journalists have received the same answer. From a governance perspective, therefore, City’s rivals are powerless on this matter, reduced merely to lobbying around the edges. The pressure came more often from the top of the Premier League table, where bigger clubs argued to the Premier League hierarchy that they would have won more trophies if City had acted differently.

Yet over time, that anger has filtered across the division. When City sought to appeal against their UEFA ban from the Champions League at CAS, nine Premier League clubs wrote to express their objection to City’s sanction being suspended while they appealed. Some clubs then placed in the top half of the table opportunistically spied a place in European competition if City were out of the picture.

Others across the Premier League do appear to genuinely believe the sport will be healthier if a firm deterrent is in place for financial regulations, while some clubs believe it is implausible, not least in terms of the optics for the Premier League, that City could evade punishment after Nottingham Forest and Everton received points deductions for financial breaches during the previous season.

“There is no happy alternative to enforcing the rules, which everyone has agreed at the beginning of each season,” Masters told Sky Sports News this week. “They have looked each other in the eye and shaken each other’s hand and said ‘We will abide by these rules’. So the Premier League has to enforce rules.”

There is also the question as to whether any political attempts have been made to exert pressure on the Premier League. Last year, the UK government admitted its embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) in London have discussed the charges levelled at Manchester City by the Premier League, but refused to disclose the correspondence.

In response to a Freedom of Information request made by The Athletic, the government said it would risk the UK’s relationship with the UAE to do so. Manchester City did not comment when told about the existence of the correspondence and the Premier League declined to say whether it has received any correspondence from the UK government in relation to the matter.

The Athletic has previously detailed extensive official correspondence demonstrating a desire to impress the interests of the UK government on the Premier League, which has always denied it has been influenced in any way. There is no evidence to say the UAE government has made representations. Asked this week if the Premier League has ever felt pressure from foreign governments, Masters said: “Never, of any flavour or description. It just doesn’t happen.”

For the independent commission, there are reams of material to sort through. This all began when emails and documents emerged from Football Leaks and were published by German newspaper Der Spiegel in 2018. Those prosecuting City would claim the documents appeared to show City bypassing financial rules within football by disguising state investment as sponsorship revenues. City have always refused to comment on any of the German newspaper’s revelations because they say the leaks were “criminally obtained”.

During the hearing, both sides will be able to request the presence of any participants from the club or Premier League during the period in question. This may even extend to the Premier League calling upon Sheikh Mansour himself, but nobody can be compelled to attend the hearing. It would be a surprise if Mansour, as the deputy prime minister of the UAE, was to put himself in that position.

The same may be true of City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak. He is also the CEO of the $300 billion Abu Dhabi Mubadala wealth fund – which owns some of City’s sponsors – as well as the chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Affairs Authority, which is described as a specialised government agency mandated to provide strategic policy advice to the Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed.

As such, several sources close to the Premier League suggested it would be unlikely that any figure directly linked to the state in the UAE would place their reputation on the line at a Premier League commission.

The more likely scenario is that figures who have worked solely for City would attend the autumn hearing. Both sides have started preparing for cross-examination of witnesses, as to be expected with such an important hearing drawing near. One witness who had already been spoken to by City’s lawyers described the process as “hardcore”, “aggressive” and “no-holds-barred”.

• The Athletic report