On the face of it, there is little to connect a Glasgow club that collapsed under unpaid tax in 2012 and the richest club in English football, now facing the consequences of an independent commission’s findings. Rangers ran out of money. City have never been short of it. Rangers’ fate was decided in creditors’ meetings and by a tax authority. City’s will be decided by sanction hearings and appeals.
Yet the comparison keeps coming up, and it is worth taking seriously, not because City are about to go bust, but because the Rangers case is the nearest thing British football has to a precedent for what happens when a major club collides with its governing bodies, its rivals and the law all at once. This piece sets out the facts of each case, then looks at what the Rangers experience suggests about delay, rival clubs, cooperation, sanctions, survival and recovery.
The Premier ague charged City in February 2023 with 115 breaches of its financial regulations, covering a nine-year period from 2009 to 2018. A three-person independent commission heard the case over ten weeks from September to December 2024. On 28 September 2026, the league announced the result: the commission found City guilty of all 80 charges relating to financial wrongdoing and 34 of the 35 charges of failure to cooperate with the league’s investigation.
In its statement, the Premier League said the club had used contracts in which sponsors paid less than the contracts stated, with the difference covered by the club’s owners, which inflated revenue and reduced costs by £900 million in total. City said they were “disappointed and surprised” and insisted they are innocent of the accusations, vowing to be relentless in pursuing avenues of appeal.
Crucially, no sanction has yet been approved, and the punishment is to be decided at a separate hearing. Even then, the club is expected to appeal. So what exists today is a verdict, not a penalty. Everything about the consequences remains open.
The Rangers story is a different kind of case. The club, trading as The Rangers Football Club plc, entered administration in February 2012 after owing substantial amounts to HMRC. Administrators from Duff & Phelps were appointed on 14 February, a decision made by then owner Craig Whyte. Rangers were deducted ten points on entering administration.
The attempt to rescue the club through a company voluntary arrangement, a deal with creditors that would have let the existing company survive, was led by Charles Green’s consortium. It failed when HMRC, who were owed more than £21 million, said they would vote against it. HMRC’s reasoning was explicit: a liquidation, it argued, offered the best chance to protect taxpayers by allowing the potential investigation and pursuit of possible claims against those responsible for the company’s financial affairs. The old company’s assets were then sold to a new company in a deal reported at £5.5 million, and the club restarted. After the Scottish Premier League rejected its application and the lower leagues voted on where to place it, Rangers re-entered the Third Division, the fourth tier of Scottish football, in time for the 2012-13 season. They did not return to the top flight until 2016.
So the contrast is plain. Rangers’ problem was debt and an angry creditor. City’s is a finding of rule-breaking by a sporting body. The lessons, therefore, are not about avoiding the same mistakes. They are about what happens to a powerful club once the machinery of football and law is turned against it.
The most striking feature of the Rangers collapse is how little control the club had over its own fate once the process started. A rescue plan was drawn up, a bidder was ready, and everyone involved was trying to avoid liquidation. But a single creditor held the deciding vote, and it chose a different route.
HMRC’s logic is worth pausing on. It did not simply want its money back. It wanted the process that would give it the most leverage to look at how the club had been run. Liquidation was a tool for investigation as much as for recovery. The club’s leadership and its prospective owners could argue, negotiate and campaign, but they could not override a creditor that had decided what outcome it preferred.
City’s situation is not identical, because the process here is contractual and sporting rather than insolvency-based. But there is a similar dynamic. The punishment will be set by a separate tribunal, and the final shape of any sanction will depend on decisions made by others: the commission, an appeal panel, and potentially the other clubs. A club that is confident of its position can still find that the levers are in someone else’s hands.
The practical lesson is that the time to shape the narrative is early, before a process hardens. Rangers’ administrators spent weeks arguing the club’s case in public while the creditor’s mind was already made up. A strategy based on persuasion alone, without a realistic plan for the outcomes you do not want, is a risky one.
One of the most debated parts of the Rangers saga was the way sporting punishments were layered on top of the financial collapse. The club lost ten points on entering administration. When the new company applied to take the old club’s place in the Scottish Premier League, that application was rejected on 4 July 2012. The Scottish Football League’s clubs then voted, in a stunning vote on 29 July, against admitting Rangers to either the First Division or the Third, before a later arrangement placed the club in the bottom tier.
Rangers’ administrators complained loudly at the time. One of them said they were “utterly shocked and dismayed by the draconian sanctions” imposed on the club. Whatever one makes of that complaint, it shows a real pattern. Football’s governing bodies often have wide discretion over punishments, and when those punishments are discussed in the shadow of public anger, they can end up more severe than a purely legal analysis would suggest.
For City, the point cuts both ways. The Premier League’s rules provide a framework, and an independent commission has already found against the club, so the room for improvisation may be smaller. But the sanction stage is where discretion returns. Previous cases, such as points deductions imposed on other clubs for breaching the league’s profit and sustainability rules, have been criticised as inconsistent and unpredictable. What a panel decides in City’s case will set a precedent, and the arguments about proportionality will be fierce.
The lesson is that sanction hearings are not a formality. A club that has accepted, or lost, the argument over guilt still has everything to play for over punishment, and the evidence it presents at that stage, about cooperation, remedial action and mitigating factors, may matter enormously.
Perhaps the starkest feature of the Rangers case was how much power the other clubs held. The question of where Rangers would play after liquidation was not resolved by a court or a regulator. It was resolved by a vote among rivals, some of whom had every reason to want the club to suffer, and some of whom had practical reasons to want it back as soon as possible, because of the money it generated for everyone.
The result was a messy compromise. The clubs’ reluctance to let Rangers back in at a higher level reflected a mix of principle and self-interest. Some argued that rewarding a club that had collapsed financially would be unfair to those that had played by the rules. Others worried about the commercial consequences of a diminished Rangers
City face a version of the same dynamic. Reporting before the verdict suggested that other Premier League clubs were split, with some reported to be willing to push for harsh punishment and others believing the delay in reaching a verdict was causing undue damage to the league and favouring a sanction that would allow everyone to move on. And expulsion from the division is not expected, because it would require a majority vote from the other clubs.
The lesson is that a club’s relationships with its competitors are an asset or a liability. Rangers discovered how little goodwill they had when the vote came. For any club in a dispute with its league, the attitude of its rivals is not background noise. It can shape the outcome
Both cases dragged on, and in both the delay carried costs.
City’s case has run for years. The investigation began in 2018, charges came in 2023, the hearing concluded in December 2024, and the verdict arrived in September 2026. Throughout that period, the club operated under a cloud. Every trophy was met with questions, every transfer window carried uncertainty, and every commercial relationship had to be explained against the backdrop of the unresolved case. Reporting during the long wait noted growing concern that the delay itself was damaging the competition.
Rangers’ ordeal was compressed into months rather than years, but the uncertainty was just as corrosive. The club lost players and staff, struggled to operate, and spent weeks unsure whether it would exist in its old form. The long-running dispute over employee benefit trusts, which loomed over the club’s finances, was not finally resolved until years afterwards, long after the old company had gone.
There is a bitter irony in that. A club can spend years fighting a case and, even if it is vindicated in the end, find that the world has moved on. The victory arrives too late to matter. For City, the lesson is that an appeal is not only a legal process but a strategic decision. Prolonging the dispute may keep options open, but it also prolongs the uncertainty for players, staff, sponsors and supporters.
One of the more telling details in City’s verdict is that the commission found the club guilty of 34 of 35 charges of failing to cooperate with the league’s investigation. That is a finding about how the club behaved during the process, not just about what it did before.
Rangers’ experience points in the same direction. The disputes around the club’s handling of information, its relationships with regulators and its dealings with the authorities became part of the story and contributed to the loss of goodwill. In the aftermath of the collapse, much of the anger from other clubs and officials was directed at how the club had conducted itself, not only at the underlying debts.
The same pattern appears elsewhere in Scottish football. The case of Cove Rangers, hit this week with a season-long registration embargo, turned on a missed payment from 2024 but also on a failure to notify the league and an incorrect certification. In that case, the reporting failures were treated as breaches in their own right. Governing bodies increasingly see transparency as the foundation of the system, and they punish concealment independently of the original problem.
For City, the finding on cooperation matters whatever happens on appeal. It suggests that the way a club handles an investigation can compound its difficulties. The practical lesson, for any club, is that openness with regulators is not just ethical but strategic. A mistake that is disclosed is usually cheaper than one that is concealed
The most hopeful lesson from the Rangers case is that a big club can come back. Rangers returned to the top flight in 2016, four seasons after the collapse, and went on to win the league again. Their supporters stayed, their stadium filled, and their identity endured through years in the lower divisions. The collapse was devastating, but it was not the end.
The more sobering lesson is what recovery cost. The club spent several years outside the top division. The loss of status, revenue and players was real. The relationship between supporters and the club’s owners was damaged for years, and the question of whether the new company was the same club as the old one became a bitter debate. The scars have not entirely healed.
For City, the equivalent questions are different. The club’s resources, global supporter base and commercial strength mean it is far better placed to absorb a punishment than Rangers were. A points deduction or a fine would hurt, but it would not threaten the club’s existence. If the club’s supporters and owners remain committed, as Rangers’ did, the long-term outlook is not bleak.
Yet there are things money cannot easily repair. Reputation, in particular, is hard to rebuild. A club whose achievements are routinely questioned by rivals and neutrals faces a long process of regaining trust, and it may find that some of the goodwill it had does not return. Rangers learned that lesson, and it is one that City, whatever the outcome, will have to confront.
There is one further thread in the Rangers case that deserves attention. HMRC explicitly chose liquidation because it wanted to look into the conduct of the people responsible for the club’s finances. The administrators and the tax authority were not only dealing with a company. They were examining decisions made by individuals.
In the City case, the commission’s findings concern the club, but they also implicate the arrangements between the club and its owners. The league’s statement described sponsors paying less than the stated amounts, with owners covering the difference. That points to decisions at the highest level of the club’s structure. Whatever the appeals process decides, the question of who made those decisions, and who is accountable, will continue to attract scrutiny.
The lesson is that governance matters. A club’s reputation depends on the integrity of its leadership, and when something goes wrong, the focus inevitably turns to the people at the top. Rangers’ supporters spent years asking who was responsible for the collapse. City’s supporters, and the wider football world, may ask the same about the conduct the commission found.
It would be a mistake to push the analogy too far, and several differences are important.
Financial strength.Rangers faced insolvency. City do not. The club’s ownership has substantial resources, and no creditor can force it into liquidation. The danger Rangers faced, the loss of the legal entity, is not a realistic possibility here.
The nature of the offence. Rangers’ collapse arose from unpaid tax and debts, mostly a financial failure. City’s case is about alleged manipulation of financial reporting to comply with sporting rules. The harm in the second case is to competitive fairness, not to creditors.The institutions involved.** The Scottish game in 2012 was smaller, more volatile and more dependent on votes among clubs. The Premier League has a more developed legal and commercial structure, with independent commissions, arbitration and detailed rules. Outcomes are likely to be more formal and less prone to sudden shifts.The role of the public purse. Rangers’ creditors included the tax authority, which meant that taxpayers had a direct stake in the outcome. City’s case concerns a sporting body and its members.
Appeals. City have said they will appeal, and the process may take a long time. Rangers had no equivalent option once the creditor had decided.
These differences mean City should not expect a Rangers-style fate. But they also mean the lessons are more about process than about outcome.
Several developments will show how this case unfolds.
The appeal. The Premier League has indicated that City must pursue an appeal within a short window. Whether it succeeds, in whole or in part, will shape everything that follows.
The sanction hearing The punishment is yet to be decided. The range of possible penalties, from fines to points deductions to something more severe, is wide, and the reasoning will set a precedent
The Rangers liquidation and the City verdict are different stories with different causes, and it would be wrong to suggest that one foreshadows the other. Rangers collapsed because the money ran out and a creditor decided to pull the plug. City have been found guilty by an independent commission of breaching financial rules and failing to cooperate with the league, a verdict they dispute and intend to challenge.
Yet the Rangers case remains the best available guide to how football’s institutions behave when a major club is in the dock. The outcome is rarely in the club’s hands. Sporting sanctions can prove harsher than expected. Rivals use their votes. Delay damages everyone. Failures of cooperation compound the original problem. A club can survive and recover, but slowly, and with lasting scars. And the focus eventually falls on the people who made the decisions.
For City, the most useful lesson may be the simplest. The verdict is not the end of the story. What follows, the sanction, the appeal and the response of the football world, will shape the club’s future far more than the finding itself. Rangers learned that the hard way, and the way City handle the next stage will tell us whether they have been paying attention.
