DELETECITY

A football thought experiment

Delete City. Rebuild the league.

Take Manchester City out of the Premier League and keep every other result exactly as it happened. Nine seasons, 2009/10 to 2017/18, rebuilt from the published results. The table you remember falls apart, and the arguments start.

Rebuild the league. Keep the debate.

Pick a season

Why we made it

What this is, and why we made it.

On 29 September 2026 the Premier League published the decision of an independent Commission in its case against Manchester City. It is probably the biggest story in world football, and it covers the same nine seasons as this site: 2009/10 to 2017/18.

Where it stands, as of 29 September 2026

  • The independent Commission. Its Core Decision finds the charges about the League's financial rules proved, and City in breach of its duties of co-operation on three of the four charges alleged (one of them in part).
  • The Premier League. “An independent Commission has found Manchester City FC guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the Premier League's financial rules over a nine-season period, and the majority of charges in relation to its failure to co-operate with the League's investigation.” Sanction “will be addressed separately in a further hearing”.
  • Manchester City. “The Club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case.” City say “the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”, and that the club will “now pursue the appeal avenues open to it”.
Latest news: the full record

  • A thought experiment. Not a verdict.

    The Commission has ruled. City say they will “now pursue the appeal avenues open to it”, and sanction is still to be decided at a further hearing. We don't add our own judgement to theirs, and we predict no sanction. We're neutral, but we're not uninterested: we do the one piece of maths everyone keeps hinting at (take City out, keep every other result) and follow it wherever it leads.

  • Not aimed at the fans, or the players.

    If you support City, you're welcome here. Fans and players aren't party to the case, and whatever the outcome, none of it should land on them. Their seasons are here too, told straight.

  • Why now.

    Because the argument is already happening, in every pub and every group chat, and it deserves real numbers. Nineteen clubs, 36 games each, three still go down, and Europe goes by that season's rules. One change, nothing else. How it works

The seasons

Nine seasons. Pick one.

2009/10 to 2017/18, each one rebuilt from the published results and checked against the official tables. We won't tell you how they end here. That's what the seasons are for.

Nine-season summary

Nine seasons without City. Three titles change hands. Who gets them?

Read the nine-season summary

Or take them one at a time. Every season, told in full:

The transfer record

The results come off the table. The money stays on the record.

Nine seasons of transfer fees, every Premier League club, window by window: who spent, who sold, and who Manchester City bought from.

  • £315.5m

    of City's reported fees went to clubs that were in the Premier League that season.

  • £901.2m

    Manchester City's net spend in reported fees, 2009/10 to 2017/18. First of 36 clubs.

  • 50

    City deals with an undisclosed fee, not counted in the totals.

Explore every club's transfers Who City bought from

All figures are reported fees, in pounds: what was reported, not what was paid. Nothing here says where any club's money came from, or links any deal to the case.

Your club

Don't care who won it? Find your club.

Besides Manchester City, thirty-five clubs played Premier League football in these nine seasons. Each one has its own story without City: the places won and lost, the points taken off City, and the money City paid them.

Every club

How this was made.

Delete City is a passion project, built from a love of football and a growing interest in AI and what it can do in the real world.

One human editor, a stack of AI agents, and one rule: nothing goes up unless it's sourced.

Every table is calculated from published results and rechecked every time the site is built. The research, writing and fact-checking are AI-assisted and human-directed.

Our aim is informed debate, not anger. This story will be argued over for years, and we'd like the arguments to start from the same numbers. We aren't here to wind anyone up.

Use it, with credit. Quote it, screenshot it, share it: please credit Delete City, link back, and keep it constructive. Don't use our work to abuse fans, players or anyone else. Terms of use

Want to partner with us, contribute, or put something right? admin@delete.city. If we get something wrong, we'll fix it and say so. Contact