DELETECITY

How it works

One club out. Everything else exactly as it was.

Take the Premier League exactly as it happened. Remove Manchester City and every league match they played, home and away. Then recalculate what remains. Taking a club out has side effects, so here they are first, plainly.

  1. 01City out

    Manchester City and all 38 of their league games are removed, with every point and goal in them, for and against. That is the only change.

  2. 02Nineteen clubs, 36 games

    Every other club has played 36 games, not 38. Points totals come out lower than the real ones, or at best the same, and aren't directly comparable, so compare positions, not raw totals.

  3. 03The free place

    City's place goes, so every club that finished below City starts one place higher. The points each club won against City come off too, which can cancel that place, or more. That extra place is a gift, not an achievement. We only call it a change when a club climbs further, or when its fate changes: a title, Europe, relegation.

  4. 04Three still go down

    Three relegation places, as in the real season. A league a club short could argue for two, but changing each season's rules would stack one hypothetical on another.

  5. 05Europe by that season's rules

    England's Champions League and Europa League places go by league position exactly as that season's rules handed them out, including the round each place entered.

  6. 06Cup results stand

    Every cup result stands as it happened, including the cups City won and the European places that came from them, places passed down the table included. We don't replay a single match, cup or league.

  7. 07Tiebreaks of the time

    Points, then goal difference, then goals scored. Deductions of the time stand, such as Portsmouth's nine points in 2009/10.

  8. 08Nothing simulated

    No invented results, no “City would have sold X to Y”, no butterfly effects, no claim about what should have happened. One club's league games never happened; everything else did.

Every season page keeps three things apart: what happened (fact), what the rebuilt table says (calculated), and what nobody can know. The What if? pieces live in the third: questions built from the record, left open for you to argue about. We never write an alternative history.

Why keep it this simple?

Could you argue for two relegations in a 19-club league? Absolutely. Should Europe be recalculated as if the cup finals never happened? Maybe. But every extra “what if” stacks another guess on the first one, and the maths stops being checkable. So we change one thing, City's league games, and leave everything else exactly as it was. It's a thought experiment, not evidence for a tribunal. If you'd draw the lines differently, good: that's the debate.

Integrity checks, run on every build

2017/18: City removed
W32 D4 L2 · 106–27 · 100 pts
2017/18: points given back
10
2016/17: City removed
W23 D9 L6 · 80–39 · 78 pts
2016/17: points given back
27
2015/16: City removed
W19 D9 L10 · 71–41 · 66 pts
2015/16: points given back
39
2014/15: City removed
W24 D7 L7 · 83–38 · 79 pts
2014/15: points given back
28
2013/14: City removed
W27 D5 L6 · 102–37 · 86 pts
2013/14: points given back
23
2012/13: City removed
W23 D9 L6 · 66–34 · 78 pts
2012/13: points given back
27
2011/12: City removed
W28 D5 L5 · 93–29 · 89 pts
2011/12: points given back
20
2010/11: City removed
W21 D8 L9 · 60–33 · 71 pts
2010/11: points given back
35
2009/10: City removed
W18 D13 L7 · 73–45 · 67 pts
2009/10: points given back
34
Every live season: 38 City fixtures, one home and one away against each club
Pass
Every club: P36, W+D+L=36, Pts=3W+D less any deduction of the time
Pass
Real table rebuilt from data = official final table
Pass

Why now?

A narrower, stranger question.

On 29 September 2026 the Premier League published an independent commission's decision, which found the charges about the League's financial rules proved over nine seasons, 2009/10 to 2017/18. City say “the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”, and that they will “now pursue the appeal avenues open to it”. No sanction has been announced. This project takes no side in the case. It asks a narrower, stranger question: take City and every league match they played out of the record, and what table is left?

Checked 29 September 2026. Sources: Premier League statement, the redacted Core Decision (PDF), Manchester City statement, all 29 September 2026.

Data

Check our working.

How we count transfers

Wikipedia's lists of English football transfers, one page per window from summer 2009 to January 2018, are our index: who moved, between which clubs, and when. Each fee comes from a named first-tier outlet (the BBC, then Sky Sports, then the Guardian, then another first-tier outlet), or is Wikipedia's figure, checked against a second dataset where that dataset has the deal. Clubs rarely disclose fees and the Premier League publishes none, so every total is in reported fees: what was reported, not what was paid.

We take the initial fee, not add-ons, and show the range where reports differ. A loan made permanent has its fee counted once, in the window the deal fixing it was agreed. A deal with no reported figure is undisclosed: it counts as zero, and every total carries its number of undisclosed deals. Loans without a fee are never totalled. Money is in £ only: the one fee reported only in euros (Francis Coquelin, Arsenal to Valencia, January 2018) is left out and listed. Wages, agents' fees, sell-on payments and loan fees aren't counted.

How this was made

Made with AI, checked by a human.

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

AI agents do the research, the writing and the fact-checking. A human editor directs the work and checks it before it goes up.

Nobody types a table. Every one is calculated from the published results and rechecked, with the integrity checks above, every time the site is built.

Spot something wrong? admin@delete.city. We'll fix it and say so.

Sources & credits

Results & tables

Current news

Checked 29 September 2026. This project does not depend on, or take a position on, the outcome of the case.

Images & type

No photography is used. Every graphic is an original data graphic generated from the published data.

Typefaces: Archivo (Omnibus-Type) and Source Serif 4 (Adobe), both under the SIL Open Font License.