Criminal investigation? Relegation or expulsion? The key Man City questions

The verdict that football fans around the world had been awaiting for years is in - Manchester City are guilty.

The club still insists it is innocent of the financial rule-breaking charges first brought against it by the Premier League in 2023, and can appeal, so the legal wrangling is far from over.

And the verdict has unleashed some huge questions for both the near and long-term future.

The Independent Football Regulator (IFR) has said the independent commission's decision raises "serious issues".

BBC Sport has taken a look at the key questions in the case and what we know about each of them so far.

What happens next and when?

The deadline for Man City to make their appeal is Friday.

In previous instances - including the guilty verdicts and punishments handed out when Everton and Nottingham Forest breached spending rules - the appeal was heard and a decision made before the sanctions against the clubs was announced.

The clubs then appealed against the sanctions, too, and had their punishments reduced.

So precedent indicates that City's appeal will be considered and decided upon before punishments are declared. Though that is not guaranteed. And a subsequent appeal against any sanctions could follow.

Exactly how long the process - which will be heard by a new three-person commission - will take is as yet unclear.

One section of the Premier League regulations says that an appeal should conclude no more than 12 weeks after it is filed, and a decision should be made within 30 days of its end.

Procedures can be hurried to meet certain deadlines, like the end of a league season.

Man City cannot make a further appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, but could potentially claim the process was not impartial at the High Court.

The Premier League's statement, formally announcing the guilty verdicts read on Monday, said it wants the process to be "concluded as soon as possible".

The phrasing may not offer any exact insight but the tone - of both the statement, and the strong language used in the independent commission's findings about the length of time the case has taken - is notable.

"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," the commission wrote. "That is regrettable."

It is clear that those in charge want the matter wrapped as quickly as can be done.

And it is arguably to the benefit of both Manchester City and all of the other clubs in the Premier League and English Football League to know where they stand sooner rather than later.

City are top of the Premier League, having taken a maximum 15 points from their opening five matches, but whether they are genuinely in a title race will be unclear as long as players, fans, and club owners are in the dark about what their punishment will be.

Were the appeal and sanctions process to drag on beyond the end of the season, it would be possible that legal challenges could be brought by teams who finished below City in the table, or are relegated, or were knocked out by them in the domestic cups, which would be far less viable if the club's 'real' position is known before that point.

How could relegation or expulsion work?

There are two key scenarios here.

The first is that one of the sanctions Manchester City are given is so significant a points deduction that they finish this season (or another future campaign, if the process takes longer) in the Premier League's bottom three and are automatically relegated to the Championship.

The second scenario is that they are expelled by the Premier League, which would require 15 of their rival clubs to vote in favour of a motion decreeing so.

Were that to happen, the club's future would be much less clear and would require them to apply to the Football Association for re-entry.

Because the EFL and National League are separate entities from the Premier League, neither would necessarily be obliged to accept an entry request from Manchester City.

And, even if a request were accepted by the EFL, its 72 clubs would have to vote whether or not to accept them.

That is where the possibility of City beginning a reascent in League Two - or potentially even lower - arises from.

There is a huge sporting and financial difference between dropping down to the Championship, with the high possibility of being promoted back to the Premier League after a single season, and starting again far lower down the pyramid.

When Juventus were relegated from Serie A to Serie B in Italy, after being found guilty of match-fixing charges in 2006, they were able to retain some of the world's best players, including Gianluigi Buffon, Pavel Nedved and David Trezeguet.