Why is everyone so sure they wont get demoted? Its the only punishment that would be meaningful and the PL need it to be meaningful. The consequence needs to be worse than the crime otherwise all teams will fancy their chances at gaining many seasons of success if the punishment is just one bad season and a bit of money. Id sacrifice ending up 10th one season if it meant winning 3/4 titles before hand.
After this, financial cheating must seen to be not an option, not something that generates a punishment worth risking for
Don't fool yourself, at the top of the pyramid in any hierarchy, it's never about the crime and the punishment. It's always about conflicting interests. The people who run the Premier League are already in bed with the oil states. They opened the door wide open for them to go through. They don't want them and their money out of the game, they just want them to acknowledge that the governing body of the league will be the one to decide how much they are allowed to bend the rules. Money and prestige.
I don't blame people for not sifting through 3.5 TBs of Football Leaks posted by Der Spiegel to get a better picture. It is a shame though that the few journos who were on the case and were screaming "scandal" were so easily waved away by the big media, which never really cared to inform football fans what the fuss was all about. Because, back then, UEFA and City as opposing parties in court was the least expected thing in the football world. In the documents, UEFA had open channels of communication with both the City and PSG ownerships and they were the ones presenting them with safe ways to bypass the FFP rules. By saying UEFA, we're not talking about a few accountants with basement offices in Nyon. Here, we have officials going as high as Gianni Infantino telling Al-Khelaifi and Mansour how to make their sponsorships/deals under the table look as legitimate as possible. All the while, UEFA were banning any club from countries like Turkey and Romania which couldn't meet the FFP requirements. That's how crime and punishment works at the top of the pyramid. Bottom line is that UEFA's deal was a conditional fine and a pre-agreed amount of cash under the table per year - from now on - in exchange for turning a blind eye to what had been going on until then. According to the same leaks, Ifantino met Soriano in 2014 in London and the alleged deal that was put on the table for City was 26 million Euros of financial doping above the Emirates contracts' real price per year with the promise that UEFA would never look into the 233 million deficit City had then, going by FFP rules. What happened? Al-Khelaifi took the deal offered to PSG, while Mansour refused to kneel and kiss the ring. Afterwards, UEFA fecked up royally their case in CAS.
If you connect the dots, you'll see why PSG stood firmly by UEFA's side when the whole thing with the European Super League broke out. The Premier League is no different. They probably fear that United, Liverpool (Klopp has always been outspoken about City's spending and i guess it's not happening against his employers' will), Arsenal, Chelsea and other clubs will want to break the agreements already set in place and look to sign separate deals that will allow them to maximize their income (especially United and Liverpool as "legacy" clubs with already established global fanbases) in order to level the field. Basically, what the ESL would, more or less, allow them to do. Then, all hell will break loose. I know it's only one season, but it looks like the PL might have struck an agreement with Newcastle on that matter. My guess is that Mansour's stance hasn't changed much. They have been oiling the machine for 15 years now, and i wouldn't blame them if they felt invincible. So, we're probably going to see a face-off between City Group and the PL. But don't kid yourself that this is about doing the right thing or anything. If that was the case, they would not have allowed oligarchs and oil states into the PL in the first place. They knew what was going to happen. Pep knows, too, despite acting like the most innocent child in the world.