On 29 September 2026, the Premier League published an independent commission’s finding on Manchester City. The club was guilty of all charges tied to serious breaches of the league’s financial rules from 2009/10 to 2017/18, and of most of the charges that it failed to cooperate with the investigation. Reporting put the tally at 114 of the 115 charges brought in February 2023.
The commission’s core finding was that City used sham commercial contracts to disguise owner funding as sponsorship income. It said revenues were overstated and costs understated by more than £900 million, so the accounts filed with auditors and regulators did not show the true position. City deny wrongdoing. They have until Friday 2 October to appeal, and they have said the decision contains errors of law, principle and fact. No sporting sanction has been set. Points deductions, title stripping and other penalties are for a later hearing.
None of that moves Erling Haaland on this site.
Haaland is the clearest reason NVC exists. He is Manchester City’s leading league scorer in a team that has won all five Premier League matches. A goals chart and a results table both treat him as the story. The NVC table does not. His current score is 81.6. That is an excellent starter, not an elite, season-defining 90.
The gap is the method. NVC is a value-over-replacement number, the football version of WAR. It counts finishing, but it also counts creation, progression, defensive contribution and minutes, then adjusts for league strength, opponent quality and team style. A striker whose value is concentrated in goals can outscore teammates and still sit behind them if those teammates add more across the rest of the match.
On the current ranking, Rayan Cherki (about 85.4) and Antoine Semenyo (about 85.3) are ahead of him. Semenyo scored twice in the 5–3 against Sunderland. Cherki is not the name on the back page. The table is not ranking fame, and it is not ranking the club’s accounts. It is ranking contribution above a realistic replacement player in the Big 5.
The financial case can still matter. If titles are later stripped, the medal count changes. It does not rewrite Haaland’s actions, and it should not be used to mark his NVC up or down. A disguised sponsorship in 2014 does not make an 81.6 into a 98. A five-game goal streak does not either, unless the rest of the profile moves with it.
Use the Premier League verdict for the argument about how City booked revenue. Use the homepage table for the argument about Haaland. Right now the best finisher at the top of the league is not the highest-value City player on a replacement-level scale. That is the point of the site.