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.
The seasons
Nine seasons. Pick one.
2009/10 to 2017/18, all nine live, each one checked against the published tables. We won't tell you how they end here. That's what the seasons are for.
2013/14 The slip. The surge. The title. City led the Premier League on only 14 days all season, and one of them was the last. Take the champions out and who is left holding the trophy?2017/18
The Centurions. 100 points, 19 clear. (2017/18)
The Premier League's first 100-point season, with everyone else at least 19 points behind. How close were they to each other?
2016/17
Guardiola's first six league games: six wins. (2016/17)
City led the table for most of the autumn and were never top again after 5 November. Can the side that finished third still decide who got into Europe?
2015/16
5000–1. And a February afternoon at the Etihad. (2015/16)
Leicester won 3–1 at the Etihad in February and went five points clear. Was that the afternoon they won the league?
2014/15
Frank Lampard scores for City. Against Chelsea. (2014/15)
Chelsea's record goalscorer, on loan at City, equalised against his old club. What else disappears along with that goal?
2012/13
Ferguson's farewell, and a derby won in stoppage time. (2012/13)
City finished 11 points behind United and spent one week of the season on top. The drama was further down the table. How far down?
2011/12
Eight points behind with six games left. Then the 94th minute. (2011/12)
City won the first Premier League title decided on goal difference, 15 seconds after United's season had ended. Take them out and Agüero's moment never happens. So what does?
2010/11
Rooney's overhead kick. Scored against City. (2010/11)
City led the league for exactly one day all season, then won their first major trophy in 35 years. The place to look is the last day, at the bottom.
2009/10
Chelsea by a point, on the final day. (2009/10)
Chelsea 8, Wigan 0 settled it. City drew seven league games in a row and never went top all season. Can a fifth-placed side change anything at all?
Nine-season summary
Nine seasons without City. Three titles change hands. Who gets them?
Read the nine-season summaryWhy now
On 25 September 2026 BBC Sport, The Athletic and Sky Sports reported that an independent commission had found Manchester City in breach of Premier League rules. The Premier League has not published the decision, City say the process is ongoing, reports say City are expected to appeal, and no sanction has been announced (as of 27 September 2026).
More on the case: the nine-season summaryYour club
Don't care who won it? Find your club.
Start with 2013/14: see where your club finishes without City, and what those two games were really worth. Every other season is in the Seasons menu.
What this is, and isn't.
A thought experiment. Not a verdict.
Nobody knows how the case ends yet. We make no claim about it, the club or the people who own it. We just do the maths everyone keeps hinting at, and follow it wherever it leads. We'd rather keep it interesting than keep it angry.
Not aimed at the fans.
If you support City, you're welcome here. Supporters aren't party to the case, and whatever the outcome, none of it should land on them. Your club's seasons are here too, told straight.
How
Nineteen clubs, 36 games each, three still go down, and Europe goes by that season's rules. One change, nothing else.
How it worksSeries one
The desk: what's next.
Delete City is where we start. Take one club out of the table and a dozen other questions fall out with it. As the story moves, so do we:
On the desk's list
The players.
Now on every season page: the careers that turn when the table does. Start with 2013/14: The players
The sanctions.
What a commission can actually do, and what it has done to others.
The rules.
PSR, FFP and the long fight over football's money: how the game got here.
The money.
Prize money, Champions League nights and the bills for going down.
The world.
One club, a global network. What moves when Manchester does?
How this was made.
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.
Spot something wrong? admin@delete.city. We'll fix it and say so.