Manchester City are facing serious and potentially unprecedented punishment after being found guilty of the majority of their Premier League charges by an independent commission.

A bruising statement from the Premier League on Tuesday confirmed reports that City had been found guilty of all charges related to serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules over a nine-season period between 2009/10 and 2018/19.

City were also found guilty of the majority of charges in relation to their alleged failure to co-operate with the Premier League’s investigation.

Punishment will be severe if that appeal fails, however. So just how serious could it get and how could the harshest potential sanctions work in reality?

Relegation itself is not a punishment that can be handed down to City.

Why? Because the Premier League and the EFL — which runs the Championship, League One and League Two — are separate entities. The Premier League therefore cannot simply hand City over to a different body, because the EFL is its own boss and would have no duty to accept them.

What is possible is that the Premier League punishes City with a points deduction so huge that it in effect relegates them anyway.

It is a near-guarantee that a deduction of between 55 and 100 points would relegate the club, as City would not earn enough points across the season to be left with a tally, minus the deduction, that keeps them out of the bottom three.

Expulsion would be an extreme punishment for City but is one of the options available if their appeal fails.

Premier League expulsion would require a special shareholder vote in which 15 of the 20 clubs vote in favour of it.

In the wake of the damning 40-page document released by the Premier League on the City guilty charges on Tuesday, Lisa Nandy, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, told Channel 5 News: “I don't want to preempt any kind of appeal process, and they are entitled to a fair hearing, but what I would say is that the ultimate sanction is very serious indeed.

“A club can be expelled from the Premier League if these sorts of allegations are upheld, with obviously huge repercussions for everybody.”

The question then would be in which division do City play if they are expelled from the Premier League?

Once again, the EFL would be under no obligation to accept them. A complex administrative process — totally unprecedented — would likely ensue in that eventuality.