More than three years have passed since Manchester City were charged, and in that time the cases against Everton and Nottingham Forest have come and gone. Both were linked to breaches of the profitability and sustainability rules. Both were docked points.
According to BBC Sport, the sheer scale of City's case explains the lengthy deliberation. This one runs to more than 115 charges spanning multiple areas of the financial regulations across nine years.
Everton and Nottingham Forest faced something far simpler: exceeding the permitted losses limit by more than £150 million over three years. The breaches were clear-cut in both instances, leaving little room to mount a defence before the authorities.
City's file is a different beast. It includes the allegation that the club disguised funding from shareholders as sponsorship contributions, a claim that demands forensic scrutiny of transactions, contracts and financial records stretching back years.
Add the volume of charges to the timespan they cover, and examining the evidence and answering each item becomes a vast undertaking. That is why this case has dragged on so much longer than the others.
