After the most hard-hitting language possible, the Premier League ’s independent commission has set up the most hard-hitting sanctions. There is surely little choice but to expel Manchester City from the competition. The conclusions are so profoundly damning that it even raises the question of whether opposition clubs could or would want to play with them.

Worse, the new Independent Football Regulator has an even bigger decision than to whether to expel. The question will be now whether to exercise their statutory power to force a sale.

The new body made considerable noise about their ability to remove “rogue owners” around the difficulties of Sheffield Wednesday and Morecambe.

The details in the Premier League’s decision of the eight-year City case , published on Tuesday afternoon, go way beyond such a description.

The word “sham” was used eight times over 40 pages, in reference to sponsorship, image rights and other arrangements that inflated revenue and reduced costs by more than £900m.

One conclusion was “that certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest”. The Premier League itself went on to say “the club filed mis-stated accounts and concealed the true state of its finances from its auditors and football regulators”, with City accused of being “significantly in breach of both the Premier League’s and Uefa ’s spending limits”.

Although the decision doesn’t use the words, the details mirror Uefa’s previous description of “a sophisticated, thoughtful and fundamental attempt to circumvent or violate” the rules.

The actual words used were still far more damning than even some of City’s most vocal critics – as well as sources that worked on previous cases – expected.