How bad could it be, really? How serious can a breach of arcane financial regulations be, really? Just how damning can accountancy be? Even after Friday’s revelation that Manchester City had been found guilty of all but one of the charges brought against them by the Premier League, it was perhaps difficult to grasp the scale of what that meant. After the publication of the independent commission’s findings, there can be no doubt: the commission found that Manchester City cheated, that they did so deliberately, and that they have sought to cover that up with a campaign of calculated misinformation.

City continue to maintain their innocence and issued a statement insisting that “the opinion contains clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”. It referred, once again, to “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of all of its positions”, and, again, insisted that “the club has diligently respected due process for eight years on the basis that the Premier League Board and Executive would behave as an independent, impartial and fair-minded regulator, free from partisan influence”.

The chief executive, Ferran Soriano, released a video reiterating many of the same points and vowing that the club would appeal – it has until Friday to do so – and pursue “all other legal avenues” to prove its innocence. He dismissed the Premier League’s charges as “a conspiracy theory” – and pointedly referred to the independent commission as a “Premier League Commission” – claiming that they were based on “a single false accusation” of diverting funds from the owner to the club under the guise of sponsorship payments. This, he said, “could not happen and … did not happen”. The commission’s view, it’s fair to say, is very different.

Any sanction will be addressed separately in a further hearing with the independent commission, but it is impossible to read the verdict without thinking that it will have to be extremely severe. Everton were docked a total of eight points over two accounting windows for an inadvertent breach of profitability and sustainability rules amounting to around £20m, having cooperated with the investigation. Exactly what City’s breach would turn out to be remains to be calculated, but the verdict found that they overstated income by around £855m and understated outgoings by around £66m. And this was not a cock-up but a calculated attempt to circumvent the rules.

The verdict makes for astonishing reading. The reputation and integrity of the Abu Dhabi United Group, the 81% majority owner of City, lies in tatters, shredded in careful, measured legal prose. The appendices, as and when they are made public, might make it even worse. Even if some technicality is found that mitigates the punishment, their standing cannot surely recover. The findings show this is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on English football. This is not breaching the maximum wage and being caught when most clubs were doing similar, which lay at the heart of the three previous huge top-division financial scandals: Manchester City in 1906, Leeds City in 1919 and Sunderland in 1957. This was deception on a massive scale.

Sponsorship deals are described as “shams” to obscure investment and overstated by £830m over the nine years in question as part of “a plan to disguise shareholder funding … as ‘commercial partner revenue’”. The Fordham Agreement, an arrangement by which an entity bought player image rights, was “little more than a front”. Attempts to claim that the Premier League had misunderstood how the sponsorship deals worked were “an ‘explanation’ that the club concocted well after the event in an attempt to conceal and obscure the realities of the disguised funding scheme”.

The level of mendacity identified is extraordinary. In regards to the “sham” sponsorship arrangements there was “intentional conduct” to “disguise the true nature of certain revenues and liabilities/expenses, to give the appearance of minimising the club’s financial dependence on ADUG” and give “a misleading impression in the club’s financial statements that the club’s financial position was better than it in fact was”.

Having been charged, City “made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the PL investigation”. The panel found “evidence given by a number of important factual witnesses called to give evidence on behalf of the club was false in a number of key respects” and “certain of those factual witnesses had given evidence at the hearing that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest”. On occasions, the panel concluded it “should not accept the opinion of an expert”; the precise reasons why are set out in an appendix but, in context, an inference can be drawn.

The one charge on which City were not found guilty was of breaching “duties of cooperation” with the Premier League in relation to one tranche of accusations. That, clearly, is not the get-out many City fans have hoped for since Friday. The verdict is damning.

The Premier League is made up of its 20 constituent clubs. City have cheated each of the other 19. They have lied consistently and deliberately. The continued denials only enhance the sense that this is a club that has no respect for the regulations.

There must now be a very good argument for expulsion. How can City, at least under the current ownership, ever be trusted again? How can they go on playing even this season, pretending all is well, awaiting appeal and sanction, when they have been found guilty of charges of such magnitude?

When the club has behaved like this, how can its continued existence in the Premier League be tolerated? And when they have cheated as they have been shown to do between 2009-10 and 2017-18, how can their name appear on the Premier League’s roll of honour?