Correct.
Let's not be silly. A proven case of multi-year false accounting creating 10 years or more of sporting advantage with severe aggravating factors (deliberate concealment) would obviously end in relegation either by expulsion or by 100 point deduction. This is not an answer about City - it would apply to any club before or after Everton. And it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
There's no doubt that deliberate false accounting, like at Wirecard who claimed a seemingly fictitious €1.9bn cash balance on their balance sheet, or at Enron, or claiming revenue or commission from contracts that aren't yet signed, is a serious, and potentially criminal, offence.
But I spent enough years in accountancy and you know, as a CEO, that you may have to choose between different interpretations of accounting standards (or other practices) on how to present figures. That's why the law uses the phrase "true and fair", rather than insisting on 100%, to-the-penny accuracy. Things like valuation of stock, WIP, goodwill, intellectual property, and other intangible assets, investments and joint ventures, etc. That's a completely different kettle of fish to deliberate, false accounting.
As you've rightly said before, City would've had to pull the wool over a lot of experienced financial professionals' eyes if they concealed the things they did, knowing they were wrong and completely misleading. Like you, I find that very difficult to believe and I absolutely agree we'd deserve everything we got if that was the case.
But if that wasn't the case, then what was? The deal with Fordham was, in my opinion, a way of getting a few million extra pounds of revenue onto the books (rather than getting expenses off the books) in an attempt to creep within what we thought would be the maximum allowable loss that would see us escape sanction. We know from the Der Spiegel emails that Jorge Chumillas signalled there was still going to be a shortfall in the 2013 financial year. In the end, UEFA's machinations over the FFP mitigation calculation of wages ended that prospect. We must assume that appropriate legal and financial advice was taken over that Fordham arrangement.
We don't know what was or wasn't reported to UEFA regarding the image rights payments. My guess is that UEFA noticed they'd gone off the FFP spreadsheet around 2015. We do know they approached us about this and the arrangement ended for good in 2018. Let's take the view that we presented our case to UEFA and they said "Yes, we understand you've acted within the letter of the law, but not the spirit. As it wouldn't have made any difference to FFP anyway, we'll call it quits as long as you report the figures properly going forward". And we did, whereupon it made no sense to continue the Fordham arrangement, and the company was liquidated.
This is why I take issue with the black-or-white view that we're either totally innocent of wrongdoing or have knowingly committed fraud on a grand scale over a number of years.
