Arsenal are top of the Premier League table going back to 2008 if you expunge Manchester City‘s results from the record since their takeover.

Manchester City’s dominance of English football since their 2008 takeover has transformed and defined the Premier League over the past 18 years. But what would the table look like if they simply weren’t there?

It’s a question worth asking after an independent commission found City guilty of serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules over a nine-season period.

The findings cover 2009-10 to 2017-18, with the Commission concluding that City artificially inflated revenues and reduced costs by more than £900million.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters described it as “the most significant” disciplinary case in the competition’s history, stating that City “systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade”.

We’ve taken a slightly wider view.

Our table begins in 2008-09, the season of City’s transformative Abu Dhabi takeover, and removes the club and every Premier League result involving them from the equation.

Only Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool and Manchester United have been ever-present in the top flight throughout that period.

The Gunners come out on top with 1,290 points, just three ahead of Liverpool. Manchester United sit third on 1,250, with Chelsea fourth and Tottenham completing the top five.

We’ve already seen points deductions handed to Everton and Nottingham Forest for PSR breaches, while Chelsea accepted fines totalling £10.75million and transfer restrictions over separate historical breaches.

But there is no meaningful precedent for something of this scale. This is the biggest scandal in English football history, involving proven breaches across almost a decade and sums running into hundreds of millions.

What happens next remains uncertain.

City have lodged an appeal against the commission’s findings, and no sanction has yet been decided. That appeal will be heard privately by a separate Appeal Board.

And even that might not draw a line under things, with further legal avenues potentially available after the Premier League process. This saga remains a long way from over.

Here’s the full Premier League table if you strip away all of Manchester City’s results since their takeover in 2008:

#	Club	Played	Points	PPG
1	Arsenal	653	1,290	1.98
2	Liverpool	653	1,287	1.97
3	Man Utd	652	1,250	1.92
4	Chelsea	653	1,236	1.89
5	Tottenham	653	1,110	1.70
6	Everton	653	932	1.43
7	Newcastle United	581	781	1.34
8	West Ham	612	772	1.26
9	Aston Villa	545	721	1.32
10	Crystal Palace	472	586	1.24
11	Fulham	437	529	1.21
12	Southampton	432	499	1.16
13	Leicester	360	491	1.36
14	Wolves	396	451	1.14
15	Stoke	360	442	1.23
16	Brighton	329	431	1.31
17	Bournemouth	328	410	1.25
18	West Brom	360	395	1.10
19	Sunderland	364	392	1.08
20	Burnley	360	365	1.01
21	Swansea	252	307	1.22
22	Brentford	185	255	1.38
23	Watford	216	233	1.08
24	Wigan	180	198	1.10
25	Norwich	216	193	0.89
26	Nott’m Forest	149	183	1.23
27	Leeds United	149	180	1.21
28	Hull	185	173	0.94
29	Blackburn	144	163	1.13
30	Bolton	144	158	1.10
31	Sheff Utd	108	93	0.86
32	QPR	108	90	0.83
33	Birmingham	72	86	1.19
34	Portsmouth	72	66	0.92
35	Cardiff	72	61	0.85
36	Middlesbrough	72	55	0.76
37	Huddersfield	72	52	0.72
38	Blackpool	36	39	1.08
39	Reading	36	28	0.78
40	Ipswich	41	28	0.68
41	Luton	36	26	0.72
42	Coventry	4	3	0.75

READ NEXT: Erling Haaland’s next club: Six potential destinations if striker quits Man City

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name Man City’s most expensive signing from every year since 2000?