City were found guilty of serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules over nine seasons from 2009-10 to 2017-18.
The club reportedly used sham contracts to inflate revenue and understate costs by more than £900M, news that could see the side kicked from the Premier League or stripped of their titles.
City deny the findings and have appealed such findings, but reports suggest that the club hold very little resistance to the oncoming storm, which could destroy the side.
Christopher M Davidson spoke to The Athletic this week and suggested that City's owners could sell as all of their success now looks to be tainted.
“Once there’s some time to digest this, my feeling would be that they would extricate themselves. I think primarily it would be seen from a political and cultural aspect.
"The ruling family of Abu Dhabi would feel that they had been embarrassed and disgraced by this ruling, and the best way of moving forward would be to sell now to cut the losses, as it were, rather than allow this to be a festering, lingering problem where the ownership of their club would be forever tainted in England. I can’t see any scenario where they would continue.”
No punishment has been imposed yet and may not come for years as City head into an appeal process that may take years to conclude.
For now, City's owners may be seeking to sell and move on to the next venture, likely well away from English football.