The Fox­es – cur­rent­ly sec­ond in the Cham­pi­onship on goal dif­fer­ence, but with a match in hand on lead­ers Leeds – could face a points deduc­tion if found to have bro­ken the finan­cial reg­u­la­tions.

It had pre­vi­ous­ly been report­ed that the points deduc­tion could take effect from next sea­son due to the time­line in which the case can be heard. 

A state­ment from the Pre­mier League read: “The Pre­mier League has today referred Leices­ter City FC to an inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion for an alleged breach of Prof­itabil­i­ty and Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Rules (PSRs) and for fail­ing to sub­mit their audit­ed finan­cial accounts to the League.

“The alleged breach relates to the assess­ment peri­od end­ing sea­son 2022/23, when the club was a mem­ber of the Pre­mier League.

“Leices­ter City were rel­e­gat­ed to the EFL Cham­pi­onship pri­or to the intro­duc­tion of the Pre­mier League’s new Stan­dard Direc­tions, which pre­scribe a time­line with­in which PSR cas­es should be heard.

“There­fore, the pro­ceed­ings will be con­duct­ed in accor­dance with a timetable to be set by the inde­pen­dent com­mis­sion, and its final deci­sion will be pub­lished on the Pre­mier League’s web­site.”

Leices­ter, who also face a finan­cial inves­ti­ga­tion from the EFL, issued a state­ment fol­low­ing the Pre­mier League charges defend­ing the club’s posi­tion.

A state­ment read: “Leices­ter City is sur­prised at the actions the Pre­mier League has tak­en today.

“The club is extreme­ly dis­ap­point­ed that the Pre­mier League has cho­sen to charge LCFC now, despite the club’s efforts to engage con­struc­tive­ly with the Pre­mier League in rela­tion to the mat­ters that are the sub­ject of this charge, even though LCFC is not cur­rent­ly a Pre­mier League club.

“LCFC remains will­ing and eager to engage con­struc­tive­ly with the Pre­mier League and the EFL to seek the prop­er res­o­lu­tion of any poten­tial charges, by the right bod­ies, and at the right time.

“The club con­tin­ues to take care­ful advice about its posi­tion and, if nec­es­sary, will con­tin­ue to defend itself from any unlaw­ful acts by the foot­ball author­i­ties, should they seek to exer­cise juris­dic­tion where they can­not do so, as occurred ear­li­er this year.

“LCFC has repeat­ed­ly demon­strat­ed its com­mit­ment to the P&S rules through its oper­at­ing mod­el over a con­sid­er­able peri­od, achiev­ing com­pli­ance while pur­su­ing sport­ing ambi­tions that are entire­ly cred­i­ble giv­en the con­sis­tent suc­cess that the club has achieved in that time, both domes­ti­cal­ly and in Euro­pean com­pe­ti­tion.

“As we con­tin­ue to rep­re­sent the club’s posi­tion, we will con­tin­ue to fight for the right of all clubs to pur­sue their ambi­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly where these have been rea­son­ably and fair­ly estab­lished through sus­tained sport­ing achieve­ment.

“The club thanks its sup­port­ers for their under­stand­ing in this mat­ter and for their con­tin­ued sup­port for our team, whose suc­cess on the pitch dur­ing the final weeks of the sea­son remains our pri­ma­ry focus.”

Not­ting­ham For­est were deduct­ed four points after being found to have bro­ken Pre­mier League finan­cial reg­u­la­tions, which saw them drop into the rel­e­ga­tion zone.

Ever­ton, mean­while, saw an ini­tial 10-point deduc­tion for breach­ing prof­itabil­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty rules reduced down to six fol­low­ing an appeal, but also face a sec­ond case.