the issue (this means that I won't be able to substantially argue any points, I just know what things look like on the surface) . . .

It seems to me that this was really UEFA trying to keep a club from becoming a big club. When this took place, City had just started to win and their new ownership started to spend money like the "big" clubs (Man United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Real Madrid etc.) do with the result of maybe joining their club. The "big" clubs don't want others to be able to evenly compete with them so they try to punish them.

The case was overturned on 2 main points: 1) This happened so long ago that the statute of limitations has lapsed and 2) UEFA didn't prove anything and had no proof other than some hacked emails from a news source.

This is a really bad analogy, but City in UEFA is BYU in the NCAA. Big clubs try to keep the little clubs from competing on even grounds and will punish them if they try to jump into the big pool.