While I'm prepared to agree that it's unlikely, I do think there's some chance that the book will be thrown at them.
The Premier League has one thing going for it above all else: its reputation for competition and a uniformly high level. It has been a league that is either not dominated by any one team, or dominated by one team because that club clearly deserves to rule English football on a premise of fairness that is understood in English culture. I'm not just fellating myself in saying that, I'm not English, but it's a country that does have a measure of belief in the notion that success and power ought to be earned. Probably stems from times when such a thing was won militarily. The sun never sets on bla-bla.
And while one would be silly to think that England still embodies that wholeheartedly, I do think that football is the place that has it closest to heart. It certainly isn't politics, so let's say it's football. There's still pride in being the tough, competitive league where it takes a little more to excel, and where there's only pride in earning it the traditional way, as opposed to just being successful because it was automatically granted. There's all this talk of whether or not some foreign player can make it in the Premier League. There's even some merit to that, although it's not as true now as it may have been in the days of Roy Keane, Patrick Vieira and Vinnie Jones. It's still part of the culture of English football. It isn't yet gone altogether.
For that reason, there's some hope (but no guarantee) that this notion will be taken into account when it comes to the investigation of MCFC. If they choose not to, they know that they're giving up the last vestiges of what used to represent English football. There's not so much of it left these days, but it isn't entirely gone, and selling out entirely to a human rights sportswashing effort will mean that nobody can ever again evoke that spirit. It would be right, in that event, to laugh mockingly at anyone who says that there's anything special about the Prem.
I do think that at least some of the people charged with the decision in question would keep that in mind. Whether or not that'll be enough to make the decision that anyone with any sense knows is right, that remains to be seen. But I don't think it's hopeless, or gullible to hope for it. It takes a willfully blind person to call City innocent, and it comes with a declaration that English football is nothing special anymore, and that whoever has enough money can erase all that used to make it special. I do think that there's still enough resistance to that in English culture to make the right decision.
It's still the country behind the Magna Carta and the declaration of war in 1939. That's not entirely gone yet. It's still a small piece of what makes up the English football heritage, i.e. that it's rooted in real culture and deserves to be representative of the people's voice. Even if eight tenths of that notion has been eroded by money, I really think that they won't let money scour away the last two tenths, because everyone knows that City are guilty.