Manchester City's attempts to stop UEFA's case against the club for alleged breaches of Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations have been thrown out.
The club had asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) to halt the case against them in an attempt get it thrown out.
City had appealed to CAS after UEFA's Investigatory Chamber (IC) referred City's alleged FFP breaches to the governing body's Adjudicatory Chamber and had recommended a sanction against the club.
The appeal was lodged with CAS in May with City seeking an annulment of the IC decision, which could see the Blues fined for breaches or even issued a ban from the Champions League.
But CAS have now ruled that they cannot hear the appeal and the case is "inadmissible", due to the fact that all legal avenues haven't yet been pursued before taking the matter to the Swiss-based court.
A statement from CAS said: "The CAS Panel determined that MCFC’s appeal was inadmissible, considering that “An appeal against the decision of a federation, association or sports-related body may be filed with CAS (…) if the Appellant has exhausted the legal remedies available to it prior to the appeal, in accordance with the statutes or regulations of that body.” (Article R47 of the CAS Rules).
"In the present case, the decision rendered by the CFCB IC to refer a case to the CFCB AC is not final and can therefore not be appealed to CAS directly, because the AC is competent to take any of the decisions listed in Article 27 CFCB Procedural Rules, that are described as being final."
The CAS decision means UEFA's investigation will now reach a conclusion.
The UEFA investigation followed German newspaper Der Spiegel publishing leaked documents which claimed that City had inflated the value of sponsorship deals to get around FFP rules.
The club had previously been fined £49million in 2014 for a breach of regulations.
