Man City's Special Treatment

Hardly a radical thought that if you are sending clubs onto European competitions then your own rules should be aligned.

7 teams out of 20 have to comply so it'd make most sense that all 20 should comply on the basis that in a utopian scenario anyone might qualify for Europe (not just the "cartel")

Shareholders loans at zero interest going into ffp is no issue.

The rules on the fair market value is what city are going after as imo they see it as a way to stop others now challenging what they already have exploited as loop hole.

It likes that it's how they apply such rules rather than the existence of them is the issue. Having a clear process with appeals and such seems to be required

 

From what I've read, the premier league originally wanted to include shareholder loans in the rules (similarly to the uefa rules), but 19/20 clubs voted against including them

So as so often seems to be the case in these things, the league is getting all the flak for issues in the rules that are really the fault of clubs

 

Ian Herbert

As 175-page legal judgements go, there is surprising clarity and simplicity in the document relating the findings of Manchester City versus the Premier League. Which is why, when you take the partisanship out of the equation and work through it, line by line, it is simply impossible to view it as anything less than a shredding of City's claims of rank injustice and prejudice.

Consider, let's say, 10 random claims of alleged injustice that City lodged against the Premier League in challenging their Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules, which evaluate sponsorship deals to ensure they're not a way of owners artificially boosting their clubs' incomes.

City alleged that the way of calculating the fairness of deals was flawed. The tightening-up of the system wasn't wanted or needed. The rules unfairly delayed cash payments to them. Rules changes meant they lost two sponsors. Calculations took longer than they ought to have done. The entire system was anti-competitive. Gulf state clubs were discriminated against. Multi-club owners were discriminated against. City were victims of 'the tyranny of the majority.' The league's entire financial sustainability system was unreasonably based on Portsmouth going broke in 2009.

'No', the panel ruled, on each and every one of these claims. And that list does not begin to capture it. There are so many more rebuttals. Or, read the report through the prism of the Premier League executive who City's lawyers clearly went gunning for - Mai Fyfield, who had oversight on the hugely complicated City sponsorship deals. It is hard to recall a witness being praised more emphatically for attention to detail, probity and professionalism in a courtroom.

'It was apparent from her evidence when cross-examined that she had applied her mind most carefully and conscientiously to the task of assessing the fair market value of the transactions placed before her,' the panel of judges found. 'Her approach was not simply to accept the recommendation of the Premier League regulatory team but to consider the question put before the Premier League board critically and with care and diligence.'

The picture the report paints of the league's attempts to assess and rule on City's Etihad Airways deal – which, the panel heard, was more complex than the entire sponsorship portfolio of some other clubs - is eye-watering. We have City's own 600-page submission on the subject, and the league's 96 requests for further information in five further letters. Premier League staff working weekends and into the early hours of the morning to get though the detail. The detail conveys the sense of a legal and intellectual onslaught from a hugely oppressive and immensely argumentative club.

The panel rejected City's claim that the Premier League was wrong to adjudge the Etihad deal as 'above market value'. But the judges did rule that the league had, unreasonably, not granted City full sight of all the data on which that decision was based. That was a procedural unfairness. A technicality. The league's initial judgement on the Etihad deal will now be set aside and - after City are furnished with the extra data - the proposed sponsorship arrangement must be resubmitted.

City are claiming wins in other changes to the APT system that the judgement has instructed the league to make. The most significant of those relates to financial benefits that clubs receive from shareholder loans, with minimal interest, which must now be considered as an APT. But it is hard to see how that was ever one of City's prime considerations as they sent seven lawyers from Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer into battle for them, seemingly intent on a root-and-branch attack on the APT system.

When the idea of including shareholder loans within APT considerations was put to clubs, City were among the 19 who voted against. It is also doubtful that the effects of this judgement will be substantial. The calculation of the benefits to clubs of such loans will not be backdated. Everton – the most heavily exposed through injections of Farhad Moshiri's cash – will probably take a minimal hit if, as expected, the sale of the club to the Friedkin Group is concluded by the turn of the year.

The other changes that the league has been ordered to make by the panel are procedural. These include turning around APT decisions more quickly, providing information to clubs earlier in the process and tightening up wording on some of the rules. In these respects, the panel finds the APT system to be 'unlawful.' But it says everything about this judgement that the 'key page from the award' which City are pointing people to, in their own interpretation of what is significant, runs to a mere 300 words from those 175 pages. It is a painfully small gain for the vast legal outlay.

In the face of the judgement, City's decision to email all other top-flight teams on Tuesday, attacking the Premier League's response to the verdict, felt like the act of a frustrated loser, rather than any kind of victor. City general counsel Simon Cliff picked up on the panel's use of the word 'unlawful' to tell clubs that 'the tribunal has declared the APT rules to be unlawful. MCFC's position is that this means all of the APT rules are void, and have been since 2021.'

This was disingenuous and selective with the truth. The tribunal judgement states, in black and white, that the Premier League's APT system is lawful, valid and entirely necessary. 'MCFC's position', as Cliff put it, is utterly immaterial in the light of that binding judgement. There will be rolled eyes in football at concluding words of Cliff's message, which extend the offer that, 'if any member clubs have any questions about the award, we would be very happy to assist them as best we can.' Many feel City would serve member clubs best by bringing an end to this interminable war on British football. 'If you come to our country and buy into our club and our system, respect our rules,' one owner said yesterday. 'Rules that our clubs have put in place. 'This isn't earning City any respect.' Buried in the detail of the tribunal report are myriad passages which bear out those words.

The panel did not pass comment on the 115 Premier League charges City are currently defending themselves but did tartly observe that the fact the alleged offences had taken four years to investigate, and dated back to 2009, 'illustrate the difficulties in the speedy and effective investigation of potential breaches' which 'the Premier League was entitled to take into account as a reason for moving to a (new APT) system.'

Some who find time to read the ruling will also be struck by the unattractive way City's lawyers used Portsmouth's collapse as an object with which to fight the very notion of sustainability rules. The Premier League's next meeting of member clubs is next Thursday, when everyone will begin to see if there is a way out of this pitched battle. It seems unlikely. The aftermath of the latest judgement, entitled 'partial final award' is just a precursor of what is to follow, whatever the outcome, when the next one is published next spring.

Man City are behaving like frustrated losers rather than winners in their fight against the Premier League: They are being selective with the truth, writes IAN HERBERT | Daily Mail Online

 

Pretty damming. Especially that the only real legal victory they won is against the absence of a rule that they themselves voted against.

 

Just another instance of City being frugal with the truth again ! The sending of emails to other Prem teams is just embarrassing and a case of City attempting to cause as much chaos and devastation they can muster before judgement is passed on their many transgressions. I personally believe this to be a desperate lunge from a club that already suspects the outcome will be more terminal than debilitating.

I feel the most damning and most damaging of Cities accusations leaned heavily on Anti-discrimination law and the fact that was basically laughed out of court and met with a resounding no severely weakened Cities sword arm. God forbid that nonsense ever got taken seriously because the emails to clubs would have been replaced with severed heads with handwritten notes in their mouths.

Claiming publicly that you have been victorious when most of your arguments have been definitively dismissed in court and doing so before the minutes have been added to public record smacks of real desperation on the clubs behalf.

 

Blimey. Three consecutive posts that could be construed as being ant-Manchester City and no sarcastic response from the resident apologist.

 

I can't reply to every anti City post on here haha , too many to go through haha

Full faith all will come out in the wash

 

Lifted from today's Independent

Executives within some clubs are now openly wondering over whether it is really possible to sustain this ostensible “partnership” with City - since all teams are simply members of a club - due to the strength of feeling.Monday night’s email from the champions’ general counsel Simon Cliff was read as a severe escalation. Suggestions that clubs should go straight to them to discuss the consequences of the judgment were accompanied by threats of further legal action. The latter was what most struck the clubs, and fired the greatest source of fury. One senior figure just laughed, astounded at the brazenness of it all.

The champions do still have their supporters, although some of those are concerned about what Monday’s judgement might now mean for them. In other words, self-interest, another dominant storyline in the modern Premier League. City themselves were said to be “seething” about the fall-out, one source tells the Independent, but stridently assertive in their response.

“They’re always like that,” was the response from an official. Many pointed to how it was purportedly Cliff’s email that appeared in Football Leaks and quoted chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak saying “he would rather spend £30m on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them for the next 10 years” as well as how Uefa had the choice “to avoid the destruction of their rules and organisation”.Some have commented about how familiar that sounds, especially with the Premier League hearing hanging over all of this.

It is why there has been mirth about the idea that City are acting in the wider interest of the game. More executives are currently calling for expulsion if City are found guilty of the most serious charges in the hearing, and it probably indicates the strength of feeling that people have even speculatively wondered what it would take for the club to be kicked out of this members’ group now. Such suggestions aren’t being pursued seriously, not least because it would not survive an antitrust claim. While some point to rule B6 requiring just a 75% vote, City could argue it would not just be a shareholder issue and would represent an unjustified market exclusion.

Above all, though, there is simply exasperation at the manner that the club have gone against the very idea of the Premier League. Rivals are furious that City’s owners bought into the competition in the knowledge of what it was, aware of the rules, and the idea that everyone ultimately abides by the founding members’ agreement: to accept the result of votes. City are instead the first to take a case of this nature, and decide that they don’t need the rules to apply to them.This is why this entire episode is seen as a crossing of the rubicon; the pressing of the button…whatever ‘point of no return’ you like.

City’s move has created a new precedent for legal action in the Premier League, in a way that clubs would previously have done anything to avoid due to the possibility of mutually assured destruction. Legal action tends to be so disruptive that it can create irreconcilable differences that damage the football. The wonder is what next. Would some clubs follow through on previously impotent talk of suing the PGMOL?

It’s a new world, if a natural progression from the current world, which is already filled with lawyers. It says much that the number of barristers on the APT case was 13, whereas the one that started the Premier League - the Football Association v the Football League - had just four, with Lord Pannick acting as the Football League's Junior. The competition was still characterised by angry disagreements after that, particularly around commercial deals, but clubs implicitly agreed to leave disagreements in the boardroom. That was because of the understanding they were all here for the primary business, which was putting on attractive matches. That accompanied the general feeling that any bad feeling would fade once football was played - but that isn’t happening now.

Others would stress how the entire issue is compounded by a perceived sloppiness within the Premier League on process, and that of course City should challenge rules that are unlawful and appear to target them. Just like that very judgment, it is more complex than that.

For one, they failed on most challenges and won victories on technicalities. The manner in which the club did a U-turn on shareholder loans also reinforces a perception they were simply attempting to throw anything at the Premier League.

Two, there has never previously been an expectation that sporting regulations must be as legally watertight as state laws. That’s because they aren’t states. They are just sports. Regulations were by definition much looser, because they only needed to be fit to stage mere games. There was again an implicit acknowledgment not to go looking for loopholes because that would disrupt the main purpose of playing sport.

That naturally changes when you have entities looking at this from state perspectives, as well as state means. It is here that the Premier League - and football as a whole - is facing up to problems that have really been a long time coming. The entire issue is a direct consequence of football greedily letting in so many non-football interests, and particularly the lack of foresight about state ownership. While the latter is far from the only major issue in modern football, this whole episode displays why it is the most serious.

The amendments to APT rules only arose because of the unique challenges surrounding state ownership, given the blurring of lines within autocratic structures. It then only escalated due to the will and means of state ownership. This is a crisis the Premier League was always going to face, a manifestation of multiple growing issues. Problems like this were inevitable, and are now almost insoluble.

This isn’t to say it would have been much better if ownership had stopped at the biggest capitalists. There just would have been another range of problems there, right down to certain groups of interests being able to form voting blocs of 14. That idea may soon become a distant memory.

The ‘huge problem’ facing the Premier League amid Man City crisis



It seems this generic email that was sent out to all the Premier League clubs hasn't had the effect City would have hoped for ,perhaps the best words to describe such an action would be ill -advised ? I'm really struggling to see how City thought this would be beneficial to their cause ,or how it would reach any other conclusion other than to make their position as a member of the league untenable ?

Killing football by the pound

 

Guess we are only buying player from abroad now.

 

The Telegraph article inclusive of the email sent.

Manchester City have been accused by rivals of trying to run the Premier League themselves after they dismissed the league’s view on the verdict from the major tribunal between the two – and advised clubs to contact them rather than the league executive.In an email sent by the club to all 19 rivals, City dismissed the Premier League’s summary of the tribunal’s findings, claimed that the entirety of the league’s associated party transaction [APT] rules were now obsolete and invited other clubs to speak to them directly.

The letter has caused consternation among clubs who feel that City are now explicitly ignoring the leadership of the Premier League, and seeking to have clubs bypass them. One source told Telegraph Sport that the situation was unprecedented and that City – also fighting a separate suite of around 130 Premier League charges – were now in open revolt.

In the email, City’s general counsel Simon Cliff accused the Premier League of “misleading” clubs with “inaccuracies” in its summary of the arbitration tribunal finding that ruled last month on City’s challenge to APT rules – critical to financial controls.

Cliff told the clubs to ignore the advice from the Premier League’s counsel and to assume that all APT rules are now invalid. He wrote: “MCFC’s position is that this means that all of the APT rules are void, and have been since 2021.” He said clubs should reject any “knee-jerk reaction” from the Premier League to amend the APT rules. He added that City would be “happy to assist” with any inquiries from their 19 fellow members.


City lawyer caused ‘tumbleweed moment’ The email was met with disbelief at many clubs who have already discussed with the Premier League the advice of its counsel Kevin Plumb. The view of Plumb and his chief executive Richard Masters, as outlined to clubs when the judgement was published on Monday, is that while the APT rules require some amendments, the tribunal found its basic legal structure to be sound.

Telegraph Sport understands Cliff caused considerable surprise among other executives at the shareholders’ meeting last week when he raised the issue of the Premier League’s huge spending on legal costs. Given the league has had to fight two legal cases with City – one of them the biggest in its history – it was, according to sources, “a tumbleweed moment”.The Premier League had disclosed legal costs of £45 million costs on various governance cases against City, Chelsea, Everton, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City.

In a 175-page tribunal finding published on Monday, City secured what they consider significant victories in their arbitration after making around 20 claims against the league. The clubs will meet next Thursday to discuss the three amendments to the APT rules as advised by the tribunal. They will not vote on any law change that day. There will be a preliminary meeting of the league financial control group and its legal advisory group to discuss those changes, before the league proposes a final vote.

Those changes will propose the clubs vote to make the amendments to the rules advised by the tribunal unlawful. That will cover the inclusion of shareholder loans in the APT rules, the revision of amendments made in February, and procedural details around access to the central database of commercial deals.Sources with understanding of City’s position signalled the club will oppose efforts to rush through amendments, particularly around shareholder loans. The club vehemently opposes one proposal that would rule out applying fair market value tests to shareholder loans retrospectively in the three years since APT rules were introduced.

Cliff wrote in his email to the clubs: “Such an unwise course would be likely to lead to further legal proceedings with further legal costs. It is critical for member clubs to feel that they can have trust in their regulator.”Arsenal, who gave evidence for the Premier League at the tribunal, are among the clubs who have utilised shareholder loans in recent years.

Cliff’s email, on Monday evening, is expected to widen the gulf between clubs on spending controls. Witnesses for the Premier League at the tribunal included Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham, Brighton and West Ham as well as Arsenal. Everton, Newcastle and Chelsea provided some support for City. Nottingham Forest are said to be sympathetic to City’s cause.Those with understanding of City’s position said the champions had received some private messages of support from other clubs since the email was sent.

APT rules govern commercial agreements between clubs and entities with similar ownership groups or background – in the case of City, those from Abu Dhabi, where its owner Sheikh Mansour is a senior member of the royal family. At stake in the tribunal were two APT rulings that had assessed City agreed commercial deals above fair market value with the airline Etihad and the First Abu Dhabi Bank. In both cases, City’s legal counsel were obliged to prove that the Premier League board had acted “unreasonably” in coming to the decision that the deals agreed were not at fair market value. The tribunal did not find that to be the case.

The Premier League clubs voted to introduce the APT rules in November 2021 in the wake of the Saudi Arabia-led consortium takeover of Newcastle United. The clubs did so in order to strengthen the league’s profit and sustainability rules [PSR]. The APT rules were devised to prevent owners investing equity disguised as PSR compliant commercial income and skewing the competitive balance of the Premier League.

Several rivals fear the ongoing war between City and the league is having a detrimental impact on the reputation of the wider English game.

Fallout from the row is a likely discussion point as Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, holds talks with Crystal Palace, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur on Wednesday about the government’s plans for an independent regulator. Ms Nandy is also meeting several EFL clubs this week as ministers press ahead with the long-awaited Football Governance Bill.

Man City accused of trying to run Premier League themselves

 

The sad thing is, there are so many football fans around the country with their heads planted firmly in the sand. All this pathetic "red cartel" shite for instance...its City thats acted like a cartel, breaking rule after rule then causing absolute mayhem to deflect this and desperately trying to drum up some support, even if it drags the clubs supporting them down with them. Sadly, those with their bonces buried dont realise this and City are not actually doing anything for their clubs, they aren't aiding them in any way, they are just using the gullible fools, much like Reform used all the racist in the country.

The "Red Cartel" is Citys buzzword, they know the likes of Everton fans will see "Red cartel" and jump on it for obvious reason...just because of the wording.

Didn't Citys own lawyers imply this some time last year, that they would basically make this so much of a mess it will be near impossible to sort out? Well here you have it...them doing exactly as they said. Absolute pure scum. I hope the PL throw everything at them now and kick them out of the league and ban them from coming back.

Bizarre thing is, the likes of Everton and Forest fans have in a few months gone from "Why have we been punished when the cheats City with 115 charges haven't?"...to now "pitying and siding" with City. You couldn't make this shit up

 

I get the impression that, until now, the PL has operated at least partly on the ‘good chap’ theory. As in the Independent article above, as a sporting organisation whose members are all in it together, they naively thought this would be enough. Or more accurately, it was never set up as a legally watertight, corporate-style entity because they didn’t think it needed to be. But now, with the ridiculous growth of the industry and the vast sums involved, they find themselves at the mercy of bad-faith actors and sharks who simply don’t give a toss about being ‘good chaps’ and want all the power and control for themselves on their own terms. A hostile takeover. A touch of karma too perhaps. Can City gather enough support amongst other clubs to make it stick though, seems to be the question.

 

Nobody says that shit over here mate.

 

Mate yous are all arguing over a carcass. Money bought the soul of the game long ago

 

Who would I possibly argue with mate ? I think the more sensible City fans on these boards have accepted their clubs actions as embarrassing ? I'm simply pointing out the unsuitability of the wheels on the agenda City are intent on driving by posting the more creditable accounts of journalism that exist in direct contradiction to the reports that shamelessly trumpeted City as winning a landslide ruling.

 

Maybe they've been "inspired" by the last 15 years of politics in this Great Country. I get it, they cheated. I'm not absolving them of blame.

 

Newcastle legend