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.
There is surprising clarity and simplicity in the document relating the findings of Manchester City versus the Premier League
It is impossible to view it as anything less than a shredding of City’s claims of rank injustice and prejudice – pictured: City owner Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan
The picture the report paints of the league’s attempts to assess and rule on City’s Etihad Airways deal is eye-watering – pictured, Premier League CEO Richard Masters
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.
City are claiming ‘wins’ in other changes to the APT system that the judgement has instructed the league to make
But it says everything about this judgement that the ‘key page from the award’ which City are pointing people to, is a mere 300 words from 175 pages
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.’
MCFC’s position, as Cliff put it, is utterly immaterial in the light of that binding judgement
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.