City win or score draw?

The issue with Monday afternoon’s verdict from City’s legal challenge to the Premier League over associated party transaction (APT) rules is that there was room for both sides to claim victory. Even trained legal professionals could not reach a consensus on who had got the better of things, if anybody.

On Monday, a Premier League statement said that City were “unsuccessful in the majority of its challenge. Significantly, the tribunal determined that the APT rules are necessary, pursued a legitimate objective and were put in place to ensure that the profitability and sustainability rules (PSR) are effective, thereby supporting and delivering sporting integrity and sustainability in the Premier League”.

City had released their own statement highlighting the five significant blows they had landed on the league, and actually provided a direct link to page 164 of the independent panel’s document, which summarises the independent panel’s findings to back up their stance — although it is almost impossible for anybody, especially a layman, to understand it without the context of the other 174 pages.

On Tuesday, there was another development: City are so sure that they didn’t just win, but win convincingly, that they wrote to the league and the 19 other clubs in the division to insist that the Premier League’s version of events is wrong.

In that letter, City say that a statement released by the league on Monday afternoon “is misleading and contains several inaccuracies” and “is a peculiar way of looking at the decision”.

That is one of the problems when it comes to finding answers here: a 175-page document is available to the public, but your average person (or journalist) will not have the appetite or stamina, let alone understanding, to digest it all properly.

There are far more people who have already made up their minds that no matter how convincingly either City or the Premier League put their case across, it is not going to move the needle too far. That is likely to be a factor even after the 115 charges are dealt with — not everybody will accept the final decision — but at least there will be evident winners and losers.

City are right that they had some big successes, even if a lot of their arguments were dismissed. When the legal challenge came to light in June it was reported that they had submitted to the panel that ticket prices would need to go up because of the impact of APT rules, something that rubbed fans of the club up the wrong way in the first place, and gained no traction during the hearing.

There can be no doubt, though, that the panel stated that the Premier League’s laws are, in places, unlawful and unfairly applied, specifically when it came to City, and that is a major victory for the club. Two previous Premier League decisions on Abu Dhabi-based sponsors were also voided (a third was dropped before the hearing) because the league took too long to act.

City will certainly throw their full weight behind their bid to beat the Premier League over the 115 charges, but the APT verdict shows that City had genuine reasons for bringing the case in its own right. Not all of their arguments were accepted, but some important ones were upheld and any tweaks to rules relating to shareholder loans could actually make the league fairer overall — as well as delight City’s executives.

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The Political Economy of Football V2

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