There seems to be a collective wish to bring an end to the all-out war between Manchester City and the Premier League and I think we will all give thanks for that.
The synchronised publication of statements on both parties’ websites yesterday, declaring that a settlement has been reached on City’s legal challenge to the Premier League‘s associated party transaction (APT) rules, takes us a very long way from 130 charges being served on an unsuspecting City two-and-a-half years ago.
That unrelated case, about alleged financial impropriety, was heard in court a year ago and we still await a verdict.
The language on City’s side is significant. No proclamations of victory in the 97-word statement. No railing against the iniquities of APT rules — the means by which sponsorship deals are evaluated to ensure they are not a way of owners artificially boosting their clubs’ incomes.
But there was a very significant sentence in that briefest of resolution announcements. ‘Manchester City accepts that the current APT Rules are valid and binding.’ A mere 12 words which made yesterday feel like a very good day for football.
In short, City’s wish to tear down the entire APT apparatus, which in a previous hearing they had declared anti-competitive, discriminatory and left them victims to ‘the tyranny of the majority’ have come to nothing.
A settlement has been reached on City’s legal challenge to the Premier League’s Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules
On City’s side, there were no proclamations of victory in the 97-word statement. No railing against the iniquities of APT rules
Yesterday’s joint statement establishes — just as it should — that the Premier League are legally entitled to prevent state entities from flooding clubs with cash from companies linked to them. What has felt like an all-out war on the underlying ethos of the Premier League has come to nothing.
It’s hard to overstate just how sacrosanct those clubs without owners who are richer than God feel the APT rules to be.
Though Daily Mail Sport revealed Chelsea, Newcastle and Aston Villa to have been sympathetic to City’s cause in this case, many clubs feared the entire competitive balance of English football would be destroyed if City won their legal bid to remove the rules in their current form.
One senior Premier League club executive told me his team ‘might as well walk away from the idea of competing with City’ if the APT case was lost. One source suggested a number of clubs were ‘losing their s**t’ with City over the matter.
It remains to be seen if the big daddy of City’s state sponsorship deals — with Etihad Airways — will, when re-submitted by the club, be deemed ‘fair value’ or artificially inflated. The written findings of a first challenge to the APT system, brought by City, painted a picture of a legal and intellectual onslaught to press the league to pass the deal.
The league had rejected it and City lawyers went gunning in the legal hearing for Premier League executive Mai Fyfield, who had oversight. The panel ruling on the case found her to be a consummate professional, ‘carefully and diligently’ analysing the Premier League regulatory team’s recommendation to reject the deal, before she put it to the Premier League board.
One suspects the small details of this new City-Premier League accord will include provisos and caveats which pave the way for the Etihad deal to be re-submitted and perhaps make the landscape easier.
Compromises may be offered to make that deal achievable for a club whose commercial revenues since the Abu Dhabi takeover have soared from £22.5million in 2008 to £350m last year.
Daily Mail Sport revealed the likes of Chelsea have been sympathetic to City, but others have feared for the balance of English football
But that does not mean open season for a club looking to game the system. Without any notion of controls over the value of commercial deals earned by clubs from entities in the same state from which that club’s owner originates, there would have been no ‘financial fair play’. No ‘profit and sustainability rules’.
The deluded who rage against controls, claiming to be the victims of some phantom ‘red cartel’, neglect to remember that English football has always been built on the primacy of competition. They conveniently forget that removing APT rules would leave the wealthiest unfettered in their pursuit of the best players.
With no limit on the cash rolling in from some quasi-state entity or other, the wealthiest may sign the best players simply to ensure others cannot have them.
The retention of the APT system leaves the notions of jeopardy and balance in Premier League football intact. It’s the balance which has always defined the competition, attracted the broadcast deals and brought the best players to these shores. The balance which means there will be jeopardy when Liverpool travel to Burnley this weekend and when Nottingham Forest head down to Arsenal.
We now know the APT Rules are ‘valid and binding’. Those are the words that matter today. For that, we can give thanks.
