City launch legal action against the Premier League | Club & PL reach settlement | Proceedings dropped (p1147)

After the latest tribunal result regardless of which side you are on trashed the premier leagues repuation.

Now is the time for cool heads to prevail. Get the clubs around the table and sort it out before the whole circus comes crashing down. The cartel clubs have lost, the league has lost and city have lost. Accept we are here to stay and let’s move on from this little disagreement.

Anyone? Nah fuck it burn it down city -:)
 
Dribble said:
WTF! Now that is a VERY VERY good point!

City could've agreed a sponsorship deal at £20m per season above the PL's FMV, but the sponsor ended up paying £20m less per season than originally agreed. If I was the sponsor & City returned saying the PL's FMV was found to be unlawful so can you pay the balance as originally agreed, I'd be telling City 'A deal's a deal mate. I paid as per the final agreed contract, so it's not my problem fella. Go take it up with the PL'.

On this basis yes, I'd think City would have a VERY good case for compensation AND compound interest too. It could go further. Who's to say we couldn't have bid more than £90m for Declan Rice, if this sponsorship money was agreed at the original price, hence why we now have an issue replacing Rodri who's out for the season?

This FMV decision could have caused untold amounts of damage to our business!

This could be the additional litigation that Cliff was alluding to in the email he sent to the 19 PL clubs.
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Im sure we would still charged the full amount for the sponsership and the only thing actually changed would be the amount which can be declared for PSR purposes.

We wouldn't be going back to the Sponserhip asking for anything.

We would potentially be able to re-declare historical revenue but we will have already charged the sponsor for it.
 
Dribble said:
This is the point, the Cartel don't care. Their one & only mission is to stop City by any means necessary, & if that means employing a sock puppet to stand in front of the world with a serious face & make an arse of himself, so be it.

For Masters, his vast wages will be some sort of recompense for trashing his reputation. The things some people will do for money never fails to astound me...
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Not so sure, if the Premier League product tanks then so do the valuations of their clubs, which is the exact opposite prospect to the one which enticed them to buy their clubs in the first place.
 
CC1 said:
Is this good news???
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So this particular tweet (from Stefan) relates to City's Etihad sponsorship deal which was a key part of the APT case. The crux of this issue is the PL's reliance on a Fair Market Value (FMV) assessment of City's Etihad deal produced by Nielsen which was significantly below where City has valued it. But City also relied on a Nielsen assessment (in 2021) which used substantially the same method. The PL's key decison-maker (Mai Fyfield, non-Exec Director) was aware of City's valuation from Nielsen and obtained an explanation of the differences from Nielsen.

As I understand, the Tribunal judgment covered the following:
1. They did not assess whether City's or the PL's valuation was correct. Instead they concluded that it was not unreasonable for Fyfield to rely on Nielsen's explanation of differences and arrive at her FMV decision. So this aspect of City's complaint was not upheld.

2. PL in its FMV assessment relied on a benchmarking analysis prepared by Nielsen. The Tribunal upheld City's complaint that they should have been shown this analysis and allowed to counter it and deemed this to be procedurally unfair.

3. More generally, the Tribunal opined that the concept of APT rules is not illegal but the rules as currently drafted are unlawful. In particular, they upheld City's assertion that loans from company shareholders should be included in APT assessments - in other words, Shareholders (owners, non-executive directors) are Associated Parties. This matters because at least 9 clubs receive such Shareholder loans that are at zero/low interest rates - in other words off-market rates. If you re-assessed those Shareholder loans at FMV, many of these clubs could fail PSR - which is the point Martin Samuel eloquently makes.

4,. This has given rise to a new food fight where the PL claims they can just tweak the current rules (e.g. add in Shareholder loans) whereas City state that the rules are unlawful so have to be discarded and re-done from scratch (and are threatening legal action if PL attempts to short cut things). Additionally, any changes to APT rules would need to be affirmed by at least 14 clubs. If 9 are depending on Shareholder Loans, they may well not agree.

5. On Shareholder loans, there is a separate fight over whether they are added in for future assessments (PL's stance) or whether all old deals need to be re-valued (City's stance). The latter would be especially problematic for clubs who might then retroactively fail PSR for prior years. Opening a major can of worms.

6. Tribunal also rejected City's claim that the APT rules were brought into disadvantage Gulf-owned clubs.

Anyway, that's my reading of things. Great minds of Bluemoon, please correct if I got anything wrong!
 
Leech said:
Not so sure, if the Premier League product tanks then so do the valuations of their clubs, which is the exact opposite prospect to the one which enticed them to buy their clubs in the first place.
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I feel this is the reason Masters ducked out of his golf day with the PL's broadcasters.

Imagine the investment the broadcasters made being undermined & threatened by the very organisation who sold them the product? It's fucking business suicide!

Personally, if I was a TV Executive, by the 2nd hole I'd have told Masters to end the bullshit. City are the most watched team on the planet, in the most popular league, & the PL are risking killing the goose that laid the golden egg all to appease the Cartel, one of whom is down in 14th & rumoured to be looking for yet ANOTHER manager?

I've honestly never seen a business go to such lengths to kill themselves & their product. La Liga & the rest must be loving this!
 
Damocles said:
But he didn't DO any real analysis of the law. He stated the facts of the judgement and then said "here's what a bunch of experienced people think".

And besides, 3 years of sports law makes him one billion percent more qualified and experienced to comment on the judgement than every single working football journalist in this country combined.
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Daft ****.........

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St Helens Blue (Exiled) said:
so have we won or not?
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If we'd lost it would still be on yellow ticker with a 4 hour sky sports documentary on it starring Levy,Henry, and every other high profile Premier league **** who's against us daisy chaining each other.
 
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johnny crossan said:
Samuel was clearly briefed in advance by City and he makes the same case as contained our letter about the PL statement. Not just an opinion piece - it's the 'Authorised Version' ;-)
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Pam said:
Will there be weeping?
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On Merseyside. They love a bit of grief over there
 
Dribble said:
I feel this is the reason Masters ducked out of his golf day with the PL's broadcasters.

Imagine the investment the broadcasters made being undermined & threatened by the very organisation who sold them the product? It's fucking business suicide!

Personally, if I was a TV Executive, by the 2nd hole I'd have told Masters to end the bullshit. City are the most watched team on the planet, in the most popular league, & the PL are risking killing the goose that laid the golden egg all to appease the Cartel, one of whom is down in 14th & rumoured to be looking for yet ANOTHER manager?

I've honestly never seen a business go to such lengths to kill themselves & their product. La Liga & the rest must be loving this!
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The city hate is so strong they want us gone. The 3 clubs behind this want it to go back to the way it was. City can fuck off with their Arab owner to div 2.

Destroying the league in the short term to get it back to the way it was is preferable to these greedy self serving cunts.

United will once again win everything and all will be warm, cosy and fair. Just as it always was before city showed up.

We are making a huge play for control of the league here and the 115. They should have just let us in when we knocked nicely at the door. Instead we got met with racism and laughter.

Well they ain’t laughing now. Not only have we destroyed their clubs legacy on the field but we are now so far ahead implosion is the best option.

The 115 is going to cause fucking mayhem when it lands.
 
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Cobwebcat said:
Apologies if already posted. Fair review. You prove unlawful once it’s unlawful.

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Not bad, The Athletic seem to be getting better again which is good.

Two points, though:

First, sports journalists need to get away from the simplistic "who won" arguments. You can't score legal judgments like a football match. If they really want a football analogy, they should look at Arsenal's performance at the Etihad last year. They defended almost everything pretty well, City threw everything at them, they couldn't lose the game and they didn't. Defensive master-class maybe, but they lost the league as a result (the analogy would work better if both sides scored a couple of goals as well, but whatever ...)

Second, an important point they are missing about the 115 is the relative importance of direct witness testimony over circumstantial, out of context evidence. We have the perfect example in this case. There is an email from a Brighton executive days after the Newcastle takeover saying the PL has to respond by banning related party transactions until they can put rules in place to stop clubs from Gulf states. It clearly leads to an implication that the introduction of the APT rules was based on a principle of discrimination. Yet, this same executive said in front of the tribunal that it wasn't meant to be discriminatory, the reference to Gulf states was just a front of mind reference and the intention of the email was that the rules should be applied equally and fairly to all clubs. And they believed him! The point being that the out of context email was disbelieved, and the witness statement was believed. If ever there was a clear indication of how the 115 is likely to go, that is it.
 
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TedofChume said:
To be honest I get confused at times as well.

I'm pretty certain it's a bit of both. The allegation is:

"In respect of each of Seasons 2009/10 to 2017/18 inclusive, the Premier League Rules applicable in those seasons that required provision by a member club to the Premier League, in the utmost good faith, of accurate financial information that gives a true and fair view of the club’s financial position, in particular with respect to its revenue (including sponsorship revenue), its related parties and its operating costs."

The der Spiegel stuff on this allegation is all about sponsorship being inflated because they allege SM was paying for it.
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It wasn't inflated in terms of fair market value, I think. I don't think anyone has challenged that since the very early days, even UEFA, until the stupid APT rules.

It was "inflated" in the sense that they say Etihad only paid a portion themselves, the rest coming from Mansour.

Edit: the reference to related parties in the allegations has always confused me. There are no RPTs with sponsors in the accounts. If they are thinking of opening up the related party nature of sponsorships as defined for accounting purposes (which is the definition in the rules) they will lose unless the most serious charges are proven in which case the club has more serious problems. Not that that is going to happen, so it's all irrelevant, really.
 
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TedofChume said:
I'm not so sure that's right, City are being charged under rule E54, so City are having deals assessed for FMV and it is Neilson who are doing it.
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Nope. E54 in 2017/18 was about related party transactions disclosed in the club's accounts. There were none with sponsors.

Edit: But see the amendment to my post above.
 
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