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

The Light Was Yellow Sir said:
It doesn’t work like that and nor should, to be fair. Arsenals mitigation would be untouchable in that they were following the rules that were in place at the time.
It’d be like getting done because you smoked in a pub in 1980, or many thousands of elderly people getting done for smacking their kids in the 70’s, before both those things were illegal.
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It’s not even that.

Arsenal weren’t in breach of the APT rules in 2021-24 because there weren’t any APT rules in that period. As the panel have confirmed, the previous rules remained in force during that period. If Arsenal were in breach of those rules but were acting in accordance with the rules as everyone understood them, that is strong mitigation.

But the APT rules simply did not exist until November 2024 and even that assumes those rules are not unlawful.
 
slbsn said:
I'm perfectly upbeat. It is a top PR win and awful optics for Masters. But I am being asked about tangible wins for City. Those haven't changed at all since the initial decision. That is my view. I said before anyone (on 14 October) that this further determination on blue pencil was likely to go with City - but to what end? That is not clear to me at this stage.
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On this occasion, I think you happen to be the one taking the tangibles out of it. All seemingly in the interest of backing your original opinion.
 
City have “claimed victory” says the headline. The story does not include anything from the Judges’ statement but all of the Premier League’s. The usual distortion from SKY.
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I would have to say that listening to their guy Kaveh they've got it spot on - we all now wait for the next one (adjucation on the legality of the Amended Rules) - if that shows that the amended rules are illegal too - PL & Masters are in trouble - the simple rewrite has not worked. Back to Square one.
 
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slbsn said:
In order:
  1. Don't know what the first one means or where I said that.
  2. It hasn't - it has seen this set of rules null and void because of 3 matters that were not severable or simply added - the concept of APT was deemed necessary and is here to stay - this was a big loss for City in the initial hearing.
  3. It isn't a huge defeat - you don't understand it. If it is a huge win, explain the tangible wins for City beyond the PR win.
  4. They could win the next APT case but again, it isn't the end of APT. The league just will vote in a lawful set of APT rules - that is the point. They will look very much like the current rules but may have some shareholder loan tweaks. How is this a major win for City? Not clear to me.
  5. I don't think we have any loss on Etihad so we have no claim for compensation. But if we do, I am not convinced we have a causation argument.
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Other than no 5, which we won't know for some time, City have achieved everything their legal challenge set out to do. Got it.

The club have been clear that they did not challenge the need or concept of APT rules. So arguing that this has been recognised seems a bit moot.

In the simplest of terms, if you challenge a speed limit, and win, in the sense that speed limit is deemed unlawful, it doesn't mean you lost because speed limits should exist and might one day come to be implemented but with a different limit to the one you challenged. It means you won.
 
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I wonder if Newcastle (or Villa) will consider legal action against the pl now? APT has certainly clipped their wings in the last couple of years I'd have thought.
 
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blueparrot said:
I assume if they say they aren’t valid. Everything is rolled back to the 2021 rules, until fit rules are drafted and agreed, which as far a I understand was our original argument.
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Bingo.

Which was pretty much the purpose of City's challenge.

Whether that is on one point, three points, however many points, as fun as it is to repackage and weigh, it is immaterial. The end result is the same, the rules are void, and would have been the last 3 years.

That is a huge win. Arguing how many points may have been valid, is pointless, if the ones that are unlawful make the whole set (from 2021, rather than as a concept) unlawful.
 
Ric said:
Not sure why some people are piling on @slbsn, when all he’s done is give his considered opinion on these matters. You may not agree with him, but let’s keep it civil and respectful please.
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It is also ok to disagree with that opinion. Rightly or wrongly, the exhanges are there to be had, once the opinion is put out there. Civil and respectful being key, granted.
 
Far be it from me to rain on anybody’s parade.

But I’m going to.

We’ve just had a stonking victory on APT1, and the dishonest spin from the PL when the original judgment came out has been shown up for the horseshit it always was.

BUT. Winning APT1 is a very different thing to winning on APT2. This is why.

Regular readers of this thread will have come across the phrase “blue pencil” test. What this basically means is, if 95% of a contract is fine, but 5% is unlawful, can you just cross out the 5% as if with a blue pencil, and will the rest make perfect sense without - and here comes the key bit - changing anything else. If you can’t, the whole thing is unlawful.

Let me give two examples. First, the shareholder loans exemption. That was a specific add-on, so if you took that away, the rest still made sense. Second, the rule changes made it easier to prove that a transaction was above market value, so the rule changed from “another party could have paid the same amount” to “another party would have paid the same amount.” That change was ruled unlawful.

The problem is, you can’t just take out the bit that is unlawful. Take the word “would” out, and the sentence stops making sense. (Try it.) Why can’t you just go back to the old rules? Because - and this is crucial - the blue paper test only allows you to take things out. You cannot add things in, even where what remains makes no sense.

So there was always a good chance that once certain parts of the APT rules were judged illegal, the rest would follow.

Now, onto the less comfortable part. The November 24 rules are NOT going to be subject to the same blue pencil test. The November 24 rules were a fresh “start again” set of rules which were voted on and approved by the PL membership.

What we know from the October judgment is that (a) the panel - and don’t forget it will be the same one - basically accepted that it was legitimate for the PL to move away from the old related party rules to the new, wider, associated party test and (B) the APT rules as originally introduced included far more safeguards and checks and balances to ensure a fair balance was struck between sponsors who had their own reasons for wanting to pay a sum that might be seen as over the odds and others who are basically taking the piss.

What we know about the November rules is that the PL kept the bits that weren’t unlawful and replaced the bits that were.

So, on the face of it, the PL have finally got their act together. They are not promulgating rules which are obviously unlawful. They are not trying to add words in when they can only take them out. They put the new rules before the league and they got approved.

For all of these reasons, APT2 is simply not going to be a slam dunk win for City. I don’t know what further arguments the Club will make, and those arguments may succeed. What I’m pretty confident about is that APT2 will be a different fight to APT1, and just because we’ve just given them a fucking good hiding this time, it doesn’t mean we will do so next time.

Finally, I’m on page 2001 at the point of writing this and the thread is around 50 pages ahead already. Sorry if anyone else has already made these points
 
slbsn said:
I don't think the arguments on shareholder loans get City there. Won't massively hit any of the Big 6. Might theoretically give historic additional PSR losses to Everton but to what end? I doubt it takes Arsenal retrospectively over the edge on PSR. Again so to what end.
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It may not take them over the edge but it would put a dent in their headroom for transfers.
 
Chris in London said:
Far be it from me to rain on anybody’s parade.

But I’m going to.

We’ve just had a stonking victory on APT1, and the dishonest spin from the PL when the original judgment came out has been shown up for the horseshit it always was.
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Sorry to piss on your parade mate, but your last paragraph there means that Rob Draper thinks you are a juvenile with extremely limited intellectual and analytical capacity.
 
Chris in London said:
It’s not even that.

Arsenal weren’t in breach of the APT rules in 2021-24 because there weren’t any APT rules in that period. As the panel have confirmed, the previous rules remained in force during that period. If Arsenal were in breach of those rules but were acting in accordance with the rules as everyone understood them, that is strong mitigation.

But the APT rules simply did not exist until November 2024 and even that assumes those rules are not unlawful.
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Correct. But the question is whether the FFP / PSR rules were unlawful because shareholder loans have never been assessed under the RPT rules, if challenged. May be worth a punt by City, Forest or Everton now?

I am struggling to see a reason why they shouldn't be unlawful?
 
Chris in London said:
Far be it from me to rain on anybody’s parade.

But I’m going to.

We’ve just had a stonking victory on APT1, and the dishonest spin from the PL when the original judgment came out has been shown up for the horseshit it always was.

BUT. Winning APT1 is a very different thing to winning on APT2. This is why.

Regular readers of this thread will have come across the phrase “blue pencil” test. What this basically means is, if 95% of a contract is fine, but 5% is unlawful, can you just cross out the 5% as if with a blue pencil, and will the rest make perfect sense without - and here comes the key bit - changing anything else. If you can’t, the whole thing is unlawful.

Let me give two examples. First, the shareholder loans exemption. That was a specific add-on, so if you took that away, the rest still made sense. Second, the rule changes made it easier to prove that a transaction was above market value, so the rule changed from “another party could have paid the same amount” to “another party would have paid the same amount.” That change was ruled unlawful.

The problem is, you can’t just take out the bit that is unlawful. Take the word “would” out, and the sentence stops making sense. (Try it.) Why can’t you just go back to the old rules? Because - and this is crucial - the blue paper test only allows you to take things out. You cannot add things in, even where what remains makes no sense.

So there was always a good chance that once certain parts of the APT rules were judged illegal, the rest would follow.

Now, onto the less comfortable part. The November 24 rules are NOT going to be subject to the same blue pencil test. The November 24 rules were a fresh “start again” set of rules which were voted on and approved by the PL membership.

What we know from the October judgment is that (a) the panel - and don’t forget it will be the same one - basically accepted that it was legitimate for the PL to move away from the old related party rules to the new, wider, associated party test and (B) the APT rules as originally introduced included far more safeguards and checks and balances to ensure a fair balance was struck between sponsors who had their own reasons for wanting to pay a sum that might be seen as over the odds and others who are basically taking the piss.

What we know about the November rules is that the PL kept the bits that weren’t unlawful and replaced the bits that were.

So, on the face of it, the PL have finally got their act together. They are not promulgating rules which are obviously unlawful. They are not trying to add words in when they can only take them out. They put the new rules before the league and they got approved.

For all of these reasons, APT2 is simply not going to be a slam dunk win for City. I don’t know what further arguments the Club will make, and those arguments may succeed. What I’m pretty confident about is that APT2 will be a different fight to APT1, and just because we’ve just given them a fucking good hiding this time, it doesn’t mean we will do so next time.

Finally, I’m on page 2001 at the point of writing this and the thread is around 50 pages ahead already. Sorry if anyone else has already made these points
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Good post. But I think what people are having a problem with is how you can make three or four changes to rules that don't exist?

Seems to me as a hopeless non-lawyer that they will have to approve a whole new set of APT rules that, taken together, form a lawful coherent whole.

They may very well look like the November rules, but just making changes wasn't good enough?

Then you have the question about the lawfulness of the transition measures on shareholder loans and, for that matter, the lawfulness of all the financial rules including FFP and PSR, taking this judgment into account ..... It's a complete pig's breakfast that will take forever to sort out.
 
Chris in London said:
Far be it from me to rain on anybody’s parade.

But I’m going to.

We’ve just had a stonking victory on APT1, and the dishonest spin from the PL when the original judgment came out has been shown up for the horseshit it always was.

BUT. Winning APT1 is a very different thing to winning on APT2. This is why.

Regular readers of this thread will have come across the phrase “blue pencil” test. What this basically means is, if 95% of a contract is fine, but 5% is unlawful, can you just cross out the 5% as if with a blue pencil, and will the rest make perfect sense without - and here comes the key bit - changing anything else. If you can’t, the whole thing is unlawful.

Let me give two examples. First, the shareholder loans exemption. That was a specific add-on, so if you took that away, the rest still made sense. Second, the rule changes made it easier to prove that a transaction was above market value, so the rule changed from “another party could have paid the same amount” to “another party would have paid the same amount.” That change was ruled unlawful.

The problem is, you can’t just take out the bit that is unlawful. Take the word “would” out, and the sentence stops making sense. (Try it.) Why can’t you just go back to the old rules? Because - and this is crucial - the blue paper test only allows you to take things out. You cannot add things in, even where what remains makes no sense.

So there was always a good chance that once certain parts of the APT rules were judged illegal, the rest would follow.

Now, onto the less comfortable part. The November 24 rules are NOT going to be subject to the same blue pencil test. The November 24 rules were a fresh “start again” set of rules which were voted on and approved by the PL membership.

What we know from the October judgment is that (a) the panel - and don’t forget it will be the same one - basically accepted that it was legitimate for the PL to move away from the old related party rules to the new, wider, associated party test and (B) the APT rules as originally introduced included far more safeguards and checks and balances to ensure a fair balance was struck between sponsors who had their own reasons for wanting to pay a sum that might be seen as over the odds and others who are basically taking the piss.

What we know about the November rules is that the PL kept the bits that weren’t unlawful and replaced the bits that were.

So, on the face of it, the PL have finally got their act together. They are not promulgating rules which are obviously unlawful. They are not trying to add words in when they can only take them out. They put the new rules before the league and they got approved.

For all of these reasons, APT2 is simply not going to be a slam dunk win for City. I don’t know what further arguments the Club will make, and those arguments may succeed. What I’m pretty confident about is that APT2 will be a different fight to APT1, and just because we’ve just given them a fucking good hiding this time, it doesn’t mean we will do so next time.

Finally, I’m on page 2001 at the point of writing this and the thread is around 50 pages ahead already. Sorry if anyone else has already made these points
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When clubs voted in November they were still in the dark as the premier league had misled members & then spent weeks lobbying (coercing) them to support the new vote.

Is this anything that a solid playmaker such as Panick could work with?
 
Stoned Rose said:
I posted a while ago (I think as a reply to one of Stefan’s posts) that there’ll be more to this than we currently know or can see.

There’s no way this has been purely about PR or to just be cunts for the sake of it imo.
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It is interesting the club haven't yet released a statement.

For a PR only win, you would think they would be milking it, knowing its fleeting nature.
 
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