City launch legal action against the Premier League | City win APT case (pg901)

[Mon Autre]

Can I just check if my understanding of things is roughly correct?

Depending on your allegiances/agenda you can essentially cherry pick parts of the ruling to claim an overall victory in the court of public opinion. The PL "won" on some points and City on others.

PL claiming victory on the finding that the concept of FMV is lawful (though I'm not sure City disputed that?)

City claiming victory on the finding that their current implementation is unlawful.

People can argue about the spin of it on forums and twitter but what is the actual outcome and impact on clubs?

It seems that clubs who favour cash injections from related parties via sponsorship (e.g. City, Newcastle etc) will benefit as the rules around FMV are likely to be loosened and they will therefore see a boost to their p&l?

It seems clubs who favour cash injections from related parties via interest free loans are now going to have to see those rules applied evenly to them and they will therefore see a big hit to their P&L every year.

So regardless of who appears to be winning any argument online or in the press, the long and the short of it is that the ruling has a net benefit to clubs like City. We'll be making more and Arsenal will be making less?

This has always felt inevitable when rules were being made not in the name of fairness, but in the name of protecting those with a head start. Loopholes left in by design were always susceptible to challenges like this.


Edit: sounds like clubs relying on loans could evade the interest fees by converting to equity. Which makes sense but would also require the agreement of existing shareholders.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

It won't be very little? Based on current shareholder loans at current interest rates of 8-10%:-
Brighton 84 million PA
Everton 104 million PA
Arsenal 62.5 million PA
Those sums would leave vanishingly small amounts left for player investment.

Depends on when they were made and over what period. Going back to 2021, you could get a loan for 1% or less. Assuming they got 0.99%, that would put arsenal on £1M per annum and see the loan paid off, whenever the term ended.

 

[cheekybids]

Going against the advice of a silk only tends to happen when emotion and sentiment overcome logic and reason. It’s a conscious decision to ignore the express legal opinion of someone you are paying huge sums of money to advise you. There has to be a much wider underlying motive to act in this way. No other logical conclusion can be drawn.

It also further underlines the PL’s fundamental gross incompetence.

Few can afford the best legal advice but it seems even fewer follow it.

 

[Keeper!]

How long will the announcement take?

 

[Asa's left peg]

Sam Wallace has a piece in the Telegraph stating that the PL has essentially won on all the main points and their APT regs have 'stood firm'. According to Wallace we have had a few minor wins but nothing substantive.

I'll post the next bit in the 115 thread too but there is also a piece with it by Tom Morgan saying that we were using this case to build a narrative that the club is being discriminated against to help our cause in the 115 case.

Like the Guardian, the Telegraph is vehemently anti Abu Dhabi but more because our owner funded Redbird to try to buy it rather than being opposed to the issue of trans rights in the Gulf and similar with the Guardian.

Sam most likely never read the CAS summary (let alone the full report) and now it seems he hasn't read the judgement but has done a quickie based on the PL statement. When will these feckers start doing their job?

 

[Colnago]

Morning All. Apologies if this has been answered previously (quite a lot of recent posts to trawl through). I thought that @slbsn had previously felt that the ruling of the tribunal would not be published as this was a private mediation and that the only clues of any City success would be the removal and redrafting of the recent amendments to the APT rules? I see the judgement has now been formally published albeit with some redactions. Do we know why this has changed and the judgement published?

 

[pauls]

Cute little narrative by wallace but the fact that the tribunal used the word unlawful suggests otherwise

Didn't expect anything else from Wallace who has constantly displayed bias on City.
Don't care which journalist spins it otherwise, page 164 is conclusive enough, just hope Khaldoon has some bigger bombs ready and waiting to be launched.

 

[mancboy]

Sam most likely never read the CAS summary (let alone the full report) and now it seems he hasn't read the judgement but has done a quickie based on the PL statement. When will these feckers start doing their job?

I have my suspicions as to whether sam can even read.

 

[paulchapo]

Martin Samuels called our win yesterday a "Seismic moment for football in this country." Could it be we are just starting? What else is about to come out of the woodwork?

Masters was appointed CEO of the premier league in 2019. In the same year the four year investigation into our club began leading to us being charged in 2023. Some coincidence eh? In that period the same hard core of clubs, padded out with the likes of Burnley , Spurs and Bournemouth, have written letters to have us suspended or banned from European competition. That is clear unequivocal evidence they were colluding and working against us.

Our club has obviously been aware of all this going on and given our great resources I would be amazed if we haven't been gathering evidence against them from the very beginning for when they played their hand. Now they have and they've been smashed in the first game. An emergency meeting has been called. I would be very surprised if Khaldoon doesn't play his aces at that meeting and tell them this is just the tip of the iceberg. If they proceed with the 115 charges case what just happened will go from a bloody nose for the premier league, to being put into intensive care, from which it will never recover.

Whatever happens I hope we make them pay, financially, professionally and personally. No mercy, just as they would have shown us none. They wanted our club put out of business. I hope we do the same to theirs.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Given the bbc and various newspapers are saying we lost a lot more than we won, can anyone who understands this stuff advise what did we lose in yesterday’s verdict that was materially significant to us?

That can’t really be answered with any real accuracy without knowing what City’s true objective was for the action. If it was to obliterate APT then that could quite legitimately be characterised as a ‘loss’. That’s unlikely, however, given we didn’t challenge the previous iteration of APT. Furthermore, such an outcome was objectively much less likely - and the club would doubtless been advised as such, and so would not have been expected, which goes to perception: if you don’t expect a particular outcome then not achieving it is very arguably not a ‘loss’, irrespective of your aspirations.