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

[oakiecokie]

I was just going to send them both a "get a fucking room you pair" but yours is more subtle mate. ;)

 

[Grassland Blue]

No expert on this by any means, but I wonder if "globalisation" of the game is more popular where there is less cultural investment in football. The more culturally invested, the less interested in change. I am thinking England, possibly Germany and further afield Argentina, Brazil, Mexico. I don't know the situation in Spain and Italy. But this "globalisation" is definitely being pushed by people who gave become rich though sports-manipulators from a country that has a completely domestic and un-ESM view of its major sports and little cultural attachment to football. The US, of course. The game will be better when these US owners are put back in their box, imho.

I have no problem with American owners of clubs.
What I do have a problem with is those club owners getting together to change the make up of the league, removing the jeopardy from it and creaming off the cash.
An American dominance of the Prem is not a good thing.
A thought occurred to me while writing this.
Why don't the P/L make it a rule that only; say, 6 clubs could be owned by any one country - much like when individual clubs were restricted in the number of foreign players they could use?
Would this be possible, to stop the yanks in their tracks?

 

[M18CTID]

If you remember the birth of Sky, they had dancing girls, bands on the pitch before the game, an awful lot of razzmatazz, and it quickly died a death.

It's just not what UK based fans either expect or want. Imagine it before a City game. The stands would carry on being empty until just before kick off because 50,000 blues want to get the beers in before the match. All that glitziness won't look good in an empty stadium.

Isn't that what happens now? ;)

 

[Blue Pete]

I was just going to send them both a "get a fucking room you pair" but yours is more subtle mate. ;)

That is him watching the room

 

[Rory Bluelow]

If you remember the birth of Sky, they had dancing girls, bands on the pitch before the game, an awful lot of razzmatazz, and it quickly died a death.

It's just not what UK based fans either expect or want. Imagine it before a City game. The stands would carry on being empty until just before kick off because 50,000 blues want to get the beers in before the match. All that glitziness won't look good in an empty stadium.

Spot on. Lots of people seem to think we share a common culture with the USA and even conflate our history with theirs. Every time I visit the States or mingle with lots of Americans I’m reminded of how very different we are !
They’re generally lovely people but definitely not like us - for good or ill.

 

[Chris in London]

I accept that the timescale of the APT rules' introduction is more likely to be related to the Newcastle takeover. But there's clearly (in my view) a link between the PL charges and their mention of related parties, and the APT rules, which are an attempt to get round IAS24.

The evidence before the tribunal on this was quite interesting. The PL said that Newcastle was the catalyst but not the reason for the introduction of the APT rules in substitution for the previous RPT rules. They said that the prime motivator was to stop another Portsmouth.

Personally, even though the tribunal accepted that evidence, I would call bullshit on that. The one thing the APT rules would not do is stop another Portsmouth, because Portsmouth went over the edge precisely as a result of the owner called in all those interest free loans. Whether the loans were interest bearing or not is not the issue: as long as the owner of a company can make loans to the company that are repayable on demand, you run the risk of another Portsmouth, and it is irrelevant that the company is in the business of professional football, manufacturing widgits or professional tiddlywinks. So "we wanted to avoid Portsmouth 2" just makes no sense to me.

By contrast, to my mind it is plain that there has for some time been some considerable angst amongst the usual suspects that the long-established RPT rules set out in IAS24 did not cover City and Etihad. This can be seen in the request that was made just after the Newcastle takeover that the tribunal refer to for a rehash of the rules "to include the widest possible definition of what is a related party transaction". It seems likely the 'real' target of the APT rules was both City and Newcastle - City because the existing rules didn't stop us, and Newcastle because they were worried that they would end up having even more muscle than City.

But none of that is to say that there is any direct connection between the 115 charges and the APT rules. They are separate issues relating to different rules. The real connection may be that the motivation for both the 115 charges and the introduction of the APT rules may come from the same place. We have debated the technical deficiencies and hurdles the PL will have to get over in the 115 charges at some length and I don't think anyone needs to re-cover that territory. I think it is quite plain that a degree of pressure has been brought to bear for those charges to be brought, and it wouldn't surprise me if the reason for that is because of the usual suspects' frustration that the rules under which all clubs were operating until 2021 didn't actually achieve what those usual suspects wanted them to achieve. We all know the PL will struggle to land the major charges - maybe famous last words, I know, but that has been the mood music from a variety of sources for the last 2 years - but why else would you bring these Hail Mary charges?

 

[Centurions]

I have no problem with American owners of clubs.
What I do have a problem with is those club owners getting together to change the make up of the league, removing the jeopardy from it and creaming off the cash.
An American dominance of the Prem is not a good thing.
A thought occurred to me while writing this.
Why don't the P/L make it a rule that only; say, 6 clubs could be owned by any one country - much like when individual clubs were restricted in the number of foreign players they could use?
Would this be possible, to stop the yanks in their tracks?

Because that would be highly illegal and a restriction of trade, the PL would never agree to anything like that.

 

[cheekybids]

The evidence before the tribunal on this was quite interesting. The PL said that Newcastle was the catalyst but not the reason for the introduction of the APT rules in substitution for the previous RPT rules. They said that the prime motivator was to stop another Portsmouth.

Personally, even though the tribunal accepted that evidence, I would call bullshit on that. The one thing the APT rules would not do is stop another Portsmouth, because Portsmouth went over the edge precisely as a result of the owner called in all those interest free loans. Whether the loans were interest bearing or not is not the issue: as long as the owner of a company can make loans to the company that are repayable on demand, you run the risk of another Portsmouth, and it is irrelevant that the company is in the business of professional football, manufacturing widgits or professional tiddlywinks. So "we wanted to avoid Portsmouth 2" just makes no sense to me.

By contrast, to my mind it is plain that there has for some time been some considerable angst amongst the usual suspects that the long-established RPT rules set out in IAS24 did not cover City and Etihad. This can be seen in the request that was made just after the Newcastle takeover that the tribunal refer to for a rehash of the rules "to include the widest possible definition of what is a related party transaction". It seems likely the 'real' target of the APT rules was both City and Newcastle - City because the existing rules didn't stop us, and Newcastle because they were worried that they would end up having even more muscle than City.

But none of that is to say that there is any direct connection between the 115 charges and the APT rules. They are separate issues relating to different rules. The real connection may be that the motivation for both the 115 charges and the introduction of the APT rules may come from the same place. We have debated the technical deficiencies and hurdles the PL will have to get over in the 115 charges at some length and I don't think anyone needs to re-cover that territory. I think it is quite plain that a degree of pressure has been brought to bear for those charges to be brought, and it wouldn't surprise me if the reason for that is because of the usual suspects' frustration that the rules under which all clubs were operating until 2021 didn't actually achieve what those usual suspects wanted them to achieve. We all know the PL will struggle to land the major charges - maybe famous last words, I know, but that has been the mood music from a variety of sources for the last 2 years - but why else would you bring these Hail Mary charges?

Do they get sworn in before giving evidence in these hearings?

I don’t believe even the most blatantly biased fans of the red cartel would believe the rules were to stop another Portsmouth. Certainly not when their intention & desires appears to be to ruin City….

 

[Chris in London]

Do they get sworn in before giving evidence in these hearings?

I don’t believe even the most blatantly biased fans of the red cartel would believe the rules were to stop another Portsmouth. Certainly not when their intention & desires appears to be to ruin City….

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. It isn't mandatory. I don't know what happened in City's case.

 

[horlock_was_super]

(not in) Manchester united Football Club

There - that's better.