Prestwich_Blue
Well-Known Member
Agent Omar playing his part beautifully as usual. "Another source" is presumably Slimy Stone.
City launch legal action against the Premier League | Club & PL reach settlement | Proceedings dropped (p1147)
- Thread starter denislawsbackheel
- Start date
Agent Omar playing his part beautifully as usual. "Another source" is presumably Slimy Stone.
Lord Blue
Well-Known Member
You know the rules…
gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
Yes, it’s an irredeemably wank term.
gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
I’m sure her security detail are keeping her fit…
gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
What a pitiful way to make a living. Making shit up and attributing it to ‘another source’.
Another source ffs.
Good article from Martin Samuel in the Times here about PL management style changing with Masters..
At last, some Premier League common sense — but too late for 115 charges
It is commendable that an agreement was reached with Manchester City despite the time and money wasted but both sides are in far too deep for a similar resolution to a much larger problem
Martin SamuelTuesday September 09 2025, 5.55pm, The Times
Today, this column can exclusively reveal the outcome of the Premier League’s 115 charges against Manchester City. The winner is . . . nobody.
Not Manchester City, not the Premier League, not the other 19 clubs, not the brand, not the fans, not even the broadcasters for all the dramatic tension this saga has created. Lawyers have been made even wealthier, reporters have been kept in headlines, although there remains personal scepticism about the public appetite for another internecine squabble around football’s seemingly never-ending list of regulations. Yet does anyone get to have their arm raised in acknowledgment of a knockout after 12 rounds of attritional slugging? Almost certainly not. The Associated Party Transaction (APT) resolution tells us that.
At roughly 3pm on Monday it was announcedthat — well, what was announced, actually? Nothing that could not have been resolved over a pot of coffee and some pastries locked in a legal office in London about two years ago. One imagines that’s how Richard Scudamore, the predecessor to Richard Masters in the chief executive’s chair, might have done it.
Scudamore preferred a lighter touch during his time as the Premier League’s chief executive.
Legal bills were not a drain on the financial health of clubs when Scudamore was in charge. He was a facilitator of the Premier League’s membership, a mediator, a negotiator, a smoother-over. At his leaving do at the German Gymnasium restaurant in London in 2018, a graph indicated the growth in broadcast revenues during his time. It looked like the north face of the Eiger. The owners and chairmen present kept gazing at it in awe.
Scudamore’s style was to protect the product by sitting down and working problems through. The light-touch regulator that football has been promised? That was Scudamore in a nutshell. He only went for West Ham United over Carlos Tevez because they lied. Had the club been truthful about some of the clauses in his contract, Scudamore has always insisted that the league would have registered the player, even allowed him to play that weekend, and then sat down with West Ham’s lawyers first thing on Monday morning to show them exactly how the contract would have to be structured and worded to stay legal.
This is not the style of the modern Premier League. Were the chairwoman, Alison Brittain, and Masters to depart now, the only graph resembling the Eiger would indicate what they had cost the clubs in legal fees — about £50million in 2023-24, with significantly more likely to come. In City, in particular, it faces an opponent with the wherewithal and motivation to match its very expensive legal habit. This, ultimately, may have forced a much-needed compromise.
Scuadmore only went after West Ham after they lied about the signing of Tevez
So why, when the verdict on the 115 charges drops, can there only be losers? Well, like the APT verdict, neither side can hope to emerge entirely unscathed. This isn’t the Women’s Rugby World Cup. Nobody gets to win 115-0. Whatever goes against City, however big, however small, there will be reputational harm. Any defeat on any accusation will always be used by their detractors to place an asterisk against their achievements.
Equally, if the Premier League goes down again, it is personally humiliating for the present administration. This is its case, its pursuit, its strategy. After the debacle defeat against Leicester City and the scandal of the legal fees against Nottingham Forest — a case the Premier League actually won, with Forest admitting breaching Profitability and Sustainability Rules, yet it still ended up costing the league a fortune — it needs to get this one over the line, and significantly.
Yet even if it does, say this was to be a Premier League slam dunk, what is proven? That the league was illegitimate? That arguably the greatest club side many of us have seen was founded on deceit? When the time comes to negotiate the next TV deal, is that really such a triumph? Revenue is already dropping in real terms. The Premier League is having to offer more — additional matches, greater access — to maintain revenue streams. What will broadcasters pay if the past decade is then peppered with asterisks?
Talk to a lot of Premier League owners and they do not want past titles taken off City — they know that’s a terrible look. Serie A used to be Europe’s strongest domestic league. It had already lost ground on the Premier League when the Calciopoli scandal led to Juventus being stripped of the 2004-05 title, which then went unawarded. The 2005-06 title was given to Inter Milan, who came second, trailing Juventus by 15 points. And it can be argued justice was done, but the fallout made the league less marketable and, in time, weaker. Italy had boasted five European champions in the 21 years before Calciopoli and has had two since. The last was Inter in 2010.
There will be senior figures at elite Premier League clubs — Tim Lewis at Arsenal springs to mind, as would Daniel Levy had Tottenham Hotspur’s politics not defeated him first — who will be furious at the Premier League reaching a settlement over APT. Yet this is what light-touch regulation looks like: compromise, understanding.
There will be no winners to the outcome of the Premier League’s 115 charges against City with the legal costs running into the millions.
Again, there are no real winners because so much time and money has now been wasted on legal rulings that appear to have been ended by old-fashioned conciliation. City recognise the validity and enforceable nature of the Premier League’s rules, the Premier League accepts that City’s deals with Etihad and other Gulf partners are fair and reasonable in today’s market, because some deals are bespoke.
Nobody needs to torch the rulebook, City can stop feeling persecuted, return to the table, sign their deal with Etihad and the competition can move on. City, you will notice, acknowledge the APT rules as binding, but have stopped short of referring to them as legal. They reserve the right, as no doubt do the Premier League if a commercial agreement crosses their desks with a few noughts where they shouldn’t be. And that’s common sense. That’s what should have happened in the first place, jaw-jaw always being preferred to war-war; and a damn sight cheaper too.
This is an entirely different case to the 115 charges, but the principle is not dissimilar. Costs on each side when the big one finally lands could be in the region of £100million. Was that really necessary? Was alleged non co-operation around historic events really such an issue that it required its own lengthy charge sheet? Could it not all have been boiled down to transgressions alleged to have directly impacted the integrity of the league? Premier League clubs could end up paying more than £5million each depending on the costs award. Would they have voted for that, or for the pursuit of Nottingham Forest, Leicester and Everton, had they known how expensive it would all be?
So can Manchester City now cash blank cheques on sponsorship? Of course not. Rules and parameters remain. City did not advocate for a league without rules. Equally, this idea that they, or Newcastle United, could buy every good player and dominate is flawed. But let’s say they could. Let’s say the new APT agreement gave them the clout to take Bukayo Saka out of Arsenal, retrieve Cole Palmer from Chelsea, prise Jude Bellingham from Real Madrid and put them together with Phil Foden. What would they have? They’d have the England forward line we know doesn’t work because we’ve seen it and the impact on paper is ten times what happens on the field.
Hell, we don’t even know if Liverpool will be able to blend Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike, Mohamed Salah and Florian Wirtz yet. We think it will work; it looks like it should work; but Wirtz hasn’t started well and Salah is yet to hit last season’s form, and the brightest spark is Ekitike, who may have to change position to accommodate Isak. And what if a regulatory compromise had given Newcastle the capacity to keep Isak from Liverpool? Would that have been such a bad thing; or would it have made for a better competition?
No doubt City’s elite rivals who place the Premier League under such pressure to rein them in will not appreciate what they see as capitulation. It is not. It is common sense. The best deal is always the one in which both sides feel they have surrendered a little. That’s not the same as losing. The problem with the 115 charges is we are already too far in. The damage is done, with no winners and not much hope of a draw. It’s a match lasting two years and nobody gets a point.
malg
Well-Known Member
Woah.....why bring @TinFoilHat into this???
malg
Well-Known Member
Good point.....over to @Keepingthefaithsince1976
TinFoilHat
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Prestwich_Blue
Well-Known Member
Nearly as bad as 'irredeemably wank'.
But to be serious, a thought has just occurred to me. The first and potentially most serious group of the PL charges are around the sponsorships and they specifically mention related parties.
I've posted before about how the theme of related parties links 2014, the UEFA/CAS case and these latest charges, as well as the introduction of the APT rules. My view is that the attempt to brand Etihad and the other Abu Dhabi sponsors as related parties, and therefore the requirement to publicly declare their value in our accounts, lies behind this group of charges to a greater or lesser degree. The introduction of the APT rules was, in my view, a clear attempt to bring those sponsorships into the remit of PSR.
So if we've agreed to accept the APT rules, my presumption is that we know that the attempt to brand Etihad etc. as related parties has failed. I could be wrong on that but, if that is the case, then the publication of the formal verdict on the PL charges must be very close indeed, maybe just days away.
thegoatsthegoat
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- 1,646
- Team supported
- City
Haha, he’s innocent on this occasion
calumdown
Well-Known Member
now you know what it felt like for me when i first posted on your new music thread :)
hilts
Well-Known Member
Once you get through about 10 pages of
Yeah we won this
Why
Coz you know
No i don't
Reading between the lines it must mean
Sorry to butt in but it doesn't actually
Are you sure
Reasonably
But we can now surely spend 100 trillion pounds
Probably not
But the 115 is definitely going away
Why? the case has been heard just awaiting decision.
Yeah but you know nudge nudge wink wink yeah
I'm not so sure
I've come to the conclusion no one knows much about anything really important from what we heard. I mean it really couldn't have been any any more vague.
Prestwich_Blue
Well-Known Member
Mate, I don't get paid for this, let alone make a living.
gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
Very well considered article that. And great spot by Samuel on the binding/legal distinction. Missed that until pointed out by Samuel. It’s a huge distinction.Good article from Martin Samuel in the Times here about PL management style changing with Masters..
At last, some Premier League common sense — but too late for 115 charges
It is commendable that an agreement was reached with Manchester City despite the time and money wasted but both sides are in far too deep for a similar resolution to a much larger problem
Martin Samuel
Tuesday September 09 2025, 5.55pm, The Times
Today, this column can exclusively reveal the outcome of the Premier League’s 115 charges against Manchester City. The winner is . . . nobody.
Not Manchester City, not the Premier League, not the other 19 clubs, not the brand, not the fans, not even the broadcasters for all the dramatic tension this saga has created. Lawyers have been made even wealthier, reporters have been kept in headlines, although there remains personal scepticism about the public appetite for another internecine squabble around football’s seemingly never-ending list of regulations. Yet does anyone get to have their arm raised in acknowledgment of a knockout after 12 rounds of attritional slugging? Almost certainly not. The Associated Party Transaction (APT) resolution tells us that.
At roughly 3pm on Monday it was announcedthat — well, what was announced, actually? Nothing that could not have been resolved over a pot of coffee and some pastries locked in a legal office in London about two years ago. One imagines that’s how Richard Scudamore, the predecessor to Richard Masters in the chief executive’s chair, might have done it.
Scudamore preferred a lighter touch during his time as the Premier League’s chief executive.
Legal bills were not a drain on the financial health of clubs when Scudamore was in charge. He was a facilitator of the Premier League’s membership, a mediator, a negotiator, a smoother-over. At his leaving do at the German Gymnasium restaurant in London in 2018, a graph indicated the growth in broadcast revenues during his time. It looked like the north face of the Eiger. The owners and chairmen present kept gazing at it in awe.
Scudamore’s style was to protect the product by sitting down and working problems through. The light-touch regulator that football has been promised? That was Scudamore in a nutshell. He only went for West Ham United over Carlos Tevez because they lied. Had the club been truthful about some of the clauses in his contract, Scudamore has always insisted that the league would have registered the player, even allowed him to play that weekend, and then sat down with West Ham’s lawyers first thing on Monday morning to show them exactly how the contract would have to be structured and worded to stay legal.
This is not the style of the modern Premier League. Were the chairwoman, Alison Brittain, and Masters to depart now, the only graph resembling the Eiger would indicate what they had cost the clubs in legal fees — about £50million in 2023-24, with significantly more likely to come. In City, in particular, it faces an opponent with the wherewithal and motivation to match its very expensive legal habit. This, ultimately, may have forced a much-needed compromise.
Scuadmore only went after West Ham after they lied about the signing of Tevez
So why, when the verdict on the 115 charges drops, can there only be losers? Well, like the APT verdict, neither side can hope to emerge entirely unscathed. This isn’t the Women’s Rugby World Cup. Nobody gets to win 115-0. Whatever goes against City, however big, however small, there will be reputational harm. Any defeat on any accusation will always be used by their detractors to place an asterisk against their achievements.
Equally, if the Premier League goes down again, it is personally humiliating for the present administration. This is its case, its pursuit, its strategy. After the debacle defeat against Leicester City and the scandal of the legal fees against Nottingham Forest — a case the Premier League actually won, with Forest admitting breaching Profitability and Sustainability Rules, yet it still ended up costing the league a fortune — it needs to get this one over the line, and significantly.
Yet even if it does, say this was to be a Premier League slam dunk, what is proven? That the league was illegitimate? That arguably the greatest club side many of us have seen was founded on deceit? When the time comes to negotiate the next TV deal, is that really such a triumph? Revenue is already dropping in real terms. The Premier League is having to offer more — additional matches, greater access — to maintain revenue streams. What will broadcasters pay if the past decade is then peppered with asterisks?
Talk to a lot of Premier League owners and they do not want past titles taken off City — they know that’s a terrible look. Serie A used to be Europe’s strongest domestic league. It had already lost ground on the Premier League when the Calciopoli scandal led to Juventus being stripped of the 2004-05 title, which then went unawarded. The 2005-06 title was given to Inter Milan, who came second, trailing Juventus by 15 points. And it can be argued justice was done, but the fallout made the league less marketable and, in time, weaker. Italy had boasted five European champions in the 21 years before Calciopoli and has had two since. The last was Inter in 2010.
There will be senior figures at elite Premier League clubs — Tim Lewis at Arsenal springs to mind, as would Daniel Levy had Tottenham Hotspur’s politics not defeated him first — who will be furious at the Premier League reaching a settlement over APT. Yet this is what light-touch regulation looks like: compromise, understanding.
There will be no winners to the outcome of the Premier League’s 115 charges against City with the legal costs running into the millions.
Again, there are no real winners because so much time and money has now been wasted on legal rulings that appear to have been ended by old-fashioned conciliation. City recognise the validity and enforceable nature of the Premier League’s rules, the Premier League accepts that City’s deals with Etihad and other Gulf partners are fair and reasonable in today’s market, because some deals are bespoke.
Nobody needs to torch the rulebook, City can stop feeling persecuted, return to the table, sign their deal with Etihad and the competition can move on. City, you will notice, acknowledge the APT rules as binding, but have stopped short of referring to them as legal. They reserve the right, as no doubt do the Premier League if a commercial agreement crosses their desks with a few noughts where they shouldn’t be. And that’s common sense. That’s what should have happened in the first place, jaw-jaw always being preferred to war-war; and a damn sight cheaper too.
This is an entirely different case to the 115 charges, but the principle is not dissimilar. Costs on each side when the big one finally lands could be in the region of £100million. Was that really necessary? Was alleged non co-operation around historic events really such an issue that it required its own lengthy charge sheet? Could it not all have been boiled down to transgressions alleged to have directly impacted the integrity of the league? Premier League clubs could end up paying more than £5million each depending on the costs award. Would they have voted for that, or for the pursuit of Nottingham Forest, Leicester and Everton, had they known how expensive it would all be?
So can Manchester City now cash blank cheques on sponsorship? Of course not. Rules and parameters remain. City did not advocate for a league without rules. Equally, this idea that they, or Newcastle United, could buy every good player and dominate is flawed. But let’s say they could. Let’s say the new APT agreement gave them the clout to take Bukayo Saka out of Arsenal, retrieve Cole Palmer from Chelsea, prise Jude Bellingham from Real Madrid and put them together with Phil Foden. What would they have? They’d have the England forward line we know doesn’t work because we’ve seen it and the impact on paper is ten times what happens on the field.
Hell, we don’t even know if Liverpool will be able to blend Alexander Isak, Hugo Ekitike, Mohamed Salah and Florian Wirtz yet. We think it will work; it looks like it should work; but Wirtz hasn’t started well and Salah is yet to hit last season’s form, and the brightest spark is Ekitike, who may have to change position to accommodate Isak. And what if a regulatory compromise had given Newcastle the capacity to keep Isak from Liverpool? Would that have been such a bad thing; or would it have made for a better competition?
No doubt City’s elite rivals who place the Premier League under such pressure to rein them in will not appreciate what they see as capitulation. It is not. It is common sense. The best deal is always the one in which both sides feel they have surrendered a little. That’s not the same as losing. The problem with the 115 charges is we are already too far in. The damage is done, with no winners and not much hope of a draw. It’s a match lasting two years and nobody gets a point.
John Wayne
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 9 Mar 2007
- Messages
- 3,792
And on that basis, we must surely be confident that the outcome is favourable. Didn't you say you had reason to believe that the PL came out of the hearing very badly?
bobbyowenquiff
Well-Known Member
There is zero chance the usual suspects do not know the broad details of the deal. It will be leaked at the most damaging moment for City. Perhaps this weekend or just before the 115 result. The damage limitation for the PL is well under way,
gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
And that’s just me talking to myself after half a bottle of Scotch...
gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
People who say the 115 and the APT are not related are merely thinking legally or evidentially. That may be correct, but they are definitely strategically and quite probably tactically related.
Think we will definitely have done stuff in one, with the other in mind. So that covers tactical.
No question they are strategically related. Absurd to suggest otherwise, given the proximity in time to each other.
So they are related.
Think we will definitely have done stuff in one, with the other in mind. So that covers tactical.
No question they are strategically related. Absurd to suggest otherwise, given the proximity in time to each other.
So they are related.
gordondaviesmoustache
Well-Known Member
Do you think it might be imminent?