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

At-Swim-Two-Birds said:
Some thoughts...

To RPT or to APT...that is the question.

Related Party is a long standing term used in accountancy standards which has been refined and amended over decades. City were/are happy to be benchmarked against this standard.

Associated Party is a term invented by the PL. City not so happy to be benchmarked against this untried and untested PL invention which is, by nature of its 'newness', open to wide interpretation.

The APT1 Tribunal has decided that the APT rules from 2021 to November 2024 are void. Does this leave a regulatory void? The Tribunal itself stated that 'the RPT rules come back into operation'.

Currently the APT2 rules are in force from November 2024 but as we know they are the subject of legal challenge by City.

Are City that bothered by shareholder loans? I don't think so. It was a useful tool applied to void the APT1 rules. It also bloodies the noses of the circa 13 clubs that use interest free shareholder loans whilst crying out for commercial fairness elsewhere.

The second big win for City was the APT1 Tribunal's ruling on the Database. All clubs feed in their anonymised transactions to the PL Database. The Database is used by the PL to assess the Fair Market Value (FMV) of transactions on a comparative basis. eg sponsorship deals.

Under APT1 the PL could simply say we have consulted the Database and your sponsorship is not at FMV. City claimed that this was unfair and that the PL must disclose the evidence it used to rely upon when reaching its decision on FMV. The Tribunal agreed with City.

In my view City want a long established International Accounting Standard as a benchmark for Related Party and disclosure of evidence used by the PL when assessing FMV. All perfectly reasonable.
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Was the Tribunal's 'sleight of hand' partly referring to this? The rules state that clubs have to act in good faith, but the PL are doing anything but.
 
slbsn said:
I just tend to believe MOST people don’t outright lie in these situations.
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Depends how you frame the situation.

If the situation is a putative journalist who has long-standing form for tendentious, and frequently specious output when it comes to Manchester City, then in that situation there should surely be a presumption of dishonesty.

I’m struggling to see what other starting point anyone could sensibly assume.
 
slbsn said:
GENERAL WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU ONLY WANT ONE SIDED RESPONSES.

City did appear to want agreement that sponsorship agreements were fundamentally incapable of being FMVed. They didn’t succeed on that. Quite a big point.

The ex ante APT scheme was also broadly found to be justified, necessary and lawful. Another big point for the PL.
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I am not sure the fact that the tribunal accepted the concept of APT was a big win for the PL. City abstained from the vote upon their introduction if I remember correctly adopting a wait and see approach. Without the changes introduced in Feb 2024 would we be here now or would City have been happy with the status quo.

I think the implementation of the rules is City’s issue and why they instigated their action. I am not sure as a club City gains that much in financial terms with the recent tribunal ruling but what is clear it’s a HUGE loss to the PL and should they lose APT2 then that will only be magnified.

I just cannot understand, well perhaps I can, why no one is calling out the executive of the PL and its legal advisors who have allowed such divisions to become apparent within the PL.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
Depends how you frame the situation.

If the situation is a putative journalist who has long-standing form for tendentious, and frequently specious output when it comes to Manchester City, then in that situation there should surely be a presumption of dishonesty.

I’m struggling to see what other starting point anyone could sensibly assume.
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you are talking to someone who gave Nick Harris the benefit of the doubt for a long time and was spectacularly wrong there so it’s my weakness clearly.
 
Chris in London said:
It is worth remembering this was an arbitration. An Arbitrator has jurisdiction to resolve the issues put before him by the parties, nothing more. The likelihood is that in the original pleadings neither side raised the question of whether IF the APT rules were unlawful in some of the ways alleged by City, whether the APT rules were unlawful as a whole.

If an arbitrator takes it upon himself to resolve questions that weren’t put before him, he exposes himself to the criticism that he has acted in excess of his jurisdiction, which might undermine his entire award.

So if you want an arbitrator to decide something, he needs to know both parties agree to that being decided.
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Is it credible that they got to the end of a weeks-long arbitration with neither party, nor the Tribunal, not wondering what the import would be of declaring the rules unlawful? The ruling was that the APT Rules were unlawful - not some rules. Even if not asked, the Tribunal could surely have explicitly reserved opinion on whether the unlawful bits could be separated. It just seems a legal nightmare that the two parties could emerge from a lengthy arbitration with different views as to what the outcome meant - well into "the law is an ass" territory.
 
slbsn said:
GENERAL WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU ONLY WANT ONE SIDED RESPONSES.

City did appear to want agreement that sponsorship agreements were fundamentally incapable of being FMVed. They didn’t succeed on that. Quite a big point.

The ex ante APT scheme was also broadly found to be justified, necessary and lawful. Another big point for the PL.
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They are right though, the changing landscapes of success and growth are impossible to determine at a fixed point in time. Measuring FMV is more akin to quantum physics.
 
slbsn said:
Assuming he has actually spoken to some humans - I have to believe he won’t simply make it up, I like to read the perspectives. Lots in that piece are nonsense. But I found it interesting to see what those people said (again assuming they did say them).
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To be fair I would not trust anything Delaney produces. You are right that there is usually a grain of accuracy in what is written but it is often distorted by lack of context. There are some bad actors whose goal is to generate as much wealth as possible by writing malicious stories about City.
 
slbsn said:
GENERAL WARNING: DO NOT READ IF YOU ONLY WANT ONE SIDED RESPONSES.

City did appear to want agreement that sponsorship agreements were fundamentally incapable of being FMVed. They didn’t succeed on that. Quite a big point.

The ex ante APT scheme was also broadly found to be justified, necessary and lawful. Another big point for the PL.
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I missed where City argued against the possibility of sponsorships being FMVd. They'd agreed to Neilsens being appointed to do it. What's not clear (to me at least) is what changed between initial agreement on the Recommendations and the final vote where City voted against and warned they might take legal action.
 
slbsn said:
I just tend to believe MOST people don’t outright lie in these situations. Plus I don’t think it is that difficult to imagine there are lots of people at a range of clubs that are prepared to give some ill thought through views - Liverpool, Arsenal, Brighton, United types
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Stefan, he’s a fucking liar. Your insight into the law is amazing but you are naive when it comes to the honesty of people.

Every day there are liars all lying as if they are warming up for the world fucking liar championships.
 
supercity88 said:
Sports journalism is a great place to be. You can take a tiny shred of something and just jump to the most bizarre conclusion. The APT rules are found to be unlawful so Sam Wallace has decided that it must mean the Geordies and us just want all rules to be removed. Quite a jump. Furthermore, he talks about how that would lead to a situation that you see somewhere like Spain where the club with the most money dominates. Has he seen who has won the most PL titles in recent times? Why would we need to change the rules - we've already dominated! Then have a little look at the swamp. Under rules they've pushed so hard for, to stifle City, they're fucked. They have to sell to buy because they've found themselves hamstrung.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

The history boys were supposed to stay at the top of the tree and the rest were supposed to stay in line and accept a position in the league, making good money, but never really competing. As City have emerged as the best of the best desperate attempts to restrict us have actually had a bigger impact on the history boys because they're not intelligent or skilled enough to compete. They thought they could just buy the odd player and stay above the competition.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the future. There's surely going to be a shift in position at some point. The rags still make a lot of money but can't spend it. There's a huge threat that they'll suffer for even longer. Would they not like a little bit more flexibility in the rules? It might mean more competition at the top but enables them to escape the bottom end of the table a little easier.
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The fact this idiot tried to look informed by quoting the idiot Sam Wallace and stating there’s a worry the clubs with the most money would potentially monopolise football, without a hint of irony.
 
I think FMV is such a bone of contention because my take is that no outside entity can decide the market value of something, that is solely for the market to decide and that is the basis of economics, no third party should be able to determine the value that anybody else is willing to pay because there is no fair and equitable way of doing that.
 
slbsn said:
I just tend to believe MOST people don’t outright lie in these situations. Plus I don’t think it is that difficult to imagine there are lots of people at a range of clubs that are prepared to give some ill thought through views - Liverpool, Arsenal, Brighton, United types
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I think there is a caveat to that, people may not outright lie in these situations but they will almost certainly frame the facts in a way that will be most beneficial to them, take the pls take on the hacking by liverpool, its all in the past we cant go back that far, just take the money and move on and then proceed to forensically investigate us going back way further than the liverpool hacking, its a choice of how you frame the facts and what you decided to do with them rather than lying.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
Depends how you frame the situation.

If the situation is a putative journalist who has long-standing form for tendentious, and frequently specious output when it comes to Manchester City, then in that situation there should surely be a presumption of dishonesty.

I’m struggling to see what other starting point anyone could sensibly assume.
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Delaney (I presume) doesn’t need to lie.

Let’s put it into the legal context.

If you put an expert witness on the stand, I presume a decent lawyer is going to try to find one that supports their client’s guilt/innocence (unless you’re representing Lucy Letby it seems).

Same with Delaney. He will talk to experts he knows will approach this subject in a way that supports his desired angle. If they don’t, he’ll find another one that does.

It’s shite journalism, but it’s not a lie.
 
mcfcphil said:
Delaney (I presume) doesn’t need to lie.

Let’s put it into the legal context.

If you put an expert witness on the stand, I presume a decent lawyer is going to try to find one that supports their client’s guilt/innocence (unless you’re representing Lucy Letby it seems).

Same with Delaney. He will talk to experts he knows will approach this subject in a way that supports his desired angle. If they don’t, he’ll find another one that does.

It’s shite journalism, but it’s not a lie.
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You actually think he’s spoken to ten lawyers? No more, no less? Why would he speak to that number based on your expert witness theory?
 
Vic said:
City didn't challenge the need for rules. They got what they asked for, that the agreement to bring in the rules was prohibited under the Competition Act and therefore unlawful. They won.

The PL "won" on things that City hadn't challenged, and that the Tribunal didn't feel that there was a racially discriminatory aspect to the "stop the Gulf" emails.
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Unless I am wrong, and I may be of course, the club challenged the need for APT rules as part of Issue 1: Do the APT rules .... have the object of preventing, distorting or restricting competition?

Also I don't think the club ever suggested the rules were discriminatory on a racial basis?
 
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