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

bobbyowenquiff said:
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,
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They've offered to speak to clubs, which doesn't make sense. Either they (Masters and Brittain) are the leaders of the league or the league is just governed by the red tops (we know it is), but either way, details must remain confidential.

Does that mean Masters won't share the details with them, or he will, but wink wink, they have to keep it secret?

As for the miserable chairman who would walk away from the league, aka Europe’s super league, I'd like to see that happen. Sounds like the Kroenkes or Levy anyway. Don't think any other club's leaders are that bothered, maybe FSG, but that's it.

Where would they go and play anyway? The championship? League one? La liga?

Cry me a river FFS.
 
bobbyowenquiff said:
There has to be a link. Why would the PL smooth the way for a new Etihad deal when they have essentially accused us of faking our deal with the same sponsor for ten years in another case? If the PL claims were true Etihad officials would have colluded with City over who was paying for the sponsorship.
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Interesting when discussing the APT on talkshite and sly, they end with saying there is no corelation between this and 115, so allowing them to continue to keep up the negative reporting on City.
If however they said there could be , we can't be sure, I think they would stop talking about it.
 
thegoatsthegoat said:
Haha, don’t agree the worlds against city and you’re therefor not a blue. Don’t recall speaking favourable of Spurs? I believe city have had the rough end of the stick from refs at times. Just like every club. The original post I quoted was someone claiming we are shafted every week. Simply not true and it’s what fans of every club thinks when they leave a stadium. If you genuinely believe that city, and city only are targeted by refs then there isn’t much more I can say, I’ll have to leave you and your tin foil hat in peace.
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Even in our pomp we would have 80% possession commit 5 fouls and get 3 yellows. we definitely get it tight from the authorities since the success
 
WEMBLEY76 said:

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.

Richard Scudamore with the Premier League trophy.

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.

Carlos Tevez of West Ham United dribbling past Fabio Simplicio of Palermo during a UEFA Cup match.

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.

Pep Guardiola and Khaldoon Al Mubarak with the Premier League trophy.

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.
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Spot on again.
 
slbsn said:
You can run such an argument. But it usually fails as it did for City in the APT case. And in the PL at least there is quite extensive detail now on how FMV is determined.
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Extensive detail doesn't preclude the use of the word simple to describe something that fails on principle.
 
TheThirdDeano said:
Hope we signed the Etihad deal and got it signed, approved and ratified by the pl before agreeing to settle. Wouldn’t trust those fuckers
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That's where this idea that the club would accept some promises to propose amendments to the APT rules falls down. Firstly, because as you say I doubt the club trusts those fuckers and, secondly, because I am pretty sure that the PL tests the waters on any proposed changes, (why wouldn't they?), and so can manipulate outcomes in their favour to a large extent.
 
Coatigan said:
They can't, and you haven't.

You have just said some stuff. But it is both wrong and irrelevant. That's not debating it.

Am I irrate, of course I am, simultaneously being ganged up on by multiple posters (who in fairness I do generally value and trust on here, hence I bother responding). All for not showing the same blind bravado over a statement of concession.
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If being shown you’re wrong by several people who disagree with you in being ganged up on then I suppose you are.
 
ayrshire_blue said:
Forgive my naivety but isn't it just a case that they'd have to pave the way for the deal to go through as for the moment we are only accused, so innocent legally speaking. In other words they'd have no lawful reason for rejecting the deal provided it was fair value etc etc. If (and I don't believe it will happen) we are found guilty of the serious charges the deal will then face appropriate penalties only at that point?

That could all be wrong btw, just asking the question as that's how I assumed it would work.
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To do that would be a huge risk for the PL. imagine endorsing a firm which is found guilty of fraud a few weeks later. If they had a strong case they would have played for time. Surely not even Masters would be that stupid.
 
bobbyowenquiff said:
Roan is biased. Never writes stories about unnamed PL clubs who are concerned about the Arsenal Emirates deal or their interest free loans. Or United’s huge debts and Liverpool’s spending. We don’t get daily updates on the Chelsea fraud probe.
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The **** is a fucking fraud.
 
bobbyowenquiff said:
There has to be a link. Why would the PL smooth the way for a new Etihad deal when they have essentially accused us of faking our deal with the same sponsor for ten years in another case? If the PL claims were true Etihad officials would have colluded with City over who was paying for the sponsorship.
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It also crossed my mind. Even if they are two separate cases, the timing of settling and waving through the mega Etihad deal before the outcome of the 115 case is known seems rather odd.
 
BobKowalski said:
As we are not privy to the terms of the settlement I am not sure it is worth getting steamed over it. The PL needed their APT revised rules to remain on the books. City threatened that need and given the PL did not want to test the new rules at a tribunal and risk another finding against them, they clearly offered City some sweeteners to buy our public acceptance.

What the PL offered is confidential, and I suspect it is accurate the other PL clubs are none the wiser, given it would have been leaked by now if they were privy to that offer. Although, I am unsure if that stance can be maintained given the PL is owned by the clubs.

This isn’t about right or wrong. This is a commercial decision where everyone walks away with something and should be seen in that light.
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Would the PL be able to make a deal with one of it's members without the other members agreement?
 
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