Going after FFP is not a sure success and could be a long process. Would UEFA let you enter their competition during this battle ? UEFA and FIFA can threaten the whole British association if one of his member dares to go to civil court. It happened with Sion if my memory is right. And Switzerland association slapped Sion with a big point penalty in the league which satisfied UEFA/FIFA.
I know your owner is more belligerent than PSG one but PSG won the appeal and didn't go further. They even accepted UEFA request about not renewing the QTA contract. And their brand is still damaged as they are seen as cheat like City.
Btw, i was on some OctagonUK account and the guy posted a study showing that, in general, the people don't really care about the moral value of a brand. So, i think City won't have too much damage on their quest for sponsors after being cleared. PSG is doing excellent these days despite all the past and present suspicions. City will be alright.
You are right, there is no guarantee that a legal challenge to FFP will be successful, and there are risks involved, to be sure.
But, I think your stance is based on a few dubious premises:
1) FFP, in its current or later modified state (for which we undoubtedly will have no input), will not be used to curtail City development in the future.
This is almost certainly false for very obvious reasons.
2) UEFA will threaten or actually expell City or perhaps all English teams from the Champions League if City were to mount a legal challenge to FFP.
This is *probably* false given that any such action could itself spark a legal challenge of unlawful retaliation from an industry regulatory body, which could be won at great (perhaps catastrophic) expense to UEFA even if the City challenge to FFP failed. Sion (and a few other examples) are very different to City challenging FFP in the courts as they were clubs with limit resources and stature so could be very easily bullied in to submission (they had little functional recourse).
3) The current damage done to the City brand and standing will be the last instance of such degradation brought about by UEFA and affiliated adversaries.
This, of course, is most certainly false. And, despite what some studies may tell you (many of them from brand management agencies who are incentivised to convince organisations that brand damage doesn’t matter much), continued hits to the integrity of a brand — and an organisation’s standing in the specific industry — will eventually lead to investment challenges and, in the case of football, suppression of sponsorship potential. That is especially the case in our social media / outage age. I actually think many of the brand value studies are fairly out of sink with the commercial environment that exists now.
4) That our relationship with current UEFA leadership is not irrevocably damaged beyond mending.
I think most reasonable observers would say this is unlikely to be true and that for City to have any hope of ever getting a seat adjacent to the table, much less at it (as PSG have), there would need to be a major change either with our leadership and organisation (perhaps even extending to ownership) or UEFA’s.
Ultimately, not attempting to remove or significantly change FFP will only serve to further inhibit City’s (as well as most other European clubs’) development in the future and, in my opinion, be seen by City leadership and ownership as acquiescing to UEFA power and control, which by extension means bowing to the cartel clubs control.