Everybody wins! Nobody wins!

Morning all.

There’s a lot of chatter about Man City this morning, and the case – separate from the 115 charges – about the Premier League’s Associated Party Transaction rules. The way it’s being reported in some outlets, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was a slam-dunk victory for City.

There is a stark difference between what actually happened, and what some of the headlines and social media commentary from people working in the football industry say. Did City have some success? Yes. Two of City’s complaints were upheld, something the Premier League addressed in their statement:

These elements can quickly and effectively be remedied by the League and clubs.

They went on to say:

Manchester City brought a wholesale challenge to the legality, design, framework and implementation of the APT Rules. The club was unsuccessful in the majority of its challenge. Significantly, the Tribunal determined that the APT Rules are necessary, pursued a legitimate objective and were put in place to ensure that the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) are effective, thereby supporting and delivering sporting integrity and sustainability in the Premier League.

I have to admit, a lot of stuff like this leaves me cold. The financial aspects, the legalese, I find it difficult to connect properly with it. However, I would recommend reading the full statement which paints a very different picture from the one presented elsewhere. Your guess as to why that is, is as good as mine. It’s not that difficult to work it out though.

Barney Ronay offers some interesting commentary in The Guardian, while in the Independent, Miguel Delaney outlines potential consequences of the findings that went in City’s favour. Quite what happens next remains to be seen. Some clubs gave ‘evidence’ against Man City, Arsenal included; others backed up the club that has won the title in six of the last seven seasons, who have basically turned it into a Ligue 1/Bundesliga where only for Jurgen Klopp and Mikel Arteta any sense of legitimate competition for the top spot would be gone. Turkeys voting for Christmas, or just the reality of how money continues to corrupt sport (and everything else)? Premier League civil war, at boardroom level at least, is bubbling away in the background.

I guess it’s just an obvious consequence of clubs being owned by billionaires, oligarchs and nation states. These people always get what they want, and they use courtrooms and expensive lawyers to do that. I don’t exclude Arsenal here, by the way. I don’t think there’s really a strong moral high ground to take but as far as I’m aware we have always tried to do things by the book. There’s only one club in this league facing a litany of charges, with mountains of evidence and previous with UEFA, let’s not forget.

But the sad fact is that money, investment groups, hedge funds and pyramid schemes are at the heart of what football is these days. Take 777 Partners, who were set to become the new owners of Everton before things started unraveling for them. There’s more detail here from Josimar (a story co-authored by our friend Philippe Auclair), and it makes for bleak reading. It is behind a paywall, but for €30 a year (that’s €2.50 a month), you get access to everything they do, and it’s one of the only publications consistently producing top class investigative reporting on the game we all love.

It’s also a great example of why the multi-club ownership model is so flawed. They ‘own’ Standard Liege, Genoa, Red Star FC, Hertha Berlin, Sevilla, Vasco da Gama and Melbourne Victory, and the futures of those clubs are now up in the air. That’s not even touching on the way that model can be used to funnel money around, whether it’s via player sales or other means. To me, it’s just fundamentally wrong that one entity can operate multiple football clubs – particularly in Europe where there’s potentially a ‘crossing of the streams’ in a competitive sense.

Earlier in the year there was talk of how Man Utd and Nice might face an issue re: European competition because of shared ownership with gigantic polluters Ineos. Man City and Girona (part of the City group) are both in the Champions League this season. If they meet at a later stage, it’s fair to say that fixture would see some cynical eyebrows raised. Even the fact it’s open to question is harmful to the integrity of the game and the competition. It’s all so unbelievably grotty.

As I said above though, this is what happens when billions of pounds are sloshing around any industry. What makes this a bit different though is that football isn’t really hugely profitable, at least not financially. The entities might be worth billions, but I don’t think there’s any other industry where the demands from your ‘customers’ are not just to spend every penny you make, but way more than that, in the aim of sporting success. We know the reasons why it’s worth it for some ownership groups, it’s part of a wider plan to present an image to the world, but it’s still a bit mad when you think about it.

So, we’ll wait and see what happens. The Premier League will likely amend the rules, City will trumpet their victory, happily amplified by some of the worst client journalism you will ever see, and the inexorable march of football towards some kind of financial black hole will continue.

Fun times!

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