One, single, lonely thing has become abundantly clear to English soccer after a week filled with jarring acronyms and dense legalese and furious, desperate spin: Manchester City’s ongoing courtroom struggle against the Premier League is not going to conclude with either side winning. At the end of all this, everyone involved is going to lose.
To recap: On Monday, an independent tribunal handed down its verdict on City’s attempt to challenge the legitimacy of the Premier League’s rules on so-called Associated Party Transactions. Those are sponsorship deals struck by clubs with other companies linked to their owners.
Quite what that verdict was might best be considered a “choose your own adventure” sort of situation. City claimed that the judges had decided that the rules were unlawful, and therefore celebrated what it saw as a decisive victory. The Premier League claimed that, while the panel had identified a couple of minor, procedural discrepancies, the system had largely been upheld.
Manchester City was so incensed by that reading of the decision that its lawyers — who, by this stage, probably need a few days off — immediately sent a letter to the league’s 19 other clubs, dismissing the league’s conclusion, stating that the sponsorship rules had been thrown out, and suggesting its rivals should now direct all further communication to them.
The reaction to that was, well, what you might expect. Executives are now openly wondering whether the democratic approach that has helped fuel the league’s growth is sustainable. There are dark whispers of City’s rivals’ submitting warnings of further legal action in advance of a conclusion to the club’s unrelated and more significant case against the league.