Manchester City's claim to a legal victory over the Premier League points to a wider war | city ​​of manchester

Laydeez and gentlemen, we have a winner. In fact, we can do better than that. We have two of them! Welcome to the Premier League: so good, so twisted by infighting, it can even defeat itself.

The decision in city ​​of manchester v the Premier League tribunal (not the big one, but the smaller retaliatory one) was finally revealed in all its 164-page glory on Monday afternoon. At that moment, English football was left with the spectacle of both sides simultaneously singing victory, the referee raising both fists in the center of the ring, both fighters falling to the ground in triumph, thanking God, telling Adrian that the they love, harassed by coaches. and cut men.

Zoom out a bit and it's objectively fun to watch the communications teams and PR operatives on both sides go out of their way to claim victory. Monday's two statements stood out for their contrasts. tones of triumphalism.

The Premier League opted for the airy and vindicated, not angry, just sad. Manchester City remained firm, hostile and pointing fingers. Maybe this is the closest we'll get in popular culture to Blur v Oasis. Except this time they both claim to be number one.

So on the one hand we have: “The Premier League welcomes the Tribunal's findings, which supported the overall objectives, framework and decision-making of the APT system.” But wait. What is this? “The Club has been successful in its claim: the Associated Party Transactions (APT) rules have been declared illegal.”

And so it goes. The Premier League tells us through a speaker that “(the tribunal) concluded that the APT Rules include adequately detailed criteria regarding the determination of FMV and that the process for assessing FMV is clearly defined, transparent and non-discriminatory.” Meanwhile, Clive, I hear in my other ear that: “The Premier League was found to have abused its dominant position. “The Court has determined that the rules are structurally unfair.”

Reading this it is difficult not to think of Bleak House and Jarndyce and Jarndyce, the insatiable black hole of a Chancery case that elite club football seems determined to model, and of which “no two Chancery lawyers can talk for five minutes without reaching an agreement.” “total disagreement regarding all premises.”

At this point, the most interesting part lies in City's claims of a clear and absolute victory. It is not immediately clear, beyond the bombast, why the club believes it has achieved such an obvious victory. Unless, of course, the outcome here speaks more meaningfully to the broader battle of the PSR charges and to evidence that we, the weary public at large, have yet to see.

An important element that City want to celebrate is the decision on loans to owners, which means not so much that they win, but that others lose. The decision that “shareholder loans should not be excluded from the scope of the APT Rules” has league-wide significance.

This means that owner loans should be subject to the same type of rules about appropriate value as sponsorship agreements, as expressed most obviously in interest and payment schedules. This is bad news for clubs that rely on favorable loans to spend more than their income would naturally allow.

The Chelsea model, for example: it will be harder to immediately splash a billion on players if what can go to the club in the form of loans is subject to restrictive rules. Some City fans online were already celebrating the fact that their club will no longer be bullied by the financial power led by its owners such as Brighton and Hove Albion, so it is a relief for Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund.

The broader point is that if other clubs have been unfairly using loans to compete, this certainly makes City look more plausible defending other charges. It is now suggested that the league's rules have contradictions and that this has not been properly analyzed. Why punish the way we bring in money while we allow it?

It is evident that this case speaks very clearly to the separate issue of the 130 financial charges. The city would have hoped that rules stating that sponsor payments must be made at fair market value would be undermined or declared illegal. If this is done, at the stroke of a pen it is likely that a large number of PSR charges will lose much of their seriousness as grounds for punishment.

This appears not to have happened. As the Premier League points out, the court rejected this argument, stating that if the associated sponsorship was not awarded at fair market value “competition would be distorted as the club would benefit from a subsidy”.

It is also worth noting that the court ruled that there was no discrimination in these rules against clubs from the “Gulf region”. This was an absurd claim that, frankly, everyone involved should be ashamed of having made. Rational and general economic rules can be discussed, modified or abandoned. But to call them racially motivated is to demean the victims of real racism.

At this point, City's sheer triumphalism might seem a bit over the top. Maybe trying to eliminate those rules was always overkill anyway. Perhaps this is simply a step on that path. The city is very happy with part of this. Again, they are much more optimistic in reporting it. “The Tribunal has set aside specific Premier League decisions to restate the fair market value of two transactions carried out by the Club. “The court held that the Premier League had made decisions in a procedurally unfair manner.”

This is supposed to be a statement directed through the wall to the other proceedings. We haven't seen the full evidence on any of this. But if City have lit a fire under what is a relevant or admissible sponsorship deal, then perhaps they can also sniff out another solution on the broader charges, a lack of statute of limitations or procedural clumsiness. According to their statement, the Premier League is, as we say in football (remember?), clearly a bit nervous at this point.

Otherwise, if we stand behind the lens of sport, it's impossible to overstate how mind-blowingly boring and nihilistic this all feels. The online debate will take place between angry avatars repeating meaningless tribal demagoguery. But really, who comes to sports for this?

The other big news of the day in legal football was the news that Coleen Rooney's legal bill in the meritless Wagatha Christie case will rise to £1.2m – a reminder, as Dickens says elsewhere, of that: “The only great principle of English law is to do business for itself.” Money will always win. More money will beat a lot of money. And while there may be some real, identifiable winners in the end, they will all be billionaires, dictators, or both.

This continues to be the direction that these twin cars follow on the same track, towards an increasingly elitist and autonomous sport. As for the current fight, it is tempting, in the absence of evidence, to draw this round; but with an advantage, in work rate and aggression, for the blue corner.