Why Manchester City's minor 'victory' hasn't halted their PR war against the Premier League

“The Club has succeeded with its claim”, trumpeted an official Manchester City statement, mere moments after the conclusion of the tribunal which ruled on the Premier League’s associated party transaction (APT) rules, which, the statement continued, “have been found to be unlawful.”

Well… yes. But also, no, not really. Manchester City won a couple of small battles in their case against the Premier League but any reading of the full 175-page written verdict reveals that the club failed with the significant majority of the claims that they made. Just two were upheld. So why are City acting as though they’ve achieved a colossal victory?

The two legal successes they have achieved aren’t necessarily insignificant, but they won’t completely rewrite the rulebook and nor are they likely to change the face of football finance in England. Manchester City had taken exception to the APT rules, which govern the amounts of money that clubs can earn through sponsorship deals and other transactions with businesses who are linked to clubs’ owners. Those seem likely to hold.

In short, the APT rules are what prevent Abu Dhabi, who bankroll City, from funding the club to the extent that they might want by buying sponsorship deals of inflated value with the club through Etihad or other companies they control. Such deals have to represent fair market value – in other words, Etihad can only pay Manchester City as much money as another similar but unrelated company might pay for the same sponsorship rights.

City had hoped to take a sledgehammer to those rules, but instead only chipped away at a couple of their component parts. Firstly, a ruling sided with City regarding concerns over transparency in the way that the Premier League calculates fair market value. Secondly, they have overturned a rule which allowed loans made by owners to their clubs to ignore fair market value – in other words, going forward, owners or shareholders will only be able to loan their teams as much money, or at as good of a rate, as they would expect to get from a bank or other third party.

All fair enough, to be honest, at least on paper. City themselves don’t appear to benefit from such loans themselves, but several sides do (The Guardian estimate that as many as nine current Premier League clubs have received such loans) and if those teams have to rein their spending in as a result, that clearly gives Pep Guardiola’s side a small but potentially significant edge when it comes to spending.

So far, so mundane, truth be told. These are not earth-shattering rulings which will tear up the fabric of English football. The Premier League’s APT rules broadly held up, even if a couple of points being found to be unlawful could open them up to a lawsuit from Manchester City down the road. Which makes the aggression with which Manchester City have gone after the Premier League in their communications quite remarkable.

“The Premier League was found to have abused its dominant position,” is another prominent line in the official statement, and one which requires a fair amount of reading between the lines of the ruling. They even describe the Premier League as having been found to be “discriminatory”. That word does not appear in the summary of the findings of the ruling, which the statement links to, conveniently not offering up the other 174 pages.

The ruling did not, as it happens, appear to make such claims, and certainly not directly. One of City’s allegations did claim that the Premier League was being discriminatory in that its APT rules were allegedly unfairly biased against people from the Middle East, apparently because that’s where the petrostates getting involved in football can be found. That was tossed out along with several other claims.

So why go in with two feet and studs raised in such a manner, even appearing to make claims which go well above and beyond what the ruling actually says? Because even if Manchester City didn’t achieve a very big victory in the courts, they are determined to win big in the PR battle, one which feeds into the entirely separate proceedings currently determining whether the club broke Premier League spending rules 115 or more times.

Here, they are on firmer ground. Their marketing machine clicked into overdrive with speed and precision the instant that the ruling was made public, getting Manchester City’s version of events out into the world loud and clear and steamrolling over the Premier League’s own version of events, which came later and was largely lost in the clamour created by City’s incendiary claims of abuse, discrimination and ultimate victory.

By the time the Premier League’s own statement, which welcomed the findings and suggested that the tribunal had “endorsed the overall objectives, framework and decision-making of the APT system” came out, not only had Manchester City already succeeded in convincing many people with access to social media, not least their own fans, that they had been vindicated, but several well-respected newspapers had already published digital stories echoing the claims of victory. Many of those stories, which took City’s bullishness to heart in their headlines, were written long before their authors could conceivably have read the ruling in full.

Nor have the club let up. Since the Premier League’s version of events became public, the club’s general counsel has written to other members of the English top flight to accuse the league of “misleading” its members of the substance of the ruling, even saying that “MCFC's position is that this means that all of the APT rules are void.” That claim seems to be the opinion of Manchester City’s lawyers alone, at least as it stands.

So why take such an aggressive stance when it won’t change the ruling? Partly, it’s because the Premier League has set itself a target of rewriting the unlawful elements of its APT rules with 10 days. Manchester City wants to slow that process down and be able to exert more pressure to bring about broader changes, presumably hoping that other clubs will support it. Newcastle United, Chelsea and Everton were among the teams who wrote in support of the team’s claims.

If the APT system was blown up entirely, or at least declawed, then the enormous wealth at Manchester City’s disposal could potentially be deployed in full force – and only Saudi-backed Newcastle would have a prayer of matching them for spending power. Clubs like Chelsea would be able to bring cash to bear in a way that would push themselves ahead of the vast majority of clubs, even if the apparent belief that they could match the few sides backed by petrostates feels optimistic. Even the most successful hedge fund billionaires can’t compete with oil money. Everton have joined the team for their own inscrutable reasons.

But Manchester City are also keen to win the broader PR war, in the hope that they can paint themselves in the best possible light. They want to be seen as freedom fighters, battling against an oppressive Premier League. It’s a Trumpian line of public relations which asks people to believe that they are the ones kicking back against a dominant elite.

That’s why, when they launched this claim earlier this year, they described their aim as averting “the tyranny of the majority.” It was a very specifically-chosen phrase intended to draw battlelines - and based on the response from fans on social media, it worked. It’s worth noting, incidentally, that the tyrannous majority of clubs which supported the rule about loans being exempt from APT checks which was just defeated included… Manchester City. They were the partial architects of the allegedly abusive and discriminatory rulings which have so deeply upset them now.

The timing, as the private hearing into those infamous 115 charges goes on – a verdict is expected in November – is not coincidental. The club knows that if that case should go against them, the consequences could be severe, and they want to make it known, whether it be true or not, that they are the victims here. They want fans to remain loyal and partisan, as well as to have a political platform from which to attack the Premier League’s rules to their own benefit going forward.

The elements of the case that they won against the Premier League were not spurious. It behoves the league to remain transparent in how it measures fair market value, and it seems fair to ask that owners’ loans fall under the same umbrella. The potential for that part of the system to be abused appears evident enough. But many more of the cases raised appeared specious or simply engineered in order to create a world in which the financial advantage that Manchester City already enjoy grows exponentially.

This is not David against Goliath, as much as the club want you to believe it to be so. Nor have they just felled the Premier League with a well-aimed slingshot. All they are trying to do is to build a sporting world in which the terms and conditions are as advantageous to them as possible. Perhaps that’s their right, but to paint themselves as having been abused and discriminated against seems extraordinary.