Keith Wyness reacts to Man City claiming ‘huge victory’ over Premier League
Everton’s former chief Keith Wyness believes there has been a lot of spinning from Manchester City after they claimed a “huge victory” in their associated party transactions (APT) case.
Speaking on the new edition of Football Insider’s Inside Track podcast, the 66-year-old – who served as CEO at Goodison Park between 2004 and 2009 and now runs a football consultancy advising elite clubs – revealed Man City appear to have won on three areas in their case against the Premier League.
The English champions took legal action against the governing body regarding the APT rules currently in place at an arbitration hearing in June.
Both sides have claimed a victory in the case after the arbitration panel’s decision was published on 7 October, where two aspects of the rules were deemed to be unlawful.
The Premier League welcomed the tribunal’s findings, saying it rejected the majority of Man City’s challenges and “endorsed the overall objectives, framework and decision-making of the APT system”.
But Pep Guardiola’s side have since written to the 19 other top-flight clubs criticising the governing body’s summary of the panel’s ruling, claiming it contains “several inaccuracies”.
Man City and Premier League battle like US election
Wyness admitted he’s “never seen so much spinning” as he compared the situation to a US election.
He told Football Insider‘s Inside Track podcast: “It started off with Man City really spinning the situation that they had won a huge victory.
“Then the Premier League came out a little bit later saying ‘No, it wasn’t that big of a victory and it was just a few tweaks needed to be done to the rules and everything would be fine’.
“Man City have now written to every club and said ‘The Premier League take on this is completely wrong, we did have a huge victory and there are lots of things we have to tell you about’.
“I have never seen as much spinning. It really is like a US election in terms of the spin coming out of this.
“I have been trying to look at this both in the detail in terms of the short term of what’s coming, but really also on the much bigger picture we have got to look at in terms of how this affects the league going forward. City won on three big areas.
“They were right about the way the sponsorships had been challenged wrongly and this again points to the Premier League not drafting their rules properly or executing their rules properly as in the Leicester case.
“There were also criticisms about drafting and interpretation in the Everton and Forest cases as well, so that’s a really big black mark for the Premier League there.
“City also won on the fact that owner funding should now be carrying a charge of interest with it. That’s a big win in terms of this for City and that’s got big ramifications for quite a few other clubs.
“And thirdly, they’ve got a chance to get damages for the sponsorships that were withheld.”
In other news, Man City told to pay “£70million” to complete midfielder deal.
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