Man City v Premier League: Stefan Borson drops update after new twist
Manchester City and the Premier League likely feel it isn’t worth holding a top-flight meeting until they receive clarification in their associated party transactions (APT) case.
That is the view of former Man City financial adviser Stefan Borson, who exclusively told Football Insider the two parties currently hold different opinions on whether the rules are null and void following the ruling.
Man City took legal action against the Premier League 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 had scheduled a meeting of the 20 top-flight clubs for Thursday (17 October) to decide how to respond to the ruling, but it was postponed earlier in the week.
Man City and Premier League want more information from tribunal
Borson suggested the two parties likely feel there is no point holding a meeting until they know the tribunal’s position after asking for more information.
“I think there is quite a lot of significance in the meeting being postponed,” Borson told Football Insider.
“I think what’s happened is we have obviously got the judgement and then the lawyers seem to have discussed between themselves the next steps, which has not necessarily been directly communicated to the PR teams.
“If you look at the way the situation was communicated by the Premier League, that did not seem to chime completely with what was clearly agreed in correspondence.
“If you look at Simon Cliff’s email he sent on the Monday night after it all came out that questioned some of the way the Premier League had described the case, one of the key things he said was that the parties have already agreed that they would put back to the tribunal the key questions as to next steps.
“That was quite different from what the Premier League said in its press announcement.
“I think what happened was they had all these meetings in place after the announcement that they made on the Monday and when City pointed out that they have agreed they are going to ask the tribunal, they didn’t immediately cancel the meetings but they will have been going ‘Hang on, what are we going to actually talk about in this meeting if we are waiting for the tribunal to decide what the next steps are? There is no point in us making plans for amendments until we know the position of the tribunal’.
“That’s particularly the case in terms of City’s position, which is everything is null and void in relation to associated party transactions on the back of the decision.
“The Premier League’s position seems to be slightly different, which is not everything is null and void, certain aspects are null and void, and they can be fixed by some fairly simple changes.
“I think it’s really just a case of the parties not being in agreement and thinking there’s no point in having a meeting until they have clarification from the tribunal.”
In other news, Man City have suffered ‘big’ blow after exit bombshell.
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