Gazza M DARVO is the acronym that gets used to describe certain rape trial defences … "deny, attack and reverse victim and offender"

So we're expected to credit that City Group has been hard done by, that the rest of the league are tyrants, and that Manchester City's persistent flouting of the collectively agreed financial regulations is a natural expression of the organisation with no clear link to its winning six titles in seven seasons.

I bet theyre arrogant enough to think they've sufficiently sportswashed their reputation over the last 15 years, and poisoned football culture enough, to the point that they believe they've moved the goalposts enough that public opinion might actually be on their side. the dangerous thing is, if you allow another 10 years of this, society might be dumbed down enough to fall for it. hopefully the wider football community keeps it a buck, and city are left scratching their heads when the court of public opinion blows them up the same way it blew up the super league

The good news is people are starting to see the wolf behind the sheep costume. Finally getting some negative pieces in the media.

That Boehly is supporting them shows what a moron he is. Want’s to show an extra 15m on his sponsorship deals so is willing back the guys who can afford to boost their deals by billions.

Claudius You can have all the lawyers you want but when you have emails literally saying "pay us the money you're not allowed to pay us through entity X so they won't find out", I really don't know why that should matter. A monkey should be able to win the case against City. Then again it's the UK so anything is possible I guess.

As a lawyer myself, I've taken some borderline shameful positions in my career. But reading those City arguments I truly wonder how anyone can make those statements without blinking or bursting out laughing. It's just next level clutching at straws on a level that is too childish even for a high school moot court. "Others are in London and can charge higher ticket prices and that's super unfair so I must be allowed to pump unlimited money in from the Gulf"? Jesus...

Burnwinter it’s called lack of foresight. Too often businesses like to boldly jump into massive revenue opportunities without the proper due diligence. Everyone said bringing in oligarchs and nation states into the ownership community would have dire consequences, but the Premier league focused on the short term gains of accumulating the best players.

This is what they’ve sown. As much as I loathe City, all of this was very easily avoidable if the league had taken a a principled approach to keep nations and affiliated actors from owning and sponsoring teams.

The UK government put huge pressure on the Premier League to approve the Saudi takeover of Newcastle too. If states threaten to hold back billions in investment in the UK, they're not going to give a shit about sporting integrity in football.

Fair enough tbf, that's on the PL for leaving that loophole open when they knew it was already happening in the EFL who then closed it.

PL only now tried and failed to close that loophole. Apparently they'll try again.

It's not all that easy though. You have to keep in mind that from a competition law point of view each club is a separate undertaking and the clubs are considered to be competitors. I.e. every agreement they make is considered to be an agreement between competitors. Many of these agreements are by definition restrictions of competition by object and need to rely on an exemption in order to survive (some kind of overriding principle, to keep things simple). Even e.g. the agreement to sell TV rights collectively, which has been tested and found to be allowed by various courts over time. The PL, in other words the clubs who are competitors, agreeing that their competitors cannot do X or Y otherwise they cannot compete in the league attracts scrutiny. Each time a new type of agreement which has not been previously found to be allowed is put forward, it is open to attack based on competition law and back in the good old days also free movement rules. Scumbags like City know this all too well and exploit it.