One sentence stands out above all others in the 165-page document detailing Manchester City’s legal action against the Premier League. It rushes straight at you, shouting its evangelism of greed and its unchecked lust for power.
It is a sentence that reveals everything. It reflects the open-mouthed anger of Abu Dhabi’s monarchical autocracy, which owns a club once considered the natural home for ordinary Mancunians but which has now become a plaything for rulers unwilling to push the boundaries of their to accept power.
The document, the Times reported on Tuesday, states that City claim they are limited by ‘the tyranny of the majority’ in English football and want to be freed from their shackles so they can unleash their true potential.
City are, of course, a club that already enjoys an unprecedented level of dominance in the English game. Last month, Pep Guardiola’s team won the Premier League for the fourth time in a row, a feat never before achieved in the country’s 136 years of top-flight football.
And yet that is not enough for City’s owners. They still claim they are victims. They still claim they are being discriminated against. They suggest that they are victims of thinly veiled racism.
Manchester City has taken ‘unprecedented legal action’ against the Premier League
City wants to end Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules, which they say are illegal
The Premier League (director Richard Masters in the photo) previously charged the club with 115 violations of spending rules.
And with every sentence, the dangers of state ownership of our football clubs, the dangers that so many warned about and whose warnings went unheeded, become more and more apparent. It is becoming increasingly clear that English football is headed towards catastrophe.
‘The tyranny of the majority’, what a terrifying expression that is. An expression for our football times. A sentence that tells you exactly what predicament the Premier League is in. A sentence that tells you how close the English game is to collapsing on itself.
‘The tyranny of the majority’ – it is what we traditionally know as democracy. It is a system that City’s owners, for all their attempts at sportswashing, regard with deep and abiding suspicion and which they are now seeking to dismantle in English football.
The tyranny of the majority, as City’s owners call it, is at the heart of our political system, but it is also at the heart of our football league and many of the sport’s most successful competitions. “For the many” is not, I suspect, a phrase that appears in too many internal City memos.
It seems that the owners of the city would prefer the tyranny of the minority. Or how about a tyranny of one? If they blow up these rules that’s what we’ll get, although it could become two if Saudi Arabia is given the freedom to pour the vast extent of its state wealth into Newcastle United without any checks.
It is also possible that, if the referees rule in City’s favour, the 115 charges the Premier League has laid against them for alleged financial breaches will remain below the waterline. That shadow has been hanging over City’s performance for a long time and they want to get rid of it.
Those who have long argued that clubs should be able to spend what they want, that there should be a ‘free-for-all’ system that allows state-owned companies to blow all their rivals out of the water and thus destroy what was once the ‘unique selling point’. point of the Premier League, may be about to get their wish.
Man City owner Sheikh Mansour (centre), pictured next to chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarrak (right) in 2023
If City are successful in the two-week private arbitration hearing that starts on Monday, the fallout will extend far beyond the club’s bid to end the league’s Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules, which according to them are unlawful, and the club’s intention to claim damages. from the Eredivisie.
If City are successful, it will mean much more than just the end of the league’s failed attempt to maintain the illusion of competition at the top levels of English football by sticking to a watered-down version of revenue sharing and weak attempts to limit spending.
If City are successful, it would likely mean an end to the Premier League’s democratic system, which requires the agreement of at least 14 clubs, or two-thirds of the vote, to implement rule changes.
City’s legal argument states that this gives the majority an unacceptable level of control. Poor City, operating within the rules that allowed them to win the Treble last season, secured a fourth consecutive league title and came within one game of winning a Double Double.
This is a moment in our game that is as important and dangerous as the moment City and five other leading clubs announced their intention to enter the European Super League in April 2021.
If City dismantles the competition’s rules, the way will once again be clear for them to lead a breakaway. Perhaps the rest of the so-called Big Six, and Newcastle, will be emboldened by City’s rebellion, especially as plans for an independent regulator of football have been halted by the advent of a general election.
City celebrated winning a record fourth successive season last month and were just one win away from becoming the first team to do a Double Double
It is possible that City secede. Perhaps this is the start of a major schism in the English game. Perhaps other clubs would try to follow them and set up a rival league. Perhaps the Premier League could try to evict them.
At this point, all bets are off. It may be, as many have warned, that the regulator comes too late.
Still, at least it’s all out in the open now. This amounts to a hostile takeover bid. It’s an attempt to prove that might is right and that, with enough money and enough lawyers, you can leave the rest of the game behind.
The city wants to destroy everything. If they win this case, we might as well move the Premier League headquarters to the Etihad and give up the pretense of anyone other than City running the English game.