Manchester City set to resume centre stage – on all fronts
Already, the buzz surrounding this weekend’s opening Premier League season is around who can knock current champions, Manchester City, off their lofty perch?
The Cityzens achieved an unprecedented fourth consecutive season atop the world’s richest league last year, successfully defending their title in the face of sustained pressure from Mikel Arteta’s ever-improving Arsenal side.
Will the former Manchester City coach manage to successfully tweak the Gunners to edge City to the title this season, or will a closer challenge emerge from North West neighbours Manchester United and Liverpool?
United’s manager, Erik ten Hag, fresh from a contract extension in the wake of beating City in the FA Cup final, will be under pressure to fulfil his boast that he wins trophies wherever he goes, while Liverpool’s Arne Slot, who replaced Reds’ icon Jürgen Klopp, will pose an interesting foil for City as he attempts to mould his Anfield team into his own persona.
Fresh from City’s Community Shield penalty shoot-out victory against neighbours Manchester United last Saturday, Pep Guardiola’s side opens its Premier League campaign at Chelsea this Sunday, in pursuit of an historic fifth consecutive title defence.
With the Premier League transfer window open until 11pm on August 30, the 2024-25 squad line-up is still fluid, with transfers in and out at the Etihad a given.
Financially, the club is rock solid on the back of its sensational treble haul during the 2022-23 season, when it clinched its first UEFA Champions League title, a third successive Premier League title – the fifth in six years – and a seventh FA Cup, in a season that yielded a win percentage in excess of 72% in all competitions.
The most recent figures, published last November, revealed revenues of £712.8m, an increase of £99.8m on the previous 12 months, and profits of £80.4m, nearly double that of the previous year’s record of £41.7m.
City said income streams from commercial, broadcast and matchday all showed significant year-on-year growth, reflecting “continued commercial momentum of recent years, the outcome of the ongoing delivery of a multi-decade strategy.”
During the reporting period the club, for the first time, was also named as “most valuable football club brand in the world”, in the 2023 Brand Finance Football 50 report which valued City at €1.51bn.
However – and it is a big however – the elephant in the room remains in the 115 Financial Fair Play (FFP) charges the club faces from the Premier League that could, if proven, result in sanctions ranging from a points deduction to financial penalties, or even expulsion from the league.
City escaped serious punishment after UEFA ruled, in 2020, that the club had committed “serious breaches” of FFP regulations between 2012 and 2016.
But a subsequent two-year ban from European competitions was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport later that year.
Reports claim an independent commission could begin considering the latest allegations next month, with a decision announced early next year.
Responding to the allegations at the time, Abu Dhabi-owned City said it welcomed the review of this matter by an independent commission, to impartially consider the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence that exists in support of its position, adding: “As such we look forward to this matter being put to rest once and for all.”
Both Everton and Nottingham Forest will be interested onlookers, having felt the wrath of the league’s PSR (Profit and Sustainability Rules) code through costly points deductions that put their top flight status in serious jeopardy.
Guaranteed winners of any actions handed down by the league will be the legal fraternity, with m’learned friends in very close attendance.
Etihad campus
City is already flexing its legal muscles having instigated its own action against the Premier League earlier this year, in what many interpreted as a pre-emptive strike.
The club is suing the league in an attempt to end its Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules which are linked to commercial and sponsorship deals with companies owned or associated with the same club’s owners.
The current rules require such transactions to be independently assessed to be of fair market value.
City believes the rules are ‘unlawful’ and wants damages for revenue lost by preventions made by those rules.
The club has portrayed itself as the oppressed party, referring to the Premier League’s rules, that require any changes to be approved by 14 of the league’s 20 member teams.
City calls this the “tyranny of the majority”.
But the only majority following this latest development was of widespread criticism of the club.
Football writer and broadcaster, Henry Winter, said at the time: “Phrases that City’s lawyers have been throwing around, like ‘the tyranny of the majority’ – which is a phrase which means the oppressing of smaller groups. I don’t think anyone looks at Manchester City as the oppressed.”
He added “This just reeks. Who runs the game in this country? Should it be the democracy of the Premier League, with the 14 majority of teams who vote things through? Or should English football be run from Saudi (Arabia) or Abu Dhabi?”
Many commentators believed the action was an attempt by City to either deflect attention from the FFP charges, or a bid to bargain with the league to withdraw or water down those charges.
Whatever. Should the independent commission into FFP matters continue as planned, the outcome, for either side, could be cataclysmic.
