The Athletic UK revealed on February 06 that, in fact, the Premier League’s official investigation of Manchester City has already begun
For a long time, and until this week, no one knew what happened.
In fact, some have wondered whether the Premier League has quietly dropped the inquiry.
But then four judgments appeared on the website of the Law Society of England and Ireland, and everyone was enlightened.
From August 2019 to July 2021, Premier League officials and Manchester City have been engaged in an uninterrupted legal battle in complete secrecy.
In fact, the Premier League officials have always hoped to obtain the desired verdict by letting Manchester City disclose relevant document information and finally submit the involved documents to the arbitration court.
But this process has become more and more strange.
City spent a year delaying requests for documents and information from the FFP investigation before taking Premier League officials to court, claiming that the procedures they had used were biased and unlawful.
The Premier League decided to change the process of selecting arbitrators for this hearing – so that both parties to the dispute can choose an arbitrator from the list of experts, and then the two will choose a third arbitrator to preside over the court.
There will be controversy.
However, when City asked the Court of Appeal to keep it all under wraps, the Premier League agreed, but on one condition: City agreed to the Premier League telling the other clubs that they intended to go to arbitration, and the court had sided with City, so no other clubs could think about it in the future.
Do this and save time and money.
The main reason for Premier League officials to do this, or to say that they choose arbitration instead of directly appealing or formal court hearings, is that they are afraid of being dragged down by related lawsuits.
Just like the jokes made by the outside world and the original words exposed by Der Spiegel, the Premier League officials are naturally unwilling to deal with the elite lawyers hired by Manchester City, let alone take ten or eight years.
So, what will happen in this investigation against Manchester City?
TA made an analogy: the Premier League’s investigation of Manchester City is like a nuclear submarine, which may be devastating, but rarely surfaced, and the above-mentioned is the record of the Premier League’s last official confrontation with Manchester City.
TA said that according to past episodes, even if Der Spiegel’s most serious accusation is confirmed, it may not break the Premier League FFP’s rolling loss ceiling.
More likely, City could end up being accused of disrupting the league, or simply failing to cooperate with the FFP’s investigation.
The problem now is that no one knows what evidence the Premier League officials have, so that Manchester City is also “surprised”.