Manchester City vs Premier League and APTs explained; Brazil’s big betting question

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Hello! The opening salvo in Manchester City’s legal scrap with the Premier League is over, but keep your powder dry for now.

Coming up:

No knockout punch: Man City vs EPL on APT rules sees both sides claim win

The verdict from Manchester City versus the Premier League part one — dropped on us from a height yesterday — was useful practice for the main event. It was long and complicated. Both sides claimed victory. The rest of us pored over detail, because the devil is usually there.

Some housekeeping first: this was not, repeat not, the outcome of the 100-plus financial charges brought against City by the Premier League. (We’re going with 100-plus because the exact number is either 115 or 129, depending on who you ask.) That case is separate and far more important. A result from it is due next year.

Yesterday’s dispute involved associated party transactions (APTs), which are key to the Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR). APTs are deals in which clubs secure sponsorship through entities connected to their owners. The Premier League tries to ensure that any transaction of that nature constitutes ‘fair market value’.

Why? A quick (and outlandish) example. Mark Zuckerberg buys your club. Facebook then sponsors your club’s shirts at a cost of £1billion a year, way above how much a shirt deal is worth, so the Premier League steps in to block it and prevent your club from using unrealistic income to circumnavigate PSR limits.

City sought to challenge the concept of APTs. On certain points, they won. On certain points, they lost. We’re here to spell it out.

Who won what?

Jacob Whitehead’s overview of the case is excellent. Here’s a brief overview of where City got results:

The Premier League was told it must be more transparent about the benchmarks it uses to establish fair market value. It was found to have unlawfully blocked two sponsorship deals proposed by City. City can seek damages.
In certain instances, the governing body missed its own timeframe for making decisions on APTs, though there was no evidence City lost out as a result.
A three-man panel agreed with City’s claim that loans given to clubs by shareholders should face fair market value analysis. At present, they don’t. This could affect certain teams, including Arsenal and Brighton, whose owners have provided big loans.

City fell short on other matters. The Premier League’s APT system was broadly supported — the panel said PSR could not function without it. It also ruled that the Premier League ran its tests without bias and was not unfairly targeting owners from the Gulf. Don’t forget that APT rules were beefed up after the Saudi Arabian takeover of Newcastle United in 2021.

What does this mean?

A statement from City welcomed the outcome and said the Premier League was “found to have abused its dominant position”. A statement from the Premier League did likewise, saying it had lost on a “small number of discrete elements” (a wonderful turn of phrase).

City have since written to the other 19 clubs, claiming the Premier League’s summary of the judgment is “misleading” and inaccurate. Just in case you thought hostilities might be suspended.

In layman’s terms: in spite of the hot air, the implications of this case are unlikely to be vast. They’re unlikely to significantly affect the much more serious raft of financial charges facing City either (all of which the club deny). Yesterday was the scuffle at the weigh-in. All eyes are on what happens when the bell rings.

News round-up

(Juan Manuel Serrano Arce/Getty Images)

Brazil’s national team are having a difficult year. Their involvement at the Copa America was unacceptably fleeting. They’re making a pig’s ear of their qualifying campaign for the 2026 World Cup. Their head coach, Dorival Junior, isn’t flavour of the month.

Understandably, Dorival wants his strongest squad around him, which is why he’s continuing to call up West Ham United’s Lucas Paqueta and Botafogo’s Luiz Henrique. Paqueta has the experience of more than 50 caps. Luiz Henrique has helped Botafogo to the summit of Brazil’s top league.

But both are mixed up in allegations related to suspicious betting patterns. Paqueta has been charged by England’s Football Association, which accuses him of deliberately incurring yellow cards in matches for West Ham. He denies the offences.

A Brazilian media outlet, meanwhile, is reporting that Luiz Henrique received money from relatives of Paqueta shortly after games in which he was booked while playing for Spanish side Real Betis in 2023. Like Paqueta, he denies wrongdoing. Luiz Henrique is not currently facing any investigation.

The noise around them raises that age-old question: should Dorival be selecting this pair while a cloud hangs over them? The Brazilian Football Confederation is maintaining the line of innocent until proven guilty but the chairman of Brazil’s parliamentary betting inquiry put it like this: “Paqueta being in the national team is a grave error.” Plenty of others agree.

Show Viz

Without club football for the next two weeks, those members of our data team who aren’t on a beach in the Caribbean have a bit of time to twiddle their thumbs.

Rather than be idle, though, Mark Carey chose to analyse what the expected goals (xG) numbers say about the early weeks of the Premier League season. Tap on his fascinating graphic, above, to see it in all its glory.

My takeaway was Liverpool ranking as the only side whose xG has exceeded their expected goals against (xGA) figure in every match.

It vindicates their position at the top of the Premier League table, and The Athletic FC Podcast has gone into more depth on them. But as an expert in these things, I wanted Mark to tell me what caught his eye.

The answer? Fulham’s form. “They’ve created more xG than they’ve conceded in all games since their opening-day loss to Manchester United,” Mark said. “Their 2.6 xG created against Manchester City (on Saturday) was their highest of the season. They’ve looked strong and the underlying numbers support that.”

It won’t hurt them if Raul Jimenez carries on serving up no-look assists like this one at City. Chapeau!

Gazzaniga: an apology: Three penalties, three saves, one match — his homework paid off

Our appraisal of Paulo Gazzaniga’s error against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last month — “dude… just catch it” — wasn’t overly kind. But the joke’s on us because the next mention of Gazzaniga in TAFC came yesterday, courtesy of him saving three penalties in one match.

The Girona goalkeeper (once of Tottenham Hotspur) has put together an eventful, nomadic career. His heroics against Athletic Bilbao in La Liga on Sunday were a quintessential demonstration of the components needed by a ‘keeper to repel penalties: preparation, s***housery and luck.

Gazzaniga does his homework. We know this because he had saved a penalty a few days earlier in a Champions League clash with Feyenoord. On Sunday, he used delaying tactics to knock them out of their stride — and he benefited from Athletic’s players hitting some limp efforts.

No matter. Gazzaniga’s job was to keep them out, which he did (with his full-length dive to deny Alex Berenguer, below, the best of the lot). One of the penalties was a retake after replays caught him leaving his line early and, bizarrely, Athletic decided to change takers in between. They had one of those days. In a positive sense, so did Gazzaniga. He might never see another one like it.