This is a smouldering civil war that could tear English football asunder

Gabriel Jesus of Arsenal clashes with Bernardo Silva of Manchester City during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Arsenal at Etihad Stadium on September 22, 2024 in Manchester, England.
On-field tensions between Man City and Arsenal are symptomatic of a greater rift that is threatening the very future of the Premier League - Stuart MacFarlane/Getty Images

If you saw the enmity between Manchester City and Arsenal as just a playground tiff, an overblown skirmish between the twin titans of the Premier League, the scales should now be falling from your eyes.

That febrile 2-2 draw at the Etihad last month, with the benches emptying at the final whistle and the executives refusing to shake hands, was symbolic of a smouldering civil war that could tear English football asunder.

Now, with both City and the Premier League deploying election-night levels of spin to claim victory in their legal fight over Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules, you can see the schism spelt out in the starkest terms.

It is all there in the verdict, in the section dealing with the list of witnesses in the arbitration: “For the claimant (Manchester City): Chelsea, Newcastle United, Nottingham Forest, Everton. For the respondent (the Premier League): Brighton, West Ham, Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham, Arsenal.” At every level, this is a case of two tribes going to war, each with fundamentally different views on the creation and deployment of power.

Well, City did say they wanted to end the “tyranny of the majority”. In one sense, they might have succeeded, in that this case has all but split the top flight in half, with both sides of the argument digging in for the long haul.

The toxicity could only intensify, with the exclusion of shareholder loans from APT calculations now declared by the arbitration panel to be unlawful. That is one conclusion that could leave half the clubs in breach of profitability and sustainability rules.

Gulf’s torrential cash waterfall is about to be unleashed

The far deeper concern among City’s rivals, though, is over the forces this ruling could unleash. Is this the moment when the Premier League becomes little more than a plutocrat’s plaything, a proxy war in which the Gulf’s absolute monarchies spend ever more preposterous amounts through state-owned companies to project soft power on a global stage?

The model has worked wonders for City already. Four of the club’s top nine sponsors – Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi Tourism, the Emirates Palace and telecommunications company E& – are direct instruments of the state bankrolling the sky-blue behemoth.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Chairman of Manchester City, and Pep Guardiola, Manager of Manchester City, poses for a photo with the Premier League title trophy following the team's victory in the Premier League match between Manchester City and West Ham United at Etihad Stadium on May 19, 2024 in Manchester, England.
The Sky-Blue behemoth could eat away at any semblance of competition for decades - Michael Regan/Getty Images

The Emirates Palace, for the uninitiated, is an Abu Dhabi hotel so opulent that there is an ATM machine in the lobby dispensing gold bars. Not exactly a validation, in other words, for City’s insistence that the Premier League are discriminating unfairly against Gulf-controlled entities.

Now, thanks to City’s partially successful challenge of the APT regulations, the eye-watering largesse threatens to turn into a torrential cash waterfall, with clubs able once more to provide their own justifications for why deals represent fair market value, rather than this being left to the Premier League to determine.

Leicester title fairytale can no longer be repeated

Leicester winning the title? You can disregard the very concept from this day forward. Any repeat of the miracle of 2016 has been thwarted by City’s successful legal action, which ensures future champions are likely to be determined less by the shrewdness of their signings than by the depth of the sovereign wealth funds behind them.

It feels as if the very essence of the game, rooted in the notion that clubs are inseparable from their communities, is warped by City’s latest victory. Just as City have traditionally been seen as the choice of the true Mancunian, Newcastle United describe themselves as “having proudly stood at the heart of an iconic city – and in the hearts of a unique community – for generations.”

Such depictions are increasingly unrealistic. City and Newcastle are not so much grand civic enterprises any longer as gaudy global brands, perfect conduits for the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to wield their influence over the widest possible audience.

While the image endures of Pep Guardiola sitting down for a desert summit with Sheikh Mansour, so too does that of Newcastle-supporting fathers and sons wearing tea towels on their heads in a crass show of deference to their Riyadh benefactors.

Fans head to St James' Park ahead of their game against Tottenham Hotspur and their first game after Newcastle United's takeover on October 17, 2021 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Newcastle fans could see success come their way once their Saudi owners are allowed to spend without limits - Ian Forsyth/Getty Images

Much as many might shudder at such spectacles, they accurately reflect the Premier League’s competitive balance, or lack of it. What was once a competition fraught with jeopardy risks becoming an entrenched duopoly.

City can claim others have spent similarly lavishly during Abu Dhabi’s 16 years of ownership, with Manchester United investing billions into trying to keep pace with the noisy neighbours and Chelsea splashing Clearlake Capital’s money on eight and nine-year player contracts.

There is a world of difference, though, between private equity and unlimited oil wealth. Just ask the French clubs bulldozed over the past decade by Qatari-subsidised Paris St-Germain.

Entrenched duopoly could last for decades

The alarm now for City’s competitors is not just that a historic sequence of four consecutive championships could stretch to domination lasting decades, but that the club’s win will now have a crucial effect on the hearing into their 115 alleged financial breaches between 2009 and 2018.

After all, it was the sponsorship deals funded by Abu Dhabi-linked companies that formed the centre-piece of the accusations against them, all of which they vigorously deny.

One claim, which City refute, is that they concealed payments made by Sheikh Mansour through third parties by dressing them up as sponsorship revenue.

Long before the Premier League’s attempt, after the Saudi takeover of Newcastle, to reinforce regulation around APTs, it was an imperative under league rules that these transactions had to be of fair commercial value. But in light of City’s robust challenging of this principle, their defence of the 115 charges looks to be considerably stronger.

This explains why there is such a chill wind blowing through the corridors of power at Arsenal, Liverpool, and all the other clubs who have tried and failed to rein in the all-conquering City during the Abu Dhabi era. The fear is that they have lost not just the battle, but the war as well.