Man City challenge to Premier League goes well beyond 115 charges as endgame nears

Here we go again. From the makers of Football Leaks, UEFA's compliance bodies and the Premier League charges, Monday saw the premiere of a new puzzle where the only piece we can see does not have Manchester City looking good.

A remarkably detailed piece in The Times told of how City's owners are taking unprecedented league action against the Premier League, with a two-week hearing starting on Monday, and that snowball of story has formed an avalanche of big opinions on the topics of Associated Party Transaction rules that are so fiercely controversial that nobody cared about them until the latest news broke.

City fans either praised their club for taking on the Premier League and their rivals, groaned at the approach or the language - the phrase tyranny of the majority, or the argument suggesting restricted sponsorship rules would 'force' the club to charge supporters more only read well to whip up a partisan crowd - or simply felt exasperated at something else they were expected to care about. There were all kinds of reactions, despite what some lazy or crackpot commentators would like to believe or push.

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Elsewhere, the insinuations flew: City were doing this because they knew they would be found guilty of the 115 charges, or it was all part of a masterplan to get out of the 115 charges - either by proving that something was unlawful or by distracting the Premier League with another case before the all-important rumble later this year. As has been seen before, the less information there is in the public domain the more the speculation can go.

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