Richard Masters inadvertently helps Man City to show up 'basic' Premier League

The Premier League came unstuck against Manchester City in their opening submission of the hearing into Associated Party Transaction Rules.

Three senior judges agreed with them that “owner funding, like state aid, is subsidisation. That is particularly so when other sources of external funding are not permitted.” However, they subsequently concluded that it was unlawful to exclude shareholder loans from Profitability and Sustainability Regulations when the same treatment was not afforded to APTs and it was classed as an object infringement of competition law.

"An object infringement is the most serious sort of grievance. It means that you don't actually have to do a detailed dive on the impact of that infringement," Jack Williams, a barrister in competition law at Monckton Chambers told the Manchester Evening News.

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"If you look at it, you go, this is just wrong. The tribunal found it was just wrong - this is a big deal in competition law terms.

"They didn't have to go through loads of economic analysis. It's dressed up over 175 pages but they've basically looked at these terms and decided they are discriminatory and unlawful.

"I know they're trying to downplay it as a tweak of the rules and yes the whole thing doesn't come crashing down but it's an object infringement so the most serious sort in competition law, and the fact they've been found to have a process that doesn't work.

"You would hope it's a real wake up call for the in-house decision making process. I keep saying how basic this is but they didn't comply with basic