Update: |Man City new Premier League timeline emerges amid £100m legal cost claim and ‘next year’ warning News

The latest Manchester City news after an update on when the club’s legal challenge against the Premier League’s amended associated party transactions rules will happen

Manchester City’s legal challenge about the amended Premier League associated party transactions (APT) rules will reputedly be heard before July.

The initial APT rules were found “unlawful”, “void and unenforceable” by an independent tribunal in February. However, the Premier League amended those regulations in November before the tribunal released its full ruling.

In light of winning the first part of their dispute, City launched a legal challenge against the amended regulations. The same three-person panel comprising Lord Dyson, Christopher Vajda KC and Sir Nigel Teare will hear the second challenge; however, there is no date known about when that will happen.

The former City financial advisor Stefan Borson, though, claims that it will take place before July. He made that assertion while discussing the latest set of Premier League accounts that came out last week.

Borson told Football Insider: “It’s pretty scary numbers really when you look at it because I would think there was in excess of £100million of external legal spend by the Premier League if it’s £200million on the administrative costs because if you look at the historic pattern and what was spent historically, it’s hard to see how that could have been less than £100million just on the legal side.

“Now, if you break down 2024-25 and compare it to what was going on last year, last year may have had a lot of the preparation for a lot of the stuff that’s happened this year, so that may well have an impact, but generally, there’s just an enormous amount of stuff that’s gone on this year since 31 July.

“You have had City’s 115 charges case actually start and happen over three months. That would have been extraordinarily expensive because they had a team of about eight barristers, as well as the firm acting for them.

“They had the associated party transaction saga. The actual hearing took place in June; so far, that’s in last year, but then they have APT 2 up and running. It will happen sometime before July.

“They had the reaction to APT 1, so dealing with all of the fallout from it. We had the changes of all the drafting. You have got this whole new regime of PSR that they’re trying to bring in.

Then you’ve got PSR cases or investigations anyway. You had the Everton case that was dropped in January. We know the Chelsea investigation so far.

“There are loads of things going on on this side of things, so there is a very good chance that it’s going to be even more expensive next year.”

—