Sir Jim Ratcliffe warns Premier League faces ‘ruin’ and appears to back Man City legal fight

Manchester United minority owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe has appeared to give his tentative backing to Manchester City’s unprecedented legal action against the Premier League and warned that the competition faces “ruin” if regulation goes too far.

City are fighting the league’s “associated party transaction” (APT) rules in a controversial landmark case that could have far reaching repercussions for England’s top flight and undermine the league’s 115 charges against the champions.

A two-week private arbitration hearing began on June 10 with City claiming they have been targeted by a “tyranny of the majority” and are victims of “discrimination”.

APT rules are designed to ensure commercial deals linked to a club’s ownership are done at fair market value.

City’s detractors fear defeat for the Premier League in the case could eventually lead to the end of any meaningful financial controls in the competition and significantly weaken the financial breach case against the club that is set for later in the year.

But Ratcliffe – who took over the day-to-day running of United in February after securing a 27.7 per cent stake in the club – has sympathised with rivals City and understands why they are challenging the league’s APT rules.

“I can understand why they are challenging it,” the Ineos billionaire told Bloomberg. “You can understand they would say that they want an open market, [a] free market.”

Ratcliffe believes the Premier League needed to be careful not to end up in “an endless legal wrangle with lots of clubs” and expressed concerns that over-regulation could be the ruination of Europe’s richest domestic league. Everton and Nottingham Forest have both been docked points for breaching the league’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR).

“The Premier League is probably the most successful sporting league in the world, certainly the most successful football league in the world. And we have this expression in northern England: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’,” Ratcliffe said.

“If you start interfering too much, bringing too much regulation in, then you finish up with the Manchester City issue, you finish up with the Everton issue, you finish up with the Nottingham Forest issue - on and on and on.

“If you’re not careful the Premier League is going to finish up spending more time in court than it is thinking about what’s good for the league. We have got the best league in the world, don’t ruin that league for heaven’s sake.”

United voted in favour of strengthening the APT rules that City are now challenging but, like their cross-city rivals and Aston Villa, the Old Trafford club voted against new “anchoring” proposals designed to place a cap on the amount clubs can spend on wages, transfer and agents’ fees.

“[Anchoring] would inhibit the top clubs in the Premier League,” Ratcliffe said. “And the last thing you want is for the top clubs in the Premier League not to be able to compete with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, PSG - that’s absurd. And if it does, it then ceases to be the finest league in the world.”

Ratcliffe said there had been a “drift into complexity” in the Premier League towards over-regulation since the departure of former executive chairman Richard Scudamore in 2018. Anchoring is set to be trialled on a shadow basis in the Premier League next season. “If you’ve got a government regulator at the end of the day they will regulate and that won’t be good,” he said.

Ratcliffe also suggested plans for the 32-team Fifa Club World Cup next summer were a step too far amid concerns that players were being pushed to breaking by a congested schedule. “You can’t just keep taking more from footballers,” he said.