Premier League look incompetent and deluded fighting Man City ...

If nothing else, you have to hand it to Richard Masters and the Premier League for being a living, breathing version of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes.

When Manchester City warned them in December 2021 that the Associated Party Transaction rules they were proposing were anticompetitive and procedurally unfair, they went ahead with them anyway. When City warned them in February 2024 that proposed amendments were unlawful, they went ahead with them anyway.

When an independent tribunal agreed with City in September 2024, the Premier League told anyone who would listen that the tribunal had in fact 'endorsed' them and pushed through new amendments against the legal advice of City and without the full verdict from the tribunal. And now that the tribunal has declared that the APT rules are 'void and unenforceable', the Premier League have again put their fingers in their ears and ignored impartial legal verdicts to say that it doesn't matter because they've already brought in these new, rushed-through rules so who cares.

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For all the scaremongering about City playing by their own rules and going off with their ball if they don't like the game, it is the Premier League who is acting like the belligerent dictator or spoilt child (one often acts like the second), refusing to accept the reality of the facts that everyone can now see. Masters, and anyone who listens to him and repeats the delusions of the Premier League, look more deluded with each passing month.

It's important to point out the facts, especially since so much of what goes on between the Premier League and its clubs is confidential and only emerges when all parties are trying to spin their own narrative. There are political motivations behind every single player in the game, and all are out for their own self-interest.

But the facts speak for themselves. City's version of events has been backed by an independent arbitration panel as part of the fair process for disputes set up by the Premier League as a regulator. Masters and a majority of clubs pushed through a set of rules that are illegal, and they have now been professionally embarrassed.

It is timelessly funny when Sideshow Bob steps on the rakes, but as the clubs who have steadfastly backed Masters now hand over more of their money to City as part of the legal costs that come with pursuing a bad argument to protect bad regulations made by bad decisions, you wonder whether the joke that the Premier League resemble is now starting to wear thin with more interested parties.

The embattled leader of the Conservative Party this week declared a new football regulator to be a waste of money, but how many more costly screw-ups can the current lot be allowed before more clubs reach City's way of thinking that substantial change is needed and that the entire authority of the Premier League is, to coin a phrase, void and unenforceable. If the Blues are not found guilty of the most serious charges in the grave allegations put on them by the Premier League, that may well be the tipping point however Masters tries to spin it.

City do not have many friends around the table in Premier League meetings for a variety of reasons, from the phenomenal growth in the last 17 years that has catapulted them into the Big Six, to the unprecedented success and domination they have enjoyed in the league, to the cloud that still hangs over their success as a result of the charges. Blues who have defended the club on social media from every charge under the sun have been painted as ignorant shills for a foreign regime from those who have made their bed with the Premier League and won't stop lying in it.

Whether they feel lied to now by the league, or just let down that a business could make so many poor business decisions, it doesn't really matter because the result is the same: the Premier League have been embarrassed and the more they fight the facts the more humiliation they are in for. You don't have to like City or independent judges, but when you spend your time and your money fighting them and losing you look as relevant as an old man shouting at the clouds.

If any Premier League clubs - and fans of those clubs - still think they are in good hands being led by such lemmings, nothing they can tell themselves will stop them heading for ruin. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to concede that City know what they are talking about and just because you don't like or agree with something it doesn't mean you can ignore its reality.

The longer the Premier League hides in its own fantasy version of events, the less fit they look to any sane person to lead and govern.