Everton, Chelsea and Newcastle United likely backed Manchester City in their associated party transactions (APT) case after seeing deals turned down by the Premier League.
That is the view of former Man City financial adviser Stefan Borson, who exclusively told Football Insider the top-flight trio would have been asked to describe their experiences in front of the independent panel.
Man City took legal action against the Premier League regarding the APT rules currently in place at an arbitration hearing in June.
Both sides have claimed a victory in the case after the arbitration panel’s decision was published on 7 October, where two aspects of the rules were deemed to be unlawful.
Everton, Chelsea and Newcastle United acted as witnesses for Man City, while Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham, Brighton and West Ham provided evidence for the Premier League.
Everton described their experiences in front of independent panel
“Those clubs backed City because they have relevant evidence as much as anything and are involved, and it also presumably serves their purpose,” Borson told Football Insider.
“That’s really because these are the teams that have been through the associated party transaction process.
“We don’t know about all the transactions that have been approved by the Premier League.
“We learned in the decision that, as of the time the witness statement was given probably in May, the Premier League said that they had processed 52 associated party transactions.
“We know obviously of some of the big ones like Newcastle and Sela, the Chelsea hotel deal, Chelsea and Infinite Athlete.
“But there are lots we don’t know about. Of those 52, most of them were processed and presumably approved quite quickly within 25 days.
“There were 11 that took significantly longer than that time period, and presumably those are the ones that were rejected.