| “I’m not moving, I can assure you,” husked Pep Guardiola in the social media drop announcing his contract extension until 2027. The clip focuses on Pep’s crow’s feet and coal-black eyes, each line possibly marking the efforts required to win the multiple trophies he has brought Manchester City. Still, in bringing the news City fans so craved, it was understated, low-budget even, in these times of people living their best lives on Insta-disgraces with the production values of Kevin Costner’s vehicle Waterworld. Football Daily has seen higher budget gender reveal videos, greater expense shelled out on web adverts for growing your hair back and injecting lead into the pencil. (It’s not just us, right, who are getting these?) But why such parsimony? Perhaps the legal department had been in touch. City’s collection of m’learned friends, some of them on Kevin De Bruyne wages, it is said, were facing down a significant defeat in their battle to take down the football establishment. They needed enough votes to blow out the Premier League’s rewriting of the associated party transaction rules but, aside from Aston Villa, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest, found not enough takers. Droned a Friday PL statement: “The purpose of the APT rules is to ensure clubs are not able to benefit from commercial deals or reductions in costs that are not at fair market value (FMV) by virtue of relationships with associated parties.” In other words, City’s ownership’s adjacency to a series of businesses in the UAE does not mean they can receive a blank cheque from companies that may or may not be owned by the relatives of their owner, Sheikh Mansour, a private individual according to City, but who happens to be the current vice-president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. What does that mean for well, you know, actual football, the stuff you read this email for? Er, it probably means it may not be quite so easy for Pep and incoming sporting director Hugo Viana to buy every player on the market required to replace the ageing legs of De Bruyne, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva, John Stones and/or stand in for Rodri while he recovers from knee knack. City had previously lawyered up to overturn pesky measures of fair market value and smash the saboteurs in a case that may or may not be related to ongoing financial charges (is it 115 or is it 130?) the club’s legal team are also fighting and that the club deny. For those Blues who now get their kicks from lawyerball rather than watching their team crush everyone in sight, this appears a significant blow. Though they did have that special night when they celebrated shareholder value being brought into the picture, a kick against the dastardly red cartel seeking to end their flying on a blue dream. Elsewhere, possibly relevant: City face Tottenham on Saturday, having lost their previous four. | 