Shaping the narrative with smoke & mirrors: Man City and chums vs the Premier League
Manchester City are not just desperate to defeat the Premier League in the "115" case, they want to shape the story and make it clear that legal action will drag on
I was listening to the BBC podcast “When it hits the fan” this week; the tagline for the show is “Inside the world of crisis managers and spin doctors as David Yelland and Simon Lewis watch the week's biggest PR disasters unfold.”
Tuesday’s pod considered the PR wins and losses around Manchester CIty’s recent legal battle with the Premier League over APTs (Associated Party Transactions). The section of that episode dealing with the issue begins at 11min 25secs.
Yelland, a former speech writer for Rupert Murdoch and a former editor of The Sun, declared his interest as a Manchester City fan but said: “I’m going to try to be as unbiased as I can in taking you through what has actually happened.”
Specifically talking about the PR battle as both City and the PL tried to argue they had won the ATP case, Yelland said the judges found the APT rules were “unlawful” and that they violated UK competition law.
City made 20 claims against the Premier League and two were upheld (while 18 were not), and Yelland didn’t mention this. Balance, much? And what he said next was preposterous.
“We can look at the news cycle in the first 24 hours after the decision, and then look at what’s going to happen longer term.
“In the news cycle, ie in the moments and hours and the day after the decision, Manchester City’s PR was very simple. They put out a simple statement … and then they shut up shop. They didn’t brief. They just said that.
“The Premier League claimed that it had won but then communicated with all the clubs and said we’re going to sort this out really quickly … but it turns out it’s not as simple as that.”
Yelland then said: “City took a decision not to brief. They have sat there and not said anything right the way through this inquiry … the [Premier League] have briefed right across the piece.”
My response to that? What a load of crap. Utterly disingenuous bullshit. Either Yelland, as a City fan, has asked someone at City what they did in PR terms around the case and they lied to him and he believed them, or he is extraordinarily naive. I don’t think he’s naive.
Today’s piece will explain why that’s the case, and how the narrative of this APT story has been curated via leaks and briefings to particular newspapers willing to put City’s case front and centre.
If Yelland doesn’t know this, he really shouldn’t be doing a BBC podcast where he spouts such bollocks funded by licence fee payers. And if he does know this, he shouldn’t either.