By Simon Evans - The Soccer Business

The reports that Manchester City have been found guilty of all but one of the 115 charges of non-compliance with financial regulations have been hailed as a “win” for the Premier League. It may prove a strikingly Pyrrhic one.

Rival fans are reveling. It’s payback time for years of dominance, and the relegation jokes write themselves. I understand the appeal of schadenfreude, but they will soon tire of lawyers and court cases; give them a year of it and they’ll hate it more than VAR.

I've seen this film before. In 2006, Milan fans and others cheered the fall of Juventus in Calciopoli. Their great rivals were stripped of titles and thrown into Serie B, which felt like justice. What followed was years of slow decline for Italian football. Serie A had been the best league in the world; within a decade it was a second-tier attraction, overtaken by the Premier League and La Liga. Milan did not inherit the earth. The league was tainted by corruption and no longer seen as a serious place for investment. It wasn't the only factor in Italian football's decline but it was a key one. Only now, 20 years on, is it starting to recover.

My point is not that Juve should not have been punished, but that the scandal damaged the whole league and the same could happen to the Premier League. My concern is less with City’s fate than with the mistaken thinking behind the rules they are alleged to have broken.

What the Premier League has built is remarkable. A lightly regulated, welcoming market attracted foreign capital, talent and audiences on a scale nobody imagined. Britain produces few dominant global exports these days, but this is one.

Football thrives when the sport is at the forefront; when other factors dominate, danger lurks, and the litigation is only starting. Burnley's successful lawsuit against Everton over PSR infringements set a precedent, and other clubs will surely sue City for damages. The league might discourage that, but shareholders will smell revenue and demand action, and lawyers won’t urge restraint.

City and their heavyweight lawyers are not going anywhere. An appeal is certain, but then what? The High Court? The club’s Abu Dhabi-based owners show no sign of giving up, and every stage will be a headline about lawyers rather than football.

The new financial regime promises more wrangles. An independent regulator arrives with its license process. The Premier League has replaced PSR with two tests: the Squad Cost Ratio, capping spending on players and head coach at 85% of football revenue plus player-trading profits, and Sustainability and Systemic Resilience checks on club finances, where failure can bring spending limits. Every test is a potential dispute, and every dispute a potential courtroom.

Now imagine you are a billionaire buying a mid-table club to turn into a challenger. You want to spend £200m on Lamine Yamal and £250m on Mbappé. Under the new order, you can't. What Abramovich and City did is closed off. Look at Newcastle and the Saudis: massive resources, shackled before they could climb the ladder.

The result is an entrenched elite, and an obvious question for the ambitious owner: why invest in Aston Villa when the ceiling is fixed before you've laid a brick? Endless legal wrangling, on top of constant checks against SCR, is hardly friendly to investors. Investors will look elsewhere. Capital is cowardly, and plenty of places will take it with a smile.

Financial regulation was originally conceived to stop clubs going into debt, but it morphed into ‘fairness’, with ludicrous consequences such as good clubs selling good players to help with compliance.

I am not against regulation. The owner's test needs tightening: who owns clubs, where their money comes from and whether they are fit custodians are fair questions, and the process has been too slack. But there is a world of difference between keeping rogue operators out and deterring legitimate, ambitious investors.

Unless there is a change of direction, I see a slow erosion of the Premier League’s global status, though there may be faster signs: if City are relegated, the league’s biggest star Erling Haaland will likely leave the country, and La Liga’s big two will be rubbing their hands.

To be clear, City's guilt or innocence is a matter for the process. Rules are rules, and if they are unfair or ill-thought out, they should be challenged in league policy forums, not broken.

But a league known for lawyers, license hearings, over-regulation and uncertainty stops being the place the world's money wants to go. That is how you become Serie A: not with a bang, but with a slow drift down the table. The rivals laughing at City today should remember that. The Premier League's global position isn't guaranteed; it must be earned every season and is easily lost.