Liverpool urge Uefa to rule on Manchester City's deal with Etihad

Liverpool have joined Arsenal in questioning the legality of Manchester City's sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways. Photograph: Ed Sykes/Action Images

Liverpool's managing director, Ian Ayre, has joined Arsene Wenger in questioning the legality of Manchester City's record sponsorship deal with Etihad. Speaking in the Malaysian capital, where earlier in the week the Arsenal manager had said that City's new agreement raised "the real question about the credibility of financial fair play", Ayre also queried the ?400m deal.

Under financial fair play, clubs cannot avoid the requirement to stay below aggregate losses of €45m (?39.5m) a year by effectively sponsoring themselves with what are known as related payments. Since Etihad, an airline that has the same number of aircraft as Flybe and has never declared a profit, is owned by the same Bin Zayed family that rules the emirate and owns Manchester City, Ayre believes it is a related deal and has called on Uefa to investigate the matter further.

"When I spoke at Soccerex earlier this year I was on a panel about financial fair play," Ayre said. "The guys from Uefa said there would be a robust and proper process about related-pay transactions. Is Etihad, Manchester City and Sheikh Mansour a related party? If they are, then it's up to Uefa to rule on them."

The other test the Etihad sponsorship would have to overcome is whether it represents "fair value". Manchester City have pointed out that the ?40m a year arrangement also provides for redevelopment work around Eastlands as well as shirt sponsorship and naming rights. However, Ayre questioned whether the naming rights to any stadium – especially one that already has a name – are worth anything like the money the airline has agreed to pay.

"It hasn't happened in Europe that a football club has renamed an existing stadium and it's had real value," he said. "It was the City of Manchester Stadium or Eastlands for the last nine years and now it's going to be called something different and someone has attached a huge amount of value to that.

"I find that odd because it has never been done before. There is no benchmark that says you can rename your stadium and generate that amount of value. Mike Ashley tried it at Newcastle but nobody called it Sports Direct@St James' Park and it certainly didn't have that kind of value."

Despite arguing that, in Asia, Liverpool and "another team down the M62" were the only two English football brands with a global reach, Ayre said Liverpool would be cautious about signing Asian players simply to reinforce the club commercially, although the club's director of football, Damien Comolli, has overseen trials in China this week.

In May, Gavin Laws, the head of Standard Chartered, Liverpool's main sponsors, perhaps conscious of the fact that Park Ji?sung has helped Manchester United recruit 1.2 million holders of its credit card in South Korea, said he would want the club to sign footballers from the region. "Signing a player because he is Asian wouldn't deliver anything in the long term," Ayre said. "Manchester United have got the best value in Park. He is a player who can perform at the top level and they have got value from his playing ability. There aren't many of them about."

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