Manchester City Council has made just under £3m from a deal to share in the so-called "super-profits" from developments built on its land by Manchester City's owners.

A deal struck in 2014 meant the council would receive payments if the profits made by Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) on schemes in Ancoats and New Islington exceeded a certain level.

But Prof Adam Leaver, co-author of a 2022 report by the University of Sheffield into the council's relationship with ADUG, said commercial secrecy around the arrangements meant it was hard to know if the council got the best value it could.

The council said it expected another payment soon, and that the regeneration had been worth £1.25bn to the city.

In 2008, Manchester City was bought for £200m by ADUG, owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan - a senior member of the Abu Dhabi ruling family, who is a current vice president and deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

In the next decade, the club went on to win the first three of eight Premier League titles, and ADUG and Manchester City Council became partners in a company called Manchester Life.

But in 2018, the Premier League began investigating the club's financial dealings, and, last week, it announced the club had been found guilty of 115 charges, including some around a so-called disguised funding scheme, which was said to have seen the club's owners topping up sponsorship and commercial deals with more than £800m of their own funds.

The club continues to deny any wrongdoing and have until 2 October to submit an appeal.

Since then, Manchester City Council's relationship with ADUG has come under renewed scrutiny.

Under the terms of the Manchester Life partnership, ADUG was able to lease development sites owned by the council across east Manchester, near to the club's stadium.

The council and ADUG struck an overage deal. Such deals are common in partnerships between public authorities and private developers, and normally ensure that if the value of a plot of land increases beyond a certain limit because of development or it being sold, the authority receives a share of what are sometimes known as the "super-profits".

According to Leaver's 2022 Manchester Offshored report, about 10 acres of land were transferred into Manchester Life's control.

The report estimated about £112m of property sales had been made by companies ultimatley owned in Abu Dhabi.

Leaver told the BBC that it was hard to gauge how good a deal the council had struck.

He said it was not possible to see how much profit had been remitted to ADUG from connected companies registered in Jersey, where there is far less transparency about companies' finances.

"So we can't compare how much profit was received by the council relative to their ADUG partner," he said.

He added the fact that the overage agreement's terms were concealed from public view meant it was not possible to know how much profit ADUG needed to make before it was obligated to give a share to the council.

In July this year, the council revealed that reviews of how it managed and monitored overage deals with developers found "weaknesses in documentation, monitoring and assurance, particularly around historic overage arrangements".

"It's unclear what prompted this concern with overage, but it doesn't look great," Leaver said.

The council said the deals had been made in the wake of the credit crunch and the financial crash of 2008, when there was "very little market interest in the area".

A spokesman added that "each parcel of land was valued by independent experts… and the best overall deal was achieved for each site".

But Leaver said while developments in Manchester had "dwindled until around 2012," the market had "picked up from 2013 onwards", around the time the Manchester Life partnership was formed.

He pointed to what he called "significant investment" by 2014 and 2015, and a "growing new population in Ancoats", the Royal Mills project, the Ice Plant development, and the regeneration of Cutting Room Square.

"Small trendy businesses were also in the process of moving into the area, indicating that gentrification was already under way in Ancoats as a natural spillover from the successful regeneration of the Northern Quarter, before the Manchester Life agreement was sealed," Leaver said.

"Land values were rising and developers were beginning to rediscover profitable opportunities and take more risk following the financial crisis," he added.

The original Manchester Life plan envisioned more than 6,000 homes built with investment of up to £1bn over a decade.

So far, the schemes have delivered about 1,500 homes, across nine sites in a "£1.25bn programme of regeneration," according to the council.

It is not clear whether the difference in the outcome and the original plan has had any impact on how much the council was in line to receive from the overage deal.

But the council said it had calculated that the overall payment to the council equated to about "£26,000 per home… representing an above-market return for land that had failed to attract market interest since the 2008 financial crisis".

The spokesman added: "This includes 1,500 new homes - with hundreds more on site now - the preservation of two historic mills, 30,000 sq ft of commercial space attracting a wave of independent businesses, and thousands of new residents, while also generating above market land returns for the council.

"The regeneration of Ancoats and New Islington is… an internationally recognised success story - not least Ancoats being named one of the best places to live globally.

"More than 3,400 homes have since been completed in the area by a range of developers, including homes for social rent and affordable tenures".

Sir Richard Leese, who was leader of the city council when the deals were struck and is now honorary president of Man City, has told the BBC "the investment from Abu Dhabi is what created the value".

But Leaver said his "own conversation suggest that was not the case, and that there was quite a bit of interest in developing [the] land".

The fallout from the Premier League investigation has prompted concern that wider UAE investment in UK projects could suffer, with media outlet Bloomberg reporting that Emirates officials had warned it "could have an influence on the bilateral state relationship".

Before that warning came, Prime Minister Andy Burnham – who was metropolitan mayor of Manchester from 2017 until entering Downing Street this summer – said he would be "really concerned" if ADUG was to pull out of Manchester over the Premier League investigation.

Burnham's intervention prompted criticism from political opponents. Shadow sports minister Louie French was reported to have accused Burnham of "publicly backing the owners".

Burnham has now said he will publish details of all his dealings with Man City and its owners ADUG during his time in charge in Manchester.

"I've been asked by the leader of the opposition to publish details of my meetings, which I'm happy to do and I'm going to," he said.

"I will quite clearly put out there everything that I have done working with them in my previous role as Mayor of Greater Manchester."