UEFA FFP investigation - CAS decision to be announced Monday, 13th July 9.30am BST

[PannickAtTheDisco]

I'm interested in what you say about Chelsea. I felt exactly the same as you when Chelsea became genuine challengers and then champions thanks to Abramovitch. But in the end he threw his lot in with the 'istry boys because he couldn't stand the competition from City and he announced his Damascene conversion to Platini's FFP. And where I can't agree with you is that "Chelsea's investment is conveniently forgotten about" because I don't believe he's actually invested anything. I accept that he always intended that Chelsea should be able eventually to be successful and live within the means permitted by FFP, but then so did City. But Abramovitch had done exactly the same as Leeds and Portsmouth by making interest free) loans to the club (to be repaid within 180 days of him selling the club). Chelsea's debts are thus massive and Abramovitch/Chelsea have "taken advantage" of FFP to increase the club's debt to their holding company to well over £1 billion. Chelsea are rather vulnerable in the light of Abramovitch's difficulties with our government and the corona virus. I don't see what can be done about debt in football within the law but as PB points out to us FFP has made the problem worse not better and far from being the unqualified success for FFP that Platini claimed, Chelsea could be its most catastrophic failure. FFP doesn't protect clubs from owners who "walk away" unless they have made genuine investment and improved the financial stability of the club. We will notice that these two great failures of FFP - limiting genuine investment and protecting the financial stability of clubs - are supposed to be the great achievements of which UEFA are most proud.

Secondly, I note the use of the phrase "financial doping". I know very well you are using this Wengerism to mock the way supporters of FFP use it and I know you use it to show your contempt of the concept behind it but unfortunately many on here and at large don't. Wenger of course coined the phrase to refer to the use of illegal and immoral monies (ie shareholders' money) to improve performance just as athletes used performance enhancing drugs. This is, as we all can see clearly, typical typical of the nonsense spouted by Archbishop Arsene

Last time I went through the myriad of Chelsea's parent entities, the total debt stood at about £1.3 billion, contrast that to City...

 

[richards30]

Last time I went through the myriad of Chelsea's parent entities, the total debt stood at about £1.3 billion, contrast that to City...

and hasn’t Roman stated it is a loan and not transferred the debt to share equity? Chelsea are fucked if he loses interest and wants his money back!

 

[BamberBridgeBlue]

I'm interested in what you say about Chelsea. I felt exactly the same as you when Chelsea became genuine challengers and then champions thanks to Abramovitch. But in the end he threw his lot in with the 'istry boys because he couldn't stand the competition from City and he announced his Damascene conversion to Platini's FFP. And where I can't agree with you is that "Chelsea's investment is conveniently forgotten about" because I don't believe he's actually invested anything. I accept that he always intended that Chelsea should be able eventually to be successful and live within the means permitted by FFP, but then so did City. But Abramovitch had done exactly the same as Leeds and Portsmouth by making interest free) loans to the club (to be repaid within 180 days of him selling the club). Chelsea's debts are thus massive and Abramovitch/Chelsea have "taken advantage" of FFP to increase the club's debt to their holding company to well over £1 billion. Chelsea are rather vulnerable in the light of Abramovitch's difficulties with our government and the corona virus. I don't see what can be done about debt in football within the law but as PB points out to us FFP has made the problem worse not better and far from being the unqualified success for FFP that Platini claimed, Chelsea could be its most catastrophic failure. FFP doesn't protect clubs from owners who "walk away" unless they have made genuine investment and improved the financial stability of the club. We will notice that these two great failures of FFP - limiting genuine investment and protecting the financial stability of clubs - are supposed to be the great achievements of which UEFA are most proud.

Secondly, I note the use of the phrase "financial doping". I know very well you are using this Wengerism to mock the way supporters of FFP use it and I know you use it to show your contempt of the concept behind it but unfortunately many on here and at large don't. Wenger of course coined the phrase to refer to the use of illegal and immoral monies (ie shareholders' money) to improve performance just as athletes used performance enhancing drugs. This is, as we all can see clearly, typical typical of the nonsense spouted by Archbishop Arsene

The Moore family put their cash into Liverpool in the fifties, I believe (I was born in 68)? Money made from selling get rich quick dreams to people in genuine grinding poverty back in those days. Arsene Wenger who managed Monaco...

The things that boil my piss are the hypocrisy, and the assumption that absolutely everybody has a memory that doesn’t stretch past last week or the last bit of nonsense that we read and took at face value.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

Sorry to pick up on your post particularly but there's a general point I wanted to make so be assured I'm not having a go at you here.

People are talking about us being "guilty". That's nonsense. We haven't killed or assaulted anyone, we haven't stolen anything. We haven't broken any laws at all in fact. CAS won't find us "guilty" or "innocent". What we've allegedly done is contravene some rules. I can't even find evidence of how these rules were accepted by the majority as all I can see is that a body appointed by UEFA, the Club Financial Control Panel, came up with the rules, which were endorsed by the Executive Committee. So anyone who also says "We signed up to them" is also wrong. They were imposed on UEFA associations whether they liked them or not as far as I can see.

The thing with rules and laws, particularly financial ones, is that they're always open to interpretation. That's why we have commercial courts, tax tribunals, employment tribunals etc. Because when sorting out tax, an acountant may take one view and HMRC an opposing one. It's about interpretation and that often involves deciding what the spirit of the rule was. It's also about what you think you can legally get away with.

The central question with our alleged breach is does it matter where Etihad and the other two Abu Dhabi-based sponsors got their money from? And the answer is, as I've shown, yes it could well matter, depending on the circumstances. But my interpretation of the FFP rules is that if Sheikh Mansour didn't pay that money, then we haven't broken any rules and, even if he did, we might not have.

I assume that UEFA's interpretation of the Der Spiegel stories will be one of our key lines of defence (although it might not be) with us arguing they were wrong and we can show that quite categorically. People are also talking about false accounting, which is ridiculous. If Etihad gave us £50m and we recorded that as £50m sponsorship then we've done things quite correctly. If, on the other hand, Etihad gave us £10m and Sheikh Mansour gave us the other £40m, which we recorded as being fom Etihad, then we could have been seen to have misreported the income. but I'm pretty confident we did things by the book.

So please can we not talk about us being "guilty" and this being some sort of court case that will establish our guilt or innocence. It will, I believe, establish if UEFA's interpretation and implementation of its own processes and procedures was correct and whether they had any genuine grounds for re-opening our case.

I agree with every word of this. Unfortunately we have had more than ten years of the worst kind of propaganda to convince us all that FFP was brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses and Manchester City are the tool by which malevolent forces are to pollute football by repeated injections of dirty oil money. The media try to persuade us that observance of FFP is a moral obligation and yet, as you point out today, as I tried to point out yesterday, we have never "signed up" to these rules (NOT laws), and neither we nor anyone else has been asked to consent to them. They have been imposed and the bodies imposing them lack the least shred of legitimacy. We are entitled to ask where the IC and AC draw their power, authority and legitimacy from and it is a question City may well ask. The question of why appeal is only allowed to CAS - a court of ARBITRATION - has already been posed and the answer is not pleasing to UEFA.

Your analysis of the issues at stake at CAS is spot on and I suspect there will be close questioning of UEFA's evidence, of its relevance, admissibility and reliability. We all hope City triumph and the ban is overturned. But I do have considerable sympathy with those, like Bosnian Blue, who say we should never accept we are "guilty", whether we like the term or not. And my reasons are quite simple and straight forward.

Whether we talk of manufacturing or services the belief in all free market economies has been that the way to stimulate growth, to improve output and productivity and the satisfy demand, is to encourage investment. This encourages the formation of new companies and greater competition to the benefit of the public. Vested interests often tried to protect themselves by measures to protect their own interests by forming cartels. Governments took action to protect the rights of investors and to make cartels unlawful. The EU codified these measures in the Treaty for the functioning of the European Union. This received the assent of every sovereign body in the EU and is law, not a rule not a wish, not advice but law to be applied in every EU state. It is and will remain law in the UK. This prohibits explicitly all agreements to limit investment and declares that "any agreements or decisions prohibited pursuant ... shall be automatically void." This is quite clear and unambiguous and it quite clearly renders whole tranches of FFP, especially the limit on owner investment, unlawful and the rigmarole dreamed up by UEFA to interpret and enforce it void and unlawful. There are no exclusions, no sporting exceptions no requirements for any agreement from UEFA. It is the law and not some tomfoolery dreamt up by whoever at UEFA.

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

All any of this proves to me is what a shithouse business professional football is.
I agree with PB’s summary that we are guilty of nothing. Because the whole thing is corrupt and the rules are skewed (particularly against us)


As such and in the present circumstances whereby I honestly have not missed football, I genuinely don’t know what outcome from CAS would actually satisfy me.

My current thinking hasn’t changed, I really feel like I’m done with football, in it’s present form.

I don’t feel the outcome I would fantasise about is possible. I think there is too much stacked against us in the overall game, but I do live in hope.

How I would love to see the tide turn.
I don’t even want to see City be a part of this corrupt money-centric business but that, I fear is being just naive.

Like I said. I truly don’t know what would satisfy me at this stage.

You make a fair point. And it's probably one we have all wrestled with. But I don't think football is the only corrupt area of British society. Sadly corruption is rife in the UK in the media, finance, politics. It's everywhere from people fiddling their mileage claims to huge money laundering operations and tax evasion. Would you stop using a bank for example or going on holiday to countries with dodgy financial issues?
The way I square things is to look at the positives and negatives. I believe our football club (and probably most football clubs) are a force for good in their local communities. Sport is fantastic for wellbeing in general. Not all the money in football is diverted into off shore accounts in the Cayman Islands. A lot of the cash trickles down creating and sustaining thousands of jobs.
I still love football as a sport and will stick with it as long as I enjoy attending matches. There are still lots of things I despise about the modern game but I am not ready to give up on City just yet.

 

[MeatHunterrr]

club should have really gone after them in 2014.

 

[King KdB of Belgium]

UEFA in this instance wants not only to set it's own laws. It also wants to be the judge and the jury all in one. There is not a country in Western Europe where laws are passed that allows them the right to be judge and jury in any trials.

UEFA thinks that because it has passed laws concerning FFP, it has the right to be the judge and jury as well. We need to defeat them and any laws concerning FFP as well. We also need to make sure that both chambers that dispense justice are defeated as well. If and when CAS gives it's final verdict, we need CAS to say that from now on, all your chambers must be totally independent from any interference from anyone that is on any UEFA boards.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

The Moore family put their cash into Liverpool in the fifties, I believe (I was born in 68)? Money made from selling get rich quick dreams to people in genuine grinding poverty back in those days. Arsene Wenger who managed Monaco...

The things that boil my piss are the hypocrisy, and the assumption that absolutely everybody has a memory that doesn’t stretch past last week or the last bit of nonsense that we read and took at face value.

My post seems to have posted itself. I lost it before it was finished! I'd better begin by saying that I agree absolutely with the tone and temper of your post and I feel exactly the same about the hypocrisy and the assumption that we are know-nothing numpties to be lectured by a herd of write-anything-for-something, cynical, ignorant hacks. I was growing up as a City supporter in the fifties and took little notice of Liverpool because they were in the second division, but the statistics tell a clear tale of heavy investment from retail and gambling. And the only quibble I had was that your tretment of Chelsea hadn't been critical enough - not investment and transfer dealings to inflate the market which is as near to financial doping as anyone has got. The point I didn't make because my post became a self-posting effort is that investment as City have practised it is the exact opposite of financial doping as the protected big clubs do it: no investment, lots of debt and nothing else to see for it.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

Competitions have to have approval from your country’s FA to start with

I think recent rulings affecting ice skating have meant this is no longer the case. Sporting bodies cannot bar you from one of their tournaments and stop you taking part in others. The only problem would be if FFP was still in place UEFA would almost certainly say that any prize money we won was disguised owner investment and would not be count as revenue for FFP purposes.

 

[Proy]

Yes I do think it is thrown round too loosely and it means different things to different people. I only use that term because, I believe, its my response to those questions, and in that thread, which frames the argument that I am
some how supportive of the press. Which could not be further from the truth.

I would say the relationship with sections of the media has deteriorated, over the past couple of years and agree there are some in the press who dislike us and their writing reflects that. Anyone can see that.

The Qatar argument has been proven so without doubt they are putting forward a narrative against the club.

Yes some blues I think go a bit far and can undermine some of the valid arguments and grievances we have with the press. It gives our detractors the opportunity to highlight those messages and portray the valid arguments as the writings of a bunch of loons. Anyway this is for another thread.

I've seen your history of posting on this matter, it's why I moved some goalposts a little. Certainly in terms of the wording 'agenda', truth be told I wanted to get an honest response from you which has happened.

I've had to read between the lines of your post but my conclusion is you don't believe UEFA are out to get us. That you don't believe there is anything organised in respect of how the media portray us and how that likely aids the message coming from quatar.

That's all fine btw, you are entitled to your point of view I just wanted to clarify what side of the fence you were on, because it was getting a little muddy.

Agree with your last sentence so will leave it here. Cheers.

 

[BluessinceHydeRoad]

So would SilverLake have invested heavily in us if they knew we were going to get done over in court....

I'd love to believe that Silver Lake saw the evidence and invested because they saw that it was clear beyond the slightest doubt that City had complied absolutely with FFP, and it might be the case, but I doubt that it's particularly relevant to their decision. They are building an entertainment arena which will be the biggest in the UK and one of the biggest in the world holding events of world significance. The arena won't even be built in two years time and the investment decisions will be based on projections over a long term, so I think the on pitch success of the club and any problems with UEFA won't really be that significant. Much more important, I would think, are the site, communications and the other opportunities offered for similar developments on other sites within the CFG.

 

[Gordyola]

So would SilverLake have invested heavily in us if they knew we were going to get done over in court....

They have invested for the long term, would be well aware of this small problem and the possible outcome

 

[Gordyola]

Even if we were economical with the truth, who gives a fuck? I know I certainly don't. In fact I embrace it.

We all know why FFP was created. We all know that goal posts were moved the first time, thus ensuring we 'failed' the audit.

Our owners should be able to invest as they see fit.

That is not to say there shouldn't be governance though, there has to be a set of rules that ensure we don't see clubs getting themselves in all sorts of shit ala Leeds, I am fully supportive of that type of process.

What I'm not supportive of is a set of rules created by a bunch of bent bastards with the sole purpose of protecting their elitism by stopping us being a prolonged and consistent threat to it.

The best possible outcome is that UEFA are instructed (and I don't believe this can happen through CAS, although I may be wrong) to revise their finicial policy so that it is actually 'fair'.

If they did this properly, then a large number of that G14 would have some serious problems.

UEFA are just a road block. There are a group of clubs who are itching to create their own super League and I suspect we want in, but those said clubs have gone to task with us now in a big way and I don't think that road can be repaired. In fact it's gone in completely the opposite direction.

This is a geopolitical power play. The very definition of football politics.

I am not entirely sure where we stand in the shit storm but it looks like we want some part of a breakaway.

UEFA embrace debt they even boast about it in their annual report as debt to equity ratio has progressively improve under FFP They obviously didn’t anticipate a pandemic

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

and hasn’t Roman stated it is a loan and not transferred the debt to share equity? Chelsea are fucked if he loses interest and wants his money back!

He tried to pull a fast one and claimed he'd converted the loan to equity. But he just moved the loan to his holding company, Fordstam Holdings, that owns Chelsea FC.

 

[franksinatra]

I've seen your history of posting on this matter, it's why I moved some goalposts a little. Certainly in terms of the wording 'agenda', truth be told I wanted to get an honest response from you which has happened.

I've had to read between the lines of your post but my conclusion is you don't believe UEFA are out to get us. That you don't believe there is anything organised in respect of how the media portray us and how that likely aids the message coming from quatar.

That's all fine btw, you are entitled to your point of view I just wanted to clarify what side of the fence you were on, because it was getting a little muddy.

Agree with your last sentence so will leave it here. Cheers.

I think for me an agenda would be the likes of organisations like the BBC, Sky, Daily Mail conspiring to put us down collectively, which I do not see. Individual companies like the BBC I could not see pushing a narrative to employees to alter their opinions to run us down, a Murdoch paper I would be less sure. Some might consider the likes of Delaney and Harris conspiring to write similar tweets as evidence of an agenda. It means many things to many people.

With regards UEFA, I think undoubtedly there is corruption within the organisation but I am unsure of the rest. Ceferins association with the likes of the Agnelli family and the influence of Qatar on UEFA does cause concern. Put it this way I would not trust them, however as the process has to go through CAS, and the comments from City, that gives me a great deal of confidence.

With regards to what side of the fence I sit, their has only ever been one side and its the badge, club I support that supersedes everything including any player, manager, owner.

Thank you for the courteous nature of your response. Cheers.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

UEFA embrace debt they even boast about it in their annual report as debt to equity ratio has progressively improve under FFP They obviously didn’t anticipate a pandemic

They're masking the fact that gross indebtedness hasn't decreased though. It's probably increased in fact. So clubs may be better able to support their debt but that's because revenues, profitability and therefore equity has increased. FFP still doesn't outlaw or restrict leveraged buyouts.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

I think for me an agenda would be the likes of organisations like the BBC, Sky, Daily Mail conspiring to put us down collectively, which I do not see. Individual companies like the BBC I could not see pushing a narrative to employees to alter their opinions to run us down, a Murdoch paper I would be less sure. Some might consider the likes of Delaney and Harris conspiring to write similar tweets as evidence of an agenda. It means many things to many people.

Would you accept an organised campaign by a number of rival clubs to use their influence with those outlets to put us down as an agenda though?

 

[WRicko]

Sorry to pick up on your post particularly but there's a general point I wanted to make so be assured I'm not having a go at you here.

People are talking about us being "guilty". That's nonsense. We haven't killed or assaulted anyone, we haven't stolen anything. We haven't broken any laws at all in fact. CAS won't find us "guilty" or "innocent". What we've allegedly done is contravene some rules. I can't even find evidence of how these rules were accepted by the majority as all I can see is that a body appointed by UEFA, the Club Financial Control Panel, came up with the rules, which were endorsed by the Executive Committee. So anyone who also says "We signed up to them" is also wrong. They were imposed on UEFA associations whether they liked them or not as far as I can see.

The thing with rules and laws, particularly financial ones, is that they're always open to interpretation. That's why we have commercial courts, tax tribunals, employment tribunals etc. Because when sorting out tax, an acountant may take one view and HMRC an opposing one. It's about interpretation and that often involves deciding what the spirit of the rule was. It's also about what you think you can legally get away with.

The central question with our alleged breach is does it matter where Etihad and the other two Abu Dhabi-based sponsors got their money from? And the answer is, as I've shown, yes it could well matter, depending on the circumstances. But my interpretation of the FFP rules is that if Sheikh Mansour didn't pay that money, then we haven't broken any rules and, even if he did, we might not have.

I assume that UEFA's interpretation of the Der Spiegel stories will be one of our key lines of defence (although it might not be) with us arguing they were wrong and we can show that quite categorically. People are also talking about false accounting, which is ridiculous. If Etihad gave us £50m and we recorded that as £50m sponsorship then we've done things quite correctly. If, on the other hand, Etihad gave us £10m and Sheikh Mansour gave us the other £40m, which we recorded as being fom Etihad, then we could have been seen to have misreported the income. but I'm pretty confident we did things by the book.

So please can we not talk about us being "guilty" and this being some sort of court case that will establish our guilt or innocence. It will, I believe, establish if UEFA's interpretation and implementation of its own processes and procedures was correct and whether they had any genuine grounds for re-opening our case.

can you elaborate is this to do with related party and fair value and are there specific rules against hiding things even if you have not actually broken rules around fair value or related party ?

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

can you elaborate is this to do with related party and fair value and are there specific rules against hiding things even if you have not actually broken rules around fair value or related party ?

I'm getting confused as to what are 'rules' and what are laws. I'm not even sure UEFA have the right to access our accounts or to define/restrict how a company is financed within UK / EU law?

 

[franksinatra]

Would you accept an organised campaign by a number of rival clubs to use their influence with those outlets to put us down as an agenda though?

Good question. It is a bit of a grey area that one. Newspapers use sources all the time to gain stories so if it was accurate and was passed to a paper, and was printed possibly not. However, dependent upon the volume ,type of content it could easily be viewed differently and questions be raised where the line is drawn and where the paper starts acting as a mouthpiece for that club(s). So I would probably say there is not a black and white answer there.

If it was a club or clubs passing disinformation and the paper(s), knowing this, were happy to keep printing it, I would probably say that is an agenda.

That is my immediate reaction without probably giving it the thought it deserves.