CAS judgement: UEFA ban overturned, City exonerated (report out p603)

[cleavers]

The question I am asking myself now is were we right to not cooperate with the UEFA investigation? I can certainly understand the motivation to refusing to give evidence to a fabricated enquiry knowing you can always go to CAS and give them a good kicking. But we have allowed the narrative to be twisted to read we have “broken FFP rules” (which should say refused to cooperate with a fake FFP investigation). If we had shown the evidence to UEFA in the first place they couldn’t have punished us (even if they wanted to) and all this cr@p would never happened.

Why are you asking ? It's been well explained why.

 

[slick]

Great points mate, however the biased media is now able to run with statements like city failed FFP rules, which although it is a play on words they wouldn’t be able to do if we gave them the evidence in the first place.

I know what you're saying but it doesn't matter what we showed them, their motive was always to ban us.
This is a proven corrupt organisation who's only motive was to get at City with the blessing of the cartel , if we would have shown our hand they would have picked through the bones and found something to pin on us.

Instead they found some lame excuses and doctored emails which they presented as evidence, once doing so they couldn't backtrack which made it a lot easier to fight as has been proven once we presented our evidence,
Showing our hand first would have been suicide, UEFA weren't after evidence but something to nail us with.

 

[Metalartin]

Kicking off about doctored emails won't play because we provided most of the emails and CAS found there wasn't a huge difference in content when compared with what we provided.

There was deception but not from UEFA, that was all Der Spiegel who presented the emails in a way that sold their story.

Failing to point relevant dates out for clarity(context), hoping they'll be missed by their giddy readers(and they were in the large) such as the date of the first email which they led with, along with the fact it was two years before CLFFPR was implemented(did they mention that?), possibly before the rules were even finalised. Which would mean they would be arguing that "City were looking for ways around rules" they hadn't seen yet.

The doctored emails you mentioned were two spliced emails and were said to give a distorted view by CAS themselves. Just not enough to dismiss them outright without exploring it on legal basis, which they did and found no proof. I don't believe CAS said the redacted text on the originals were irrelevant or provided no context specifically.

My belief is Etihad and the the other Abu Dhabi partners didn't want to delve into their 3rd party links unless they really had to. It was enough to show UEFA had no proof in the end. It was mentioned by one of the witnesses that Etihad have their own shareholders, trusts, funds etc to fall back on if they ever needed to, why would the others be any different?:

 

[Mancity1980]

Why are you asking ? It's been well explained why.

Has it? We have been careful not to break FFP rules, only been punished in 2014 when they changed the rules, we had an opportunity to cooperative and thus continue to not break them and we choose not to. If we had presented the evidence there and then UEFA would have no grounds to punish us (if for some stupid reason they still did we could still go to CAS and this time non-cooperation couldn't be thrown at us). As stunning as our victory has been it could have been more complete.

 

[Mancity1980]

I know what you're saying but it doesn't matter what we showed them, their motive was always to ban us.
This is a proven corrupt organisation who's only motive was to get at City with the blessing of the cartel , if we would have shown our hand they would have picked through the bones and found something to pin on us.

Instead they found some lame excuses and doctored emails which they presented as evidence, once doing so they couldn't backtrack which made it a lot easier to fight as has been proven once we presented our evidence,
Showing our hand first would have been suicide, UEFA weren't after evidence but something to nail us with.

Maybe, but you are suggesting there was something(s) to hide. If we really had done nothing wrong no picking through the bones would have found anything.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

Maybe, but you are suggesting there was something(s) to hide. If we really had done nothing wrong no picking through the bones would have found anything.

It's nobody else's business. UEFA seem to think our private business is everyone's business. They weren't trusted to be ethical so we took it to court. Our private business is thus.

 

[mrbelfry]

There was deception but not from UEFA, that was all Der Spiegel who presented the emails in a way that sold their story.

Failing to point relevant dates out for clarity(context), hoping they'll be missed by their giddy readers(and they were in the large) such as the date of the first email which they led with, along with the fact it was two years before CLFFPR was implemented(did they mention that?), possibly before the rules were even finalised. Which would mean "City were looking for ways around rules" they hadn't seen yet.

The doctored emails you mentioned were two spliced emails and were said to give a distorted view by CAS themselves. Just not enough to dismiss them outright without exploring it on legal basis, which they did and found no proof. I don't believe CAS said the redacted text on the originals were irrelevant or provided no context specifically.

Typed a reply and lost it :( paragraphs 215 and 216 in the judgement explain what i mean. The emails are a red herring - it is right that we get upset by the misrepresentation of them in the papers - maybe im overstating by saying they are irrelevant but CAS found them of limited evidential value. Arguing about them specifically gives them evidential credence CAS doesn't afford them. The issue isn't that the emails were doctored if is that they have extremely limited value even when viewed through UEFA's perspective

 

[Metalartin]

Typed a reply and lost it :( paragraphs 215 and 216 in the judgement explain what i mean. The emails are a red herring - it is right that we get upset by the misrepresentation of them in the papers - maybe im overstating by saying they are irrelevant but CAS found them of limited evidential value. Arguing about them specifically gives them evidential credence CAS doesn't afford them. The issue isn't that the emails were doctored if is that they have extremely limited value even when viewed through UEFA's perspective

We don't know why so much of what was missing was redacted or if that was done before or after the hearing though do we? If it's redacted, they wont be mentioning it in the report either. We know UEFA didn't have the originals though because City didn't provide them. Of course at the CAS they'll claim it didn't matter, they tried claim if didn't matter they had had no proof either.

I'm not arguing that we know for sure how relevant it was but you're dismissing it a little too easily perhaps. In my opinion we shouldn't care so much for the legitimacy of the doctoring and deception claims, Der Spiegel can have some of their own medicine now. "This is proof they were up to no good". ;)

 

[Impeccable One]

Has it? We have been careful not to break FFP rules, only been punished in 2014 when they changed the rules, we had an opportunity to cooperative and thus continue to not break them and we choose not to. If we had presented the evidence there and then UEFA would have no grounds to punish us (if for some stupid reason they still did we could still go to CAS and this time non-cooperation couldn't be thrown at us). As stunning as our victory has been it could have been more complete.

Your point is valid and could have resulted in any of these outcomes;

1) UEFA see the error of the ways and don't charge us with breaking FFP

2) UEFA continue to expose confidential communication to the media, building a strong case in the public's view and possibly tainting the CAS adjudicator pool prior to our appeal, when we would have nothing new to show, against an organisation that now knows everything we wanted to submit.

Whilst CAS says had we cooperated option 1) may have been the result, that's CAS's view. My view is we would have still been charged and facing a significant negative image in both the court of public opinion and then what that CAS panel had absorbed prior to making their judgement.

 

[mrbelfry]

We don't know why so much of it was redacted though do we? If it's redacted they wont be mentioning it in the report either. We know UEFA didn't have the originals though because City didn't provide them. Of course at the CAS they'll claim it didn't matter, they tried claim if didn't matter they had had no proof either.

I'm not arguing that we know for sure how relevant it was but you're dismissing it a little too easily perhaps. Der Spiegel can have some of their own medicine now.

I think we are misunderstanding each other :) My main point is that arguing about the veracity and the doctoring of the emails is a distraction. CAS preceeded on the grounds that they were mostly accurate but of limited evidential value. We don't need to undermine the emails to prove our defence. The most relevant thing about the emails is how irrelevant CAS considered them in proving UEFAs case even when they are accepted in good faith.

Ha in any event im absolutely not qualified to interpet CAS so i won't labour the point any further. Feel free to respond and have the last word