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

[SilverFox2]

Largely, they appear to have now moved into:
UEFA have messed up completely and their incompetence has allowed the clearly guilty City to get off.

Thanks, so effectively criticising the g## for pushing the case in its unprepared state?

 

[Centurions]

@projectriver:
Sorry to bother you on something minor, but you may be the best to assess this.

The use of the word 'majority' is common in describing the panel opinions.
Should anything be read into the meaning of that? Is it always 2-1, and does it preclude 3-0?
I can't search the doc to see if they ever use 'unanimous'.

I've posted a couple of times about this but haven't seen any actual expert confirmation to back it up.

As I understand it the two Arbitrators consider the evidence and give their verdict on it, if they disagree then the President has the deciding vote. If both Arbitrators are in agreement then it's reported as a 'majority verdict'. I've no idea what they call it if the President has to overrule. The fact that 'majority verdict' appears to be the only term used suggests that there were no disagreements as surely they wouldn't both be at odds over every single decision.

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

I made a thread, amazingly it seems to have taken off and people like it. If you have a spare 3 mins, feel free to give it a read. Just my observations based on the facts of the 93 page report. No agenda bullshit

Well done m8.. There's been a lot of misinformation on twitter and people like you, pb, slsb etc have been jumping on those tweet threads and correcting them. It's an information war after all.

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

I think the BBC are going to be surprised by the amount of complaints that they receive. FWIW, I have had hundreds of likes / comments of support on Twitter and Facebook. I know not everyone who supports making a complaint to the BBC will write one themselves but I’ve been encouraged by the response.

My wife wrote to them. Again. She's livid!

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

James ducker, interesting.

 

[mrbelfry]

If all you say is true - why did we warrant a two year ban for Christ sake?

UEFA found us guilty. CAS took a different approach to those emails in particular. UEFA didn't specify which punishment related to which charges but as that was the harshest punishment CAS assumed it was related to the severest rule break

 

[Mancity1980]

Not at all.
I've told you it's a Witch Hunt they can find and twist whatever they want.
We now live in a world where everything can be scrutinised to the n'th degree, it doesn't matter who you are or what you are, if they wanted to they could make Mother Theresa look like Myra Hindley.
City knew the shower of ****s were out to get them so gave them fcuk all.

You don't feed the hand that bites you.

Good point, it’s don’t feed the mouth that bites you! :)

 

[MillionMilesAway]

Thanks, so effectively criticising the g## for pushing the case in its unprepared state?

Or just not doing it right.

It ignores the issue that UEFA have no powers to compel information provision, and thus are reliant on what is given freely or publically available. My impression is that that's always going to struggle on proving a matter - it's very different from the earlier City matter when out books were clearly in breach of FFP.

Not ignoring that would require them to consider why there is a set of rules that can't be proven easily.

 

[mrbelfry]

Are you free for analogy coaching?

I'm quite expensive

 

[the talisman]

James ducker, interesting.

Interesting ? Surely that’s exactly what we were accused of and exactly was CAS found that we didn’t do....

 

[MillionMilesAway]

I've posted a couple of times about this but haven't seen any actual expert confirmation to back it up.

As I understand it the two Arbitrators consider the evidence and give their verdict on it, if they disagree then the President has the deciding vote. If both Arbitrators are in agreement then it's reported as a 'majority verdict'. I've no idea what they call it if the President has to overrule. The fact that 'majority verdict' appears to be the only term used suggests that there were no disagreements as surely they wouldn't both be at odds over every single decision.

Cheers. I hadn't seen a more qualified opinion either.

As you say, I thought use of 'majority' throughout left something unspoken about what it meant.

 

[Groke]

Interesting ? Surely that’s exactly what we were accused of and exactly was CAS found that we didn’t do....

He is one of the many who didn't actually know what the charges were

 

[Centurions]

UEFA found us guilty. CAS took a different approach to those emails in particular. UEFA didn't specify which punishment related to which charges but as that was the harshest punishment CAS assumed it was related to the severest rule break

That is particularly strange to me that UEFA just said you're banned for 2 years and you owe us €30million without specifying what the breakdown was.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

What I still can't get my head round is that CAS found we'd failed to co-operate with UEFA yet also found that we'd done nothing wrong concerning what they were investigating us for anyway.

I'd assume we refused to co-operate originally on the grounds that the emails were stolen, which isn't in dispute, therefore UEFA had no right to use them as evidence anyway. While CAS ultimately determined that they were allowed to rely on them, there was clearly a valid legal question as to their admissibility. CAS even said our lawyers were justified in vigorously defending our non-cooperation stance.

Had we refused to submit supporting evidence for our annual FFP return despite numerous requests, for example, then that would plainly justify a non-cooperation charge and significant fine. But we didn't.

In that case, I don't see how CAS were right to uphold the non co-operation charge and impose such a significant fine. I'd have expected CAS to say that while we certainly initially refused to co-operate, we genuinely felt we had a valid, legal right not to do so, on the grounds that the emails were stolen and presented out of context. Having produced the required evidence at CAS, which was agreed with UEFA, they should have dropped that charge in my view.

 

[mrbelfry]

That is particularly strange to me that UEFA just said you're banned for 2 years and you owe us €30million without specifying what the breakdown was.

I'd have to double check the CAS ruling but I'm sure it mentions it towards the end. It does support City's stance that this wasn't a 'good' prosecution from UEFA

 

[Elbow beards]

Not at all.
I've told you it's a Witch Hunt they can find and twist whatever they want.
We now live in a world where everything can be scrutinised to the n'th degree, it doesn't matter who you are or what you are, if they wanted to they could make Mother Theresa look like Myra Hindley.
City knew the shower of ****s were out to get them so gave them fcuk all.

You don't feed the hand that bites you.

Actually mother Teresa was a ****, it's well documented, but that's another story.

 

[Mancity1980]

What I still can't get my head round is that CAS found we'd failed to co-operate with UEFA yet also found that we'd done nothing wrong concerning what they were investigating us for anyway.

I'd assume we refused to co-operate originally on the grounds that the emails were stolen, which isn't in dispute, therefore UEFA had no right to use them as evidence anyway. While CAS ultimately determined that they were allowed to rely on them, there was clearly a valid legal question as to their admissibility. CAS even said our lawyers were justified in vigorously defending our non-cooperation stance.

Had we refused to submit supporting evidence for our annual FFP return despite numerous requests, for example, then that would plainly justify a non-cooperation charge and significant fine. But we didn't.

In that case, I don't see how CAS were right to uphold the non co-operation charge and impose such a significant fine. I'd have expected CAS to say that while we certainly initially refused to co-operate, we genuinely felt we had a valid, legal right not to do so, on the grounds that the emails were stolen and presented out of context. Having produced the required evidence at CAS, which was agreed with UEFA, they should have dropped that charge in my view.

Now that is a very interesting point and clearly answers why we would refuse to cooperate and risk the non-cooperation charge. Where do you suggest city go from here? We still have a black mark against which is being twisted by the media.

 

[Dextersmate]

I made a thread, amazingly it seems to have taken off and people like it. If you have a spare 3 mins, feel free to give it a read. Just my observations based on the facts of the 93 page report. No agenda bullshit

Great thread, I did suggest that you get Conn's job at the Guardian.

 

[PannickAtTheDisco]

What I still can't get my head round is that CAS found we'd failed to co-operate with UEFA yet also found that we'd done nothing wrong concerning what they were investigating us for anyway.

I'd assume we refused to co-operate originally on the grounds that the emails were stolen, which isn't in dispute, therefore UEFA had no right to use them as evidence anyway. While CAS ultimately determined that they were allowed to rely on them, there was clearly a valid legal question as to their admissibility. CAS even said our lawyers were justified in vigorously defending our non-cooperation stance.

In that case, I don't see how CAS were right to uphold the non co-operation charge and impose such a significant fine. I'd have expected CAS to say that while we certainly initially refused to co-operate, we genuinely felt we had a valid, legal right not to do so, on the grounds that the emails were stolen and presented out of context. Having produced the required evidence at CAS, which was agreed with UEFA, they should have dropped that charge in my view.

I guess, but I think CAS have taken out all of the cynicism and scepticism that we hold towards UEFA and just look at it in plain black and white, hence the whole narrative of "if we'd co-operated from the start we wouldn't have got that far", even though we know we would have because UEFA would have screwed us by any means necessary. I think they've parked that whole side of things because of the ongoing Ethics investigation (Which may lead to those reforms) but means they've looked at it on a factual basis without giving proper weight to the underlying narrative. That's just my impression, but I don't think it's anything we could really overturn, nor would we really want to go back through all that. I think at best we would get a reduction of a fine but that would end up being immaterial to a) the narrative and b) us as a club, I think we just have to take it on the chin as the price needed to be paid to get UEFA in a forum where we could present the facts.

 

[RobMCFC]

Looking at paragraphs 294 & 295, it seems that by refusing to co-operate with UEFA at any stage means the club breeched article 56 of FFP.
Whether CAS thought we might have been acting reasonably to defend our position, it's a black-or-white decision in that at some point we did fail to cooperate.