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

petrusha said:
I haven't been able to post my views since publication of the report. I'll also face difficulties in posting for some time to come (this is a one-off contribution and I won't be able to respond to replies to it).

But the conclusion to that article, especially the closing paragraphs, is the ultimate takeaway from CAS. This is all the more valuable as it comes from a legal professional who's (presumably) neutral in terms of fan allegiance.

I also note that CAS has been called not fit for purpose by some of our detractors in recent days. Not so. What's shown itself up as most unfit for purpose in this saga is the British football media.

City were charged with inflating revenue under sponsorship contracts whose fair value wasn't contested by UEFA, under which the relevant services had been provided, and which were underwritten by organs of the Abu Dhabi Emirati government.

All of this was in the public domain. And it showed, as many of us on here repeated ad nauseam, that MCFC would highly likely prevail before CAS unless UEFA possessed evidence hitherto unknown to us. Of course, they ultimately didn't.

Yet the British football media unanimously gloried in the prospect of our demise from the publication of Der Spiegel's revelations onwards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall one media outlet (and I mean literally not a single fucking one) ever at any stage suggesting that City may prevail.

It was all in the emails, they gloated. Well, chaps, take a look at what the CAS says about that. Should hardly have required the Brain of fucking Britain to work it out, should it.

Now, your level of performance has been truly execrable on an objective level from any body of professionals with pretensions to even bare adequacy as a group. One issue is that we find football writers trying to grapple with complex issues of finance and law when they're, perfectly understandably, lamentably ill-equipped to do so - even those who claim expertise in the relevant areas. But there's a deluge of cases where the ineptitude is bound in with bad faith: they're also desperate for us to fail.

Well, it isn't failure, is it? Quite the contrary. On the main point, the one that matters, the one on which UEFA's AC tried to hang an extended ban, it was rather emphatic: as has been said elsewhere, count the usage of terms such as 'no evidence' in the report. Anyway, try to convert the result into football terms and you're probably looking at something like 4-0.

By all means indulge your incompetence and bias by trawling through the rest of the report, the flim-flam, for out-of-context phrases you can use to discredit City for the delectation of your clickbait sheep. Go big on the barely relevant obstruction point if you want to. We're happy to have obstructed an investigation mired in illegally obtained materials, prejudicial conduct, and vicious and self-interested third-party lobbying, all egged on by vacuous press cheerleading.

The thing is, you've shown us what you are now, haven't you? We knew all along, of course, but you used to try and gaslight us. You reported on us fairly and we were too thin-skinned to see it, you used to say. That won't wash any longer, will it? Act as PR shills for our enemies in the way you seem to want to. Fine. Don't expect a reaction from us other than utterly fucking despising you for it, though.

A final mention for David Conn, the self-appointed conscience of football. I long regarded his professional success as an example of Emperor's new clothes syndrome as others queued up to praise him extravagantly. I did, however, respect him for what seemed to be an ethical approach and genuine integrity.

What a sad state of affairs, then, to see his tendentious output over the last few months. It truly rivals the worst imaginable from any bigoted, comically biased, bottom-feeding hack scum that's out there. Still, chin up, David. You can always trot off back to FC United and help your mate Walsh be the exemplar of soul in modern football. Oh.

OK, maybe The Guardian will let you write a bit for the front end of the paper. Oh, no, another no-go. You did those stories on Orgreave a while back and they were fucking dreadful so you were sent back to the toy section. Looks as though you've found your level, then, doesn't it. As have City, however much you and your journo mates wish it were otherwise.
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Great post P, and get well soon please.
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
Winter is conspicuously from old money so much less likely to need to prostitute himself to pay his mortgage, or even have a mortgage at all.
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Winter does have previous though. I used to enjoy his writing when he was at the Telegraph. But then Sir Baconface invited him to (I think) a pre season tournament. He came back completely brainwashed and, after that, every article Winter wrote tried to shoehorn in what a genius Slur Alex was and how winning was in the rag's DNA (whatever the hell that means). Pretty much stopped buying the Telegragh after that.
 
The Clansman said:
Winter does have previous though. When he was at the Telegraph, Sir Baconface invited him to (I think) a pre season tournament. After that, every article Winter wrote tried to shoehorn in what a genius Slur Alex was and how winning was in the rag's DNA (whatever the hell that means). Pretty much stopped buying the Telegragh after that.
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Winter is a dilletante. He ingratiates himself with whoever is most successful at the time.
Always thought there was an element of the “Toff ironically enjoying slumming it with the proles” about him. A bit like GDM on here...
 
Tim of the Oak said:
Why do you think he was positive about us before Der Spiegel then? The people running City are paid top dollar to find solutions. Not to say that’s too difficult we won’t bother trying.
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Actually, I just checked the last two or three weeks of Winter's Twitter - he voted for KdB in the POTY award and waxed lyrical about Sterling, saying he was England's most important player and a "special talent." So, not all bad then. He's just on the wrong side of history re: City/UEFA.
 
Nails said:
Actually, I just checked the last two or three weeks of Winter's Twitter - he voted for KdB in the POTY award and waxed lyrical about Sterling, saying he was England's most important player and a "special talent." So, not all bad then. He's just on the wrong side of history re: City/UEFA.
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Thanks Nails. Good information mate.

Hopefully, Henry will see the bigger picture around the CAS decision some day. We did shoot ourselves in the foot a bit with some of the stuff in the Club’s emails, that wasn’t illegal but was fuel to the fire for our enemies.
 
SilverFox2 said:
Is this a sign of the times Chris, by that I mean has clickbait overtaken journalism?
The digital world means the traditional newspaper needed to change for financial reasons so editors insist journos follow their researched customer base and literally pander to their often extreme views.
Views of news prevails which allows say a cartel or say a Government (eg Russia or Qatar or g##) to buy into a financial need in return for job security and skewed publicity.

Propaganda is now sold by a financially desperate media who simply want clicks and have descended to having all their media pages advert features along with those tagged as such.
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Read Alan Rusbridger's book 'Breaking News'. It's quite interesting and he seems to have been someone who wasn't afraid to take on powerful interests. He guided The Guardian to be one of the leading digital news sites but its content has gone downhill since Kath Viner took over as Editor (and blocked his nomination to the trustees of the Scott Trust).

But in the book he talks about the Telegraph and how it's basically in hock to its major advertisers. It refused to run a story about wrongdoing by HSBC that every other paper ran, because HSBC spent a lot of money advertising with the Telegraph. He tells how the Telegraph ran other stories that had the Advertising Director screaming at the editorial staff, which were subsequently removed or significantly altered.

A few years ago, at a Manchester Football Writers Festival event, Oli Kay (then at The Times), David Mooney and Paul Lake were part of a panel talking about young players. Afterwards I got to have a chat to them. I think Dave Mooney was part of this conversation but Paul & Joanne Lake certainly were and we got talking about where journalism had gone. Kay said that he could write the piece of his life but if it didn't get enough clicks, his editor would kick his backside all round the newsroom. That's the state of our current, so-called "quality" media.
 
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Nails said:
Actually, I just checked the last two or three weeks of Winter's Twitter - he voted for KdB in the POTY award and waxed lyrical about Sterling, saying he was England's most important player and a "special talent." So, not all bad then. He's just on the wrong side of history re: City/UEFA.
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That's much nearer the mark. Has written extensive praise of us in the past, but he fell for the popular line of "got off on a technicality" which would require evidence of wrong doing re ETISALAT, which CAS specifically said was not there.
Why would a journo who was normally fair and accurate suddenly do this?
When I pointed this out, he wrote back saying he criticised both City and Uefa, but completely ignored the only point (this one) that I made.
 
SilverFox2 said:
Is this a sign of the times Chris, by that I mean has clickbait overtaken journalism?
The digital world means the traditional newspaper needed to change for financial reasons so editors insist journos follow their researched customer base and literally pander to their often extreme views.
Views of news prevails which allows say a cartel or say a Government (eg Russia or Qatar or g##) to buy into a financial need in return for job security and skewed publicity.

Propaganda is now sold by a financially desperate media who simply want clicks and have descended to having all their media pages advert features along with those tagged as such.
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It seems that the medium has become the message.
These ‘social media’ platforms are meat and drink to the masses who confuse ubiquity with omniscience.Just get on ... doesn’t matter what you say, as long as you’re there saying it.
Trump is a perfect example.
 
Were we succesful in overturning the ban ? All the crap i have read in the media since make me wonder , imagine if UEFA had won the verdict and the mayhem that would have ensued , i think the death sentence would have been re-introduced.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Read Alan Rusbridger's book 'Breaking News'. It's quite interesting and he seems to have been someone who wasn't afraid to take on powerful interests. He guided The Guardian to be one of the leading digital news sites but it's content has gone downhill since Kath Viner took over as Editor (and blocked his nomination to the trustees of the Scott Trust).

But in the book he talks about the Telegraph and how it's basically in hock to its major advertisers. It refused to run a story about wrongdoing by HSBC that every other paper ran, because HSBC spent a lot of money advertising with the Telegraph. He tells how the Telegraph ran other stories that had the Advertising Director screaming at the editorial staff, which were subsequently removed or significantly altered.

A few years ago, at a Manchester Football Writers Festival event, Oli Kay (then at The Times), David Mooney and Paul Lake were part of a panel talking about young players. Afterwards I got to have a chat to them. I think Dave Mooney was part of this conversation but Paul & Joanne Lake certainly were and we got talking about where journalism had gone. Kay said that he could write the piece of his life but if it didn't get enough clicks, his editor would kick his backside all round the newsroom. That's the state of our current, so-called "quality" media.
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As is often the case in the world, money rules what people do.

I don't know how their revenue breaks down and have no interest in researching that but I believe newspapers live off ad revenue; especially in this day and age.

I am not one of the tin foil hat brigade but I find it hard to believe that dark forces are not at work trying to foil City's rise; it's just the level of collusion that is in question. The media's part in this though I suspect is driven mainly by economics and the fact that the media seems to contain a high proportion of people with red allegiances.

City are victims of both conspiracy and circumstance, all of which works against us. Thankfully our owners have vast wealth and perseverance. If the club continues to be successful on the pitch, delivering trophies and entertaining football, slowly but surely over the years things will improve. This is going to be a very long war.
 
old blue said:
Sign them up!
Did you spot the pop up ad from Red Bubble, they are selling mugs bearing the legend phrase that you like.
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Sorry about this post, I was typing too quickly and completely missed a few lines off what I meant to write. The red bubble ad was addressed to GDM.
 
maurizio said:
Foolishly turned radio station over to Talksport this morning. Discussion on Sheffield Wednesday punishment saying it's not really a punishment for the owner. Cascarino says there's loads of loopholes whereby an owner can disguise money into the club and then you get wages pushed up and the trouble clubs are in. There's sponsorship. He gave the example of Etihad. Doh. They still haven't got the headline from CAS. NOT disguised equity investment! And we haven't pushed up wages and and investment is not why championship clubs are in trouble. That would be debt and dodgy gambling.
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Cascarino gave Carragher a close run in the village idiot competition recently.
 
petrusha said:
Well, it's been brewing ever since I observed the nauseating, hysterical, hyperbolic glee with which the football press responded to the original Der Spiegel stories based on the Football Leaks materials. I've been waiting ever since to have my say once the matter was properly disposed of, a moment that arrived with this week's publication of the full CAS report.

It probably also doesn't help that I'm currently in a Russian hospital undergoing treatment for Covid and associated pneumonia. I can't say I felt in much of a mood to soft-soap my views, to be honest. (I'm doing fine and am much improved compared with my rather pitiful state earlier in the week, thanks.)
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Get well soon mate.
 
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