PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

So let me get this straight ... The English FA will appoint a person who will appoint a team to check the allegations made by the FA? Isn't there a conflict of interest? What's worse is even the appeals team will be appointed by an FA-appointed person.

I actually support government/wealthy group investment in clubs. Even though I'm a Real Madrid supporter, competition is essential for revenues to grow. No one wants to see the same set of teams in the CL semis every year or the same set of Top3/4 teams in the league.

Edit: I mean the PL not FA.
 
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Norman kneejerk said:
Interesting angle was wondering if we might have a nuclear option.
Also interesting that we are state owned when it suits but not called it fraud by Abu Dhabi state yet. That could get very interesting
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That is the nuclear option IMO. Try fucking us and watch what happens to any planned investments in the UK by Abu Dhabi.
 
cleavers said:
Well quite a few of the charges are for "not cooperating", so I expect we'll be guilty of those.

As I posted earlier we didn't cooperate with UEFA, because we thought we'd be shafted, so we were never going to cooperate with the PL at that point, because anything we gave them, would end up with UEFA anyway, but we did cooperate with CAS. This was a good policy since UEFA failed to shaft us, and we were found not to have done anything wrong. I fully expect the same will apply, we'll let it go to this "independent commission" and then cooperate and get a similar result, especially as it seems to be based on exactly the same evidence.
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Oh yes I understand all that, it was a rhetorical question, i.e. if we haven't co-operated then they can't have any evidence, unless they've hacked into the club's systems.

Seems a bit dumb to me given that the UEFA case was overturned and the only thing they were able to fine us for was not co-operating, but I know I wouldn't have if they were using either fake or stolen emails against me, which would have been inadmissible evidence in a proper court.
 
coolcity said:
First sentence says it all. I think we can expect something to come out of it, but I don't think it will be that serious. What I would like to know is how do they come to the conclusion that we're guilty of a specific number of instances if they say we haven't been co-operating?

As for what anybody else thinks, a lot of them already think that way anyhow since the UEFA bullshit so no change there then. I couldn't give a toss what anybody else thinks to be honest. Where have the likes of Chelsea got their £400 million from then, other than the new owners bankrolling the club? What about United when you consider the Glazers didn't have any money to buy the club and had to mortgage it? No questions asked?

Nothing's going to happen for a while anyway, it's taken them 5 years to get this far.
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I get the feeling the non cooperation is that we don’t provide them anything they haven’t asked for specifically. We won’t allow fishing, their response is possibly we’ve got something to hide.
 
ilrm said:
So let me get this straight ... The English FA will appoint a person who will appoint a team to check the allegations made by the FA? Isn't there a conflict of interest? What's worse is even the appeals team will be appointed by an FA-appointed person.

I actually support government/wealthy group investment in clubs. Even though I'm a Real Madrid supporter, competition is essential for revenues to grow. No one wants to see the same set of teams in the CL semis every year or the same set of Top3/4 teams in the league.
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English FA? You went wrong there.
 
coolcity said:
Oh yes I understand all that, it was a rhetorical question, i.e. if we haven't co-operated then they can't have any evidence, unless they've hacked into the club's systems.
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Somebody else did that, and they appear to be using those same "hacks" to a degree, and that is why we didn't cooperate in the first place, we had the evidence for CAS, I don't imagine it's changed much.
 
lonestay said:
I don't know if this is correct or even true but I recall a story being told about Khaldoon and Mansour while students in America, not allowed to enter a big nightclub in Miami due to them being non white, so they bought a nightclub very close to the one that refused them entrance and made it so successful it put the other one out of business. If there is a grain of truth in that, that's the Khaldoon, Mansour we need to see right now . Like I said I do not know if true but it's a story I heard couple of years back . Can anyone verify this ?
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Look, regardless of any stories these guys are light years ahead of the likes of the Premier League when it comes to legal matters. They deal in contract law with deals valued in hundreds of millions on a regular basis without batting an eyelid. This is about as serious to them as a parking ticket is to you and me, and I have every confidence that they know what they're doing when it comes to operating a business, whether that business is a football club or a 7 star hotel in Dubai.

As for the PL, this is just a witch hunt at best, they've never been happy that we snuck in and stole the glory from their pet clubs (you know who they are). The sad thing is when you look at what the club's owners have done and the money they have poured into projects around the club, the PL should be proud and use their achievements as good publicity for the league around the world, not do the exact opposite. I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if the likes of united and Liverpool have something to do with this.
 
Rory Bluelow said:
I call bollocks on this piece from the Athletic. Ex-player or ex-coach turned “informer” - really ? if there is ANY substance behind it will be around a trivial matter.
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Yeah, like they would know anything at all about the club's finances? Utter pile of crap.
 
Stevob said:
It’s going to be an absolute pile on from the media and opposition fans for the next few months (years) until we are (hopefully) exonerated - in the meantime we are going to need thick skins and a sense of humour. Whatever happens we will still be there week in, week out and whether its vs Bayern or Borehamwood.

Was thinking we might need to update a few songs to show that we really don’t give a f*ck.

I’m no Noel Gallagher but maybe something like this to the tune of “we never win at home …”

Oh we spent loads of cash and ignored fair play
Banned by UEFA but we got away
We won’t give a fuck if it goes tits up
M C F C - Always

Shit, I know but you get the idea …..
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They danced on our grave when UEFA tried to kick us out of European competition for two years for serious FFP breaches. We laughed them out of court once and can do it again, the problem is even if we win again the hatred spewed at us will be about paying for expensive lawyers to make problems go away, yadda yadda yadda
 
coolcity said:
My thoughts exactly. In fact I've just said the same thing re. Chelsea and united. Chelsea most certainly haven't earned £400m in the past year and as you say, united owe millions so they shouldn't be able to spend anything, so what the fuck is going on?

If we haven't been co-operating then where do they have the information from to charge us with anything?
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I would be very wary of taking comfort from the CAS outcome. City are explicitly forbidden from appealing to the CAS in this case. And who the hell is supposed to be the independent party that chooses the "independent tribunals" that will determine the initial judgement, and (as I understand it) any initial appeal? It would appear to be whoever the accusers decide that they consider is independent: could anything be more transparently NOT about independence? I fear that we will have to rely ultimately on real courts of justice, not commissions stacked against us by our enemies.
 
Mike Keegan writes this which gets lost in paragraphs & pages of bullshit by his fellow scribes.

The second is that they felt backed into a corner under pressure to act from City's main rivals. What cannot be disputed is that City, aided by deep pockets and with their reputation on the line, will defend themselves with everything they have.
 
coolcity said:
Yeah, like they would know anything at all about the club's finances? Utter pile of crap.
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An "informer" isn't much use without the actual evidence to back it up. Unless this "informer" has copies of bank statements on both sides of transactions in, apparently, up to 100 cases, it's just heresay.

To paraphrase CAS, I doubt the balance of probability is in favour of a multi-year fraudulent scheme involving club contracts, club executives, non-executives, shareholders, sponsors and all their respective accounting firms over some gossip from disgruntled former employees. If they can't show actual evidence, they won't stand a chance.
 
Maly said:
Cheers for the correction. I thought illegally gained information couldn’t be used in UK courts. My bad

Completely agree with your post, everyone bends the rules & would be foolish not to in order to gain advantages over your competition
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My understanding is that it can't be used unless it was legally obtained. Probably depends what it is and how it was obtained, but this is the PL, not a law court so it's irrelevant anyway. PL can make up the rules to suit themselves.
 
cheekybids said:
Mike Keegan writes this which gets lost in paragraphs & pages of bullshit by his fellow scribes.

The second is that they felt backed into a corner under pressure to act from City's main rivals. What cannot be disputed is that City, aided by deep pockets and with their reputation on the line, will defend themselves with everything they have.
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City are also funding the plaintiff as they own 5% of the PL, who also have deep pockets.
 
eyalluvitt said:
They danced on our grave when UEFA tried to kick us out of European competition for two years for serious FFP breaches. We laughed them out of court once and can do it again, the problem is even if we win again the hatred spewed at us will be about paying for expensive lawyers to make problems go away, yadda yadda yadda
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You are absolutely right about yadda, yadda etc. but in a sense it's not a problem, it's to be expected given the deeply flawed nature of the human species.
 
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