PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

not gonna be any development on this for some time imo. tomorrow we will see Pep front of the press, his mood will be only thing to watch as I assume (hopefully) our press officer will make it clear no questions can be asked about or related to this ongoing case and fake charges. and anyone who does try to put Pep in a situation will be fucking dealt by Ricky Hatton on the spot and will never be invited back for pressers.
(I know, we are too nice for that, probably the opposite, VIP treatment next time...)
 
All this shit heightened when the spiegel shit came out, has anyone considered why we let Liverpool off so lightly with the database hack ? Are City about to blow the lot up ? Keeping our powder dry maybe?
Probably because - naively - we didn't see Liverpool as being too much of a threat on the pitch (and off it perhaps) back then. It was 2013 and they'd just finished 7th in the league, whereas we finished 2nd.
 
not gonna be any development on this for some time imo. tomorrow we will see Pep front of the press, his mood will be only thing to watch as I assume (hopefully) our press officer will make it clear no questions can be asked about or related to this ongoing case and fake charges. and anyone who does try to put Pep in a situation will be fucking dealt by Ricky Hatton on the spot and will never be invited back for pressers.

(I know, we are too nice for that, probably the opposite, VIP treatment next time...)Would cancel ALL press conferences from now
 
The non cooperation is interesting I have always felt FFP was a bit weird to really cheat the system you need sponsors to inflate their deals. The only way to do that is if they are related party which is covered or if they are not related party to act as if they are (they won’t ) and you wouldn’t be able to prove it without looking at there accounts which you carnt. The emails or testimony might be the exception but the emails weren’t last time.

Has anyone checked to see if any of United’s American sponsors are paying money into United they shouldn’t ? Are any getting special deals in the Glazers shopping malls ? I jests to an extent of course back in the day we needed the money more than them but now ? They need more they keep spending and until now have been getting it very wrong so need even more money and look at our youth selling policy and the age at which we buy players compared to them ? And even an idiot has to admit that we have lots of real revenue.

So back to my point about non cooperation when the charges see so daft why can we not just cooperate and blow it out the water ? Or have both the Premier League and UEFA been asking for stupid stuff ? Or is it a case of we feel persecuted and have had a hissy fit ? Surely we are better than that ?

Well United’s current shirt sponsor Team Viewer paid a high percentage against the companies actual value. So high they have decided to stop the sponsorship as I imagine it’s probably bankrupting them. Fair market value? Nothing to see hear.

If we wanted to delve into the rags accounts, they are hidden away offshore in the Cayman Islands. I wonder why that is?
 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it's a shame the club did not spend the legal costs on fighting FFP from day one instead of this sh1t show.

At the time the club didn't have much option imo, it was basically forced on them.

But I agree, ffp has been a load of shit from the start.
 
Good thing our owner didn't have the same defeatist attitude around this thread, or else this club already fucked the moment they own club.
Has he any other choice FFS, a huge investment and highly successful investment could suffer collateral damage if these charges stick.
 
The aim here is all out corporate damage. The hope that sponsors walk and we can’t attract. The hope that Pep walks, players want away, transfer targets think twice….

I’ve little doubt the punishment will be 2-3 years of transfer bans and relegation meaning no CL, no CL revenues and no big players coming and many wanting away.

We have a huge fight on our hands sadly as I don’t see anyone coming to fight our corner here.
Pretty sure that the panel don't have the power to relegate us. They can expel us - which some would argue amounts to the same thing - but they can't relegate us.

Expulsion is the nucleur option though and I could only see them getting away with that if it turns out they have us bang to rights on the most serious charges. I can't really see that being the case though as it would mean we, the fans, along with our manager have been lied to all along. Plus I very much doubt that the people we have running the club would be so stupid as to commit large-scale accountancy fraud just to help give little ol' City a leg up! Now if it was Peter Swales running the club ;)
 
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it's a shame the club did not spend the legal costs on fighting FFP from day one instead of this sh1t show.

At the time the club didn't have much option imo, it was basically forced on them.

But I agree, ffp has been a load of shit from the start.

The club hasn’t challenged FFP because it benefits us as much as any other big 4 team.

It puts off other owners coming in, it makes it very difficult to close the gap.


If the club thought they were better off challenging it, they would have done so over the last 15 years.
 
Obviously there is a lot we don't know but I'm assuming that all the years of false accounting relate to the same issue. Based on what was in the De Spiegel leaks and my faulty memory that's mainly the Etihad deal, third party payments, and Mancini's pay. If I remember rightly CAS said that if we'd fully cooperated with UEFA then we'd not have been charged by them. This makes me think all our ducks are in a row on the Etihad stuff which in theory clears the most damaging charges (assuming it is that which is the alleged infraction).

Causing me a little concern is what was not covered by CAS, what the actual issues are and how competent the Premier League are. So for example I think in 2009/10 one of the rules is logging the managers contract with the EPL by a certain date. Another rule is including a certain section of text but there is no rule I can see about including details of third party or group payments although this wording does come up in later versions of the handbook. It's interesting to see how the rules have developed in response to how City operate. In any event a quick look at the rules by someone like me could argue we've not presumably breached those rules and if Mancini's contract hadnt been logged by the certain date then why not charge us at the time? Unless they are alleging that what we filed wasn't actually Mancini's contract - they have a different version than what was produced in the paper

Or maybe the De Spiegal stuff dropped. Everyone has said we cheated based on that and certain parties demanded the EPL charge us. They've then retrofitted charges based on De Spiegal and not the actual paperwork they are in possession of. EPL didn't really want to open this can of worms hence both sides desire to keep it private but big pressure from other teams means they have to pursue it at least a little. 4 years later they get a new boss who's probably had the usual suspects in her ear "what are you doing about City?" She knows we are cheats because everyone knows we are cheats and so she tells her staff to sort it out with the threat also of an inde-reg looming. Her staff say boss this ain't it just let it die but as is the want of bosses everywhere she insists on something she doesn't quite understand and so we get a rushed and a little fumbled statement on Monday morning. Could the Premier League be this incompetent? How could they charge us for failing FFP when UEFA even haven't charged us with it? Are they so incompetent they've even failed to realise the seriousness of their own accusation and the ineffectiveness of their own structures to deal with them? This may also explain City's slightly flippant responses

It's a fiction which gives me some comfort at least. Until you remember hubris and sometimes incompetent people get really really lucky
The FFP rules have always been an agenda to clip our wings based on disquiet from the history clubs. Therefore, the PL and UEFA have tended to make up the rules as they went along in order to try and catch City out. My belief is that they rushed out the announcement for political reasons due to the imminent govt whitepaper regarding regulation in football and possibly due to pressure from the history clubs. City will be pissed off about the sly release of the announcement with the media seemingly given a head start. Plus, the allegations of City not cooperating because in 2019 apparently the PL were very pleased with City's cooperation in their investigation. So whats changed? I think the PL have decided to throw everything at City in the hope something sticks. The PL leadership have taken a gamble, perhaps they were staring over a cliff and had no choice due the amount of pressure they were under from the history clubs.
 
The club hasn’t challenged FFP because it benefits us as much as any other big 4 team.

It puts off other owners coming in, it makes it very difficult to close the gap.


If the club thought they were better off challenging it, they would have done so over the last 15 years.
Or the hunted become the hunter.
 
You only have to read the leaked emails to understand how people can come to the conclusion that in those early years the club could well have used related party sponsorships to drive revenue to circumvent FFP. But to PROVE that in a court of law is exceptionally difficult. ADUG as an owner of various Abu Dhabi companies has every right to invest in those companies however they wish, and those companies can also choose to sponsor football clubs however they wish. How can you prove that entirely legal transactions in their own right are not legal or in good faith when strung together?

Unfortunately the PL isn’t a court of law but the escalation route to challenge this no doubt finds its way there. If this is the extent of the charges then you can see how the club is confident it can successfully overturn this. Beyond that, I haven’t read enough of the emails or charges to see what other things are out there.
 
When you see the media this morning
There were "rumours" that Abramovic was giving money to other clubs to buy Chelsea players at vastly overvalued prices to get over FFP.

These were rumours but the creative ways the rich find to overcome obstacles should not be underestimated.
Is that how Shanghai Port's transfer spend in 2017 went from an average of £15m-£20m per season to £127m that year? This 'coincidentally' included buying Oscar from Chelsea for £60m. They also bought the Hulk for £55m.
Where did they get the money from especially considering their stadium holds 16,000.
 

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