PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

halfcenturyup said:
Well, firstly, I'm not saying any if that is true. But it make sense to me based on what we think we know, so I am happy to put it out there.

And, secondly, they don't have those investigative powers, do they? They aren't the SFO :) They are probably ruing that. Shame. I would imagine the club will be presenting a statement from Mancini in the defence, though? Would have been wise for Soriano not to fuck him over with negative press stories after he was sacked, maybe?
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What did Soriano say? I don't remember that.
 
eastmanc said:
What did Soriano say? I don't remember that.
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For six months after he was sacked the press had regular articles about how disruptive he was. I am not saying he wasn't, he cleatly was, I am saying Soriano runs a tight enough ship for me to know that if that happens it happens with, at least, the blessing of the club, if not directly from the club.

Mancini was man enough to keep his silence, but it wasn't a good look for the club and it wasn't even necessary.

At least, that's how I remember it.
 
Pep joined City in our 115th season of football.

Does anyone think post case and the years beyond it, we'll look back and say whilst we had our name dragged through the mud that FFP and even COVID were challenges for us but the bigger picture is that it hamstrung our rivals a lot more. I was thinking clubs have spent money to compete with United but they always came back with a record transfer or poached talents of other clubs. Now? They can hardly scrape money by for transfers. They've blown big money at they very worst time to do so. Sanchez, Sancho, Pogba, Anthony, etc coupled with the biggest wage bill. And even with us aside, letting other clubs taste CL football.

Love the way we've set the bar for any club that wants to be top dog.. £1b investment needed and it'll probably take you 50 years to do what we've done in 15.
 
malg said:
FFS.....League Two - we're fucked!!

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I urge all Blues to ignore the silly online blog. Because of the way it's designed & presented, I thought it was a legitimate outlet, but on further investigation, it's a one man & his dog blog, run by rival fans who hate City.
 
halfcenturyup said:
Nothing to worry about with Mancini, at least nothing serious, imo.

Certainly nothing that affects the true and fair view of the accounts which is the central tenet of the PL's case. It just isn't material in view of the losses.

I don't think they have any chance of proving any allegation that implies fraud, either, when there was no FFP and so no benefit to be gained.

The fact that there is no evidence in the public domain to support the al Jazeera connection before Mancini signed for City doesn't mean there isn't any. The leaked emails were for effect, of course, all negative. My theory is Mancini's settlement with Inter prevented him signing full-time for another club for 15 months and so Mansour gave him a consultancy contract with AJ to keep him warm for the City job. Nothing wrong with any of that. Then it was kept on for tax reasons (Mancini's, not ours). Again, nothing wrong with any of that. And, anyway, as pointed out, the rules at the time didn't require disclosure of contracts a manager had with other clubs.

I remember Robbie Savage saying at the time that Khaldoon and Mancini had already worked together and Mancini had been advising him on football. Savage knew Mancini from their time at Leicester, of course. I also found an article in the Guardian when Mancini was signed saying that he and Khaldoon already had a relationship. How else would Mancini have developed a relationship with Khaldoon?

I am thinking this is just another area in which the club has refused to give external information to the PL to justify its position. Once it does that at the panel, the whole thing goes away, imho.

That's assuming it isn't all time barred anyway, which it most probably is. Good luck to the PL proving this was "knowingly concealed" from them.
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It’s not relevant to the first charge but it’s the entire premise of the second one. I get the point that if there’s no evidence in the public domain it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen but where are people getting that it did happen from? It doesn’t correlate with anything in the public domain so it’s just a hypothesis that someone has come up with.

Either way though, I don’t think the 2009 contract is the issue, it’s the 2011 one (like I said, if the leaked emails are genuine) and the questions we’ll have to answer aren’t just about that initial contract, it’ll be why were City personnel renegotiating his Al Jazira contract and arranging payment for it.

I’m not saying it’s indefensible, that one concerns me the most though as there’s nothing to suggest what our defence actually is, unlike some of the others.
 
cibaman said:
Apologies if this has already been discussed at length, but where do City’s auditors stand in all of this? Have we had the same auditors throughout the period? Presumably, if the charges were proved, that would call into question the adequacy of their work. I expect they would argue that City initially duped them. But once these allegations came to light, wouldn’t they have had to carry out their own investigation? And if they found that they had been misled, shouldn’t they have resigned? Or at least insist that City restate their accounts?
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Or of course maybe there’s nothing wrong with the accounts
 
Manchester1894 said:
Pep joined City in our 115th season of football.

Does anyone think post case and the years beyond it, we'll look back and say whilst we had our name dragged through the mud that FFP and even COVID were challenges for us but the bigger picture is that it hamstrung our rivals a lot more. I was thinking clubs have spent money to compete with United but they always came back with a record transfer or poached talents of other clubs. Now? They can hardly scrape money by for transfers. They've blown big money at they very worst time to do so. Sanchez, Sancho, Pogba, Anthony, etc coupled with the biggest wage bill. And even with us aside, letting other clubs taste CL football.

Love the way we've set the bar for any club that wants to be top dog.. £1b investment needed and it'll probably take you 50 years to do what we've done in 15.
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If City’s sponsorship deals were inflated has this given the club an advantage over the likes of United, Liverpool and Arsenal? Not really as they were able to look at the figures City were getting from Etihad and go the likes of Chevrolet and Team Viewer and demand a lot more than what City were getting. We don’t have the biggest shirt sponsor and we certainly don’t have the highest paid kit deal. The teams trying to fuck City over do.
 
meltonblue said:
It’s not relevant to the first charge but it’s the entire premise of the second one. I get the point that if there’s no evidence in the public domain it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen but where are people getting that it did happen from? It doesn’t correlate with anything in the public domain so it’s just a hypothesis that someone has come up with.

Either way though, I don’t think the 2009 contract is the issue, it’s the 2011 one (like I said, if the leaked emails are genuine) and the questions we’ll have to answer aren’t just about that initial contract, it’ll be why were City personnel renegotiating his Al Jazira contract and arranging payment for it.

I’m not saying it’s indefensible, that one concerns me the most though as there’s nothing to suggest what our defence actually is, unlike some of the others.
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Well, obviously we don't know what the club's defence will be, because we don't know what the facts really are, but some things to consider:

If the arrangement was for tax purposes, it is completely normal that the leading employer is involved in the discussions and negotiations around the contracts. After all, arrangements for tax purposes are normally made for the purposes of reducing the employee's tax, so it would be strange if the leading employer wasn't making sure that the details were clean from the point of view of both Mancini and the club in the high tax paying country. These guys don't fart without legal and tax clearance. Same applies to 2009 and 2011.

I am still assuming Mancini had a consultancy contract with AJ before joining City. Why? Based on my recollections from the time when Savage mentioned (in commentary I think) that Mancini had already been advising Khaldoon on football matters and I thought "Oh, that's interesting". I am getting old, but I remember that quite clearly (I think). Granted, the only other "evidence" I can find is the reference to a prior relationship in a Guardian article in December 2009 (iirc). That gives me more comfort that there was an existing relationship than a lack of clear evidence of a relationship persuades me otherwise, especially in view of the Inter clause which would have required a certain subtlety. I fully accept others may draw different conclusions.

I am sure when we know the facts, everything will become clear.

Anyway, I am pretty relaxed about Mancini, I have more concerns about Fordham, purely because I don't have a feel for the contract. You know anywhere where it is explained, at all?
 
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