PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

leithblue said:
I was sagely informed by a United fan today that…

City have accepted full guilt and are instead working on arguing that Sheikh Mansour has plausible deniability

We are delaying frantically until 6 November as that is apparently some kind of cut-off date for being sued by other clubs

So that’s nice to know.
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KS55 said:
That’s the statute of limitations date. But it may not apply when fraud is alleged. In any case one PL club cannot sue another due to PL rules. The procedure is an independent commission. Unless I’ve missed something, we already have one which has the power to order City to pay damages to other clubs.
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I've said before that I don't buy the fraud argument. If I'm right and fraud isn't seen as an avenue to go down then the 6-year limitation comes into play. If they follow the logic that CAS used then the key date will be the date that the PL made public the alleged breaches and passed the case to the IC. That was February 2023, so the cut-off date for alleged breaches will be Feb 2017, meaning all the 2016/17 FY will be in scope.

That leaves maybe one year of both Fordham (although that arrangement may have ceased by then) and Etihad, with the earlier part of the Etihad contract, all the Etisalat one and the Mancini contract time-barred in theory.

With Fordham, it's quite possible that after the 2015 discussion with UEFA, we either stopped the arrangement or, more likely in my opinion, added it to our own wage bill. If that's the case, then there would be no case to answer for the 2017 FY.

And UEFA only queried the Etihad payments in 2013, 2014 and 2016, not 2015 or 2017.

I was also thinking about points deductions. The IC's rationale for these was that the clubs so punished had gained a sporting advantage by spending more than they were entitled to under PSR. But what if we were found to have breached PL rules with the Fordham arrangement, and when the amounts were added back we were still within PSR/FFP? In that case, it would be arguable that there was no sporting advantage as it was an accounting issue only. That would merit a fine.
 
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leithblue said:
I was sagely informed by a United fan today that…

City have accepted full guilt and are instead working on arguing that Sheikh Mansour has plausible deniability

We are delaying frantically until 6 November as that is apparently some kind of cut-off date for being sued by other clubs

So that’s nice to know.
Click to expand...
We're you working at the asylum or just visiting?
 
leithblue said:
I was sagely informed by a United fan today that…

City have accepted full guilt and are instead working on arguing that Sheikh Mansour has plausible deniability

We are delaying frantically until 6 November as that is apparently some kind of cut-off date for being sued by other clubs

So that’s nice to know.
Click to expand...
Was he a rather rotund, out of shape, dough boy that charged you £20 to go to the pub?
 
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leithblue said:
I was sagely informed by a United fan today that…

City have accepted full guilt and are instead working on arguing that Sheikh Mansour has plausible deniability

We are delaying frantically until 6 November as that is apparently some kind of cut-off date for being sued by other clubs

So that’s nice to know.
Click to expand...
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Metalartin said:
No, just an answer from Richard Masters on the talkSport interview recently, where he said they are close to wrapping up the investigation already, in so many words. Here it is:



A lot of Chelsea fans seem to think they'll be fine because it was under a different ownership. That has never been a valid excuse in the past and it will easily be torn to shreds the PL tries that one, given how they've went after City. Self reporting shouldn't be a huge factor either, I imagine the PL had to do their due diligence just as much as ClearLake did before the takeover was approved. If they saw too much, I wouldn't be surprised if the PL were the ones who told them to report it.
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Yet they've spent over 200m on signings.

Weird.
 
Metalartin said:
No, just an answer from Richard Masters on the talkSport interview recently, where he said they are close to wrapping up the investigation already, in so many words. Here it is:



A lot of Chelsea fans seem to think they'll be fine because it was under a different ownership. That has never been a valid excuse in the past and it will easily be torn to shreds the PL tries that one, given how they've went after City. Self reporting shouldn't be a huge factor either, I imagine the PL had to do their due diligence just as much as ClearLake did before the takeover was approved. If they saw too much, I wouldn't be surprised if the PL were the ones who told them to report it.
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Never mind the Abramovic era, what about the Boehli era? All those signings, all those player wages, a small stadium and 2 years with no CL football? By which measure are they within FFP or PSR? Scandalous
 
halfcenturyup said:
I see Jordan is turning into prime Martin Samuel. How embarrassing for him after the bollocks he has spouted for so many years.

Tbf, he said he was wrong and was naive and he now feels PSR (as it is) isn't achieving any good for the game. He also says the PL needs leadership to decide what it wants financial regulation to achieve and how.

On YouTube as part of @slbsn 's talks this morning. He must have been reading Bluemoon :)
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I wouldn't trust Jordan as far as I could kick him. Didn't he nearly run Palace into the ground?
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
I've said before that I don't buy the fraud argument. If I'm right and fraud isn't seen as an avenue to go down then the 6-year limitation comes into play. If they follow the logic that CAS used then the key date will be the date that the PL made public the alleged breaches and passed the case to the IC. That was February 2023, so the cut-off date for alleged breaches will be Feb 2017, meaning all the 2016/17 FY will be in scope.

That leaves maybe one year of both Fordham (although that arrangement may have ceased by then) and Etihad, with the earlier part of the Etihad contract, all the Etisalat one and the Mancini contract time-barred in theory.

With Fordham, it's quite possible that after the 2015 discussion with UEFA, we either stopped the arrangement or, more likely in my opinion, added it to our own wage bill. If that's the case, then there would be no case to answer for the 2017 FY.

And UEFA only queried the Etihad payments in 2013, 2014 and 2016, not 2015 or 2017.

I was also thinking about points deductions. The IC's rationale for these was that the clubs so punished had gained a sporting advantage by spending more than they were entitled to under PSR. But what if we were found to have breached PL rules with the Fordham arrangement, and when the amounts were added back we were still within PSR/FFP? In that case, it would be arguable that there was no sporting advantage as it was an accounting issue only. That would merit a fine.
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Update to the Fordham issue: There was something at the back of my mind about this so I went back to check something.

Our wage bill increased by over 30% for no apparent reason from 2016 to 2017. I couldn't understand or explain this at the time, as we'd won nothing in Pep's first season, so it couldn't be performance related, but I'd take a guess that this was the Fordham payments going onto the club wage bill. That doesn't necessarily mean they weren't declared to UEFA though.

The increase was aboit £65m from 2016's £197m, so around a third, which suggests all the Fordham payments from 2013 onwards were accumulated for that increase, as about £12-13m per annum seemed to be going through Fordham.

That means Fordham was not an issue after the 2016 financial year.

Edit: Ignore this, it's wrong. See @halfcenturyup's post and my response.
 
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Brendan110_0 said:
We were cleared by CAS for all UEFA investigations. PL can't stop us from entering the FIFA CWC.
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You may think so but the PL hold the tickets into UEFA competitions, and if they were to put sanctions in place then the retrospective withdrawal from our competition, and therefore there’s, would have consequences.

Not saying it will happen, but not far off how far they would go if they were allowed to get away with it.
 
BringBackSwales said:
Never mind the Abramovic era, what about the Boehli era? All those signings, all those player wages, a small stadium and 2 years with no CL football? By which measure are they within FFP or PSR? Scandalous
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I've noticed the lack of outrage there too but we'll get to that. The current investigation has more parallels to the 115 than break even issues. Clubs like Everton and Forest... Even Newcastle and Villa should be on that. I've not seen many 'It's against the spirit of the rules' arguments for their many loopholes yet either. There are so many examples of double standards from all involved, from the governing bodies(UEFA and the PL), to the UK sports media and beyond.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Update to the Fordham issue: There was something at the back of my mind about this so I went back to check something.

Our wage bill increased by over 30% for no apparent reason from 2016 to 2017. I couldn't understand or explain this at the time, as we'd won nothing in Pep's first season, so it couldn't be performance related, but I'd take a guess that this was the Fordham payments going onto the club wage bill. That doesn't necessarily mean they weren't declared to UEFA though.

The increase was aboit £65m from 2016's £197m, so around a third, which suggests all the Fordham payments from 2013 onwards were accumulated for that increase, as about £12-13m per annum seemed to be going through Fordham.

That means Fordham was not an issue after the 2016 financial year.
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That's very interesting. I had a quick look and the average number of personnel employed by the club during the year went down from 476 in 2012 to 314 in 2014 (less 125 football staff and less 37 commercial and admin staff) which is what you would expect having sold the scouting and other IP (including the relevant staff) to CFG in 2013. The average in 2013, btw, was 449 in 2013 but that makes sense as it's an average and the transaction happened near the end of the year. Wages decreased by 38 million between 2012 and 2013, again as you would expect.

As you say, wages went up considerably between 2016 and 2017 and so did staff numbers, up from 320 in 2016 to 449 in 2018 (again using a two year comparison to eliminate the averaging effect in 2017). This brought the staff numbers back into line with the pre-IP sale numbers of 2012.

Do you think it's possible the two revenue-generating IP deals (coaching IP to CFG and image rights to Fordham) were both cancelled in 2017, leading to the increase in staff numbers and wages? Why in 2017? Not sure, but could it be to do with the end of the monitoring period as part of the 2014 settlement?
 
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Metalartin said:
I've noticed the lack of outrage there too but we'll get to that. The current investigation has more parallels to the 115 than break even issues. Clubs like Everton and Forest... Even Newcastle and Villa should be on that. I've not seen many 'It's against the spirit of the rules' arguments for their many loopholes yet either. There are so many examples of double standards from all involved, from the governing bodies(UEFA and the PL), to the UK sports media and beyond.
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I think the lack of outrage has a lot to do with Chelsea currently being a bit of a joke on the pitch. If they were winning shit loads of trophies like we’re currently doing then it would be different. Simply put, no United/Liverpool/Arsenal fans are that arsed about Chelsea at the moment as they’re not a barrier to them winning trophies, whereas the best team in the world - us - are. Which is all rather ironic because 20 years ago after Abramovich bought Chelsea the fans of all those clubs were very much arsed about Chelsea, accusing them of ruining football, buying trophies, and other hackneyed shite.

Such is the sheer fuckwittery of these people that if, hypothetically, City end up getting fully exonerated by the IC and Chelsea end up getting found guilty of all kinds of dodgy stuff, these cunts will still try and claim that City are bent without giving a toss about Chelsea.
 
If I was being giving the media the benefit of the doubt it’s because nothing has happened yet with the current stuff or even the Abramovich stuff but I was annoyed last night on talkSPORT they called it like an accounting trick and said things like we do not know who they will sell yet etc
 
Churchlawtonblue said:
They passed PSR rules by selling a hotel they owned back to themselves. All above board, nothing to see hear! Lol
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Seems that it's allowed to sell a hotel to yourself and your own woman's team to yourself! Maybe they'll sell those 15/20 players who are training with the u21 back to themselves for 300m!? Also if you can sell your own woman's team back to yourself what's stopping them selling there u21 team back to themselves
 
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