Spoiler alertAm racking my brain regarding our home tie against Norwich in the FA Cup I was there in person in 1981. What have I forgotten. CTID
Did his back in as well i seem to recall.Ah yes, I remember Bond jumping/falling down now. Pillock.
Not sure needy is remotely accurate, but I’ll readily admit I’m an inveterate attention seeker. It’s undeniable.He's self confessed needy, but he's never boring.
You can’t expect some posters on here (& we know who I mean) to consider all sides before forming their opinion. They are transfixed by Pinto & negativityOh Lord, nothing can ever be discounted 100%, why would anyone ever do that? But what you do when you form an opinion on anything is look at the likely evidence either way, consider the counter-evidence, the likelihood of any other evidence existing that may support or disprove the initial hypothesis and then come to an educated conclusion.
I have done this, in my mind at least, and have come to the conclusion that it is possible, however unlikely, that the club, its executives, board and owner together with at least two public companies and a set of auditors, have been involved in fraudulent behaviour presumably now for 15 years. But it is very much more likely that they haven't for a multitude of reasons and even if they had it would be almost impossible to prove to the standard required for a multitude of other reasons.
Fwiw, this conclusion, which I am perfectly at ease with, would be the same even if Pinto had given the PL full and unrestricted access to all the club's emails he hacked. Which he won't have been in a position to do, imho, no matter what the convicted extortionist and blackmailer says.
After Bobby Mac got the 6th the ref blew for full time without allowing Norwich to restart the game (and then blowing).Er… I can’t remember the unusual feature of our 1981 win v Norwich. ???
If the Premier League, prior to disclosure, obtained another Pinto-hacked document that proves we inflated our sponsorship, would this be considered irrelevant as evidence?
Just a minor quibble but "at the end of the day anything can happen" is a little extreme.at the end of the day anything can happen. What is for sure is Pinto's hacked data is not used at all as it's not needed the PL have everything anyway. Whether the PL have the evidence to suggest multiple independent companies, probably in the region of 10 or so, have all colluded together to commit financial fraud for no apparent reason seems very far fetched. Will the PL be able to convince the IC that it happened? possibly but I doubt it. They might have evidence of some other small adminy things, like player contract stuff, that might warrant a few points deduction but who knows it's anyones guess.
You’ll have to ask @gordondaviesmoustache :-)Since this thread has descended into nonsense, I've always wanted to ask what erudite means.
I think this is the point. It is as though "on the balance of probabilities" makes (hacked) emails much more credible "on the balance of probabilities" while, at the same time it make our accounts, duly audited, and all the testimony, from reputable and respected sources, much less credible "on the balance of probabilities". To quote Sir Humphrey, "that would be a very courageous decision minister."at the end of the day anything can happen. What is for sure is Pinto's hacked data is not used at all as it's not needed the PL have everything anyway. Whether the PL have the evidence to suggest multiple independent companies, probably in the region of 10 or so, have all colluded together to commit financial fraud for no apparent reason seems very far fetched. Will the PL be able to convince the IC that it happened? possibly but I doubt it. They might have evidence of some other small adminy things, like player contract stuff, that might warrant a few points deduction but who knows it's anyones guess.
Hilarious - if he’s a KNOWN Gunner…….Has anyone ever considered there maybe unknown unknowns, and that no-one knows about them apart from @Keith Moon, but nobody knows who he is. Even worse, didn't anyone else know Lord Pannick is now a known Arsenal season ticket holder. Did Khaldoon know about that before we employed him. Who knows ?
No but you are. And you continue to. And having been informed that you are wide of the mark, you double down, further annoying people.Our beloved super legal eagle, whom I respect very much, misunderstood what I meant in one of my posts (probably my fault) and replied a couple of times that I didn’t understand disclosure and that I didn’t understand that the Pinto documents were irrelevant after the hearing. This, in turn, triggered some posters to unleash their inner cyber bullies. I never had any intent to wind anyone up.
So Neddy Seagoon has gone then....?I know there’s not much new to discuss at the moment, but let’s at least try and keep the thread on track. Have removed a few pages of nonsense to try and stop it getting derailed further.
There is no way the PL would win a case where a "perfectly legitimate and audited set of accounts" was deemed to be bad faith and misleading. If the accounts were "perfectly legitimate" they are by definition neither in bad faith nor misleading.You can have a perfectly legitimate and audited set of accounts that the PL still deemed to be in bad faith and misleading (In terms of how you chose to account in order to circumvent their own set of rules).
If you sell shirts at the stadium shop on matchday, that could be deemed matchday revenue. However, you could alternatively just attribute them to merchandise regardless of matchday. Neither is wrong, but the PL might try to argue you've chosen a specific categorisation to give a skewed picture that favours FFP. That becomes very subjective very quickly and any club on their right mind would always choose to account for things favourably. I seem to recall Liverpool declaring huge figures for infrastructure consultancy and the PL not batting an eyelid.
As an example, you may have an internal team working on infrastructure improvements and their costs are attributed to infrastructure. The PL may take a view that they were just regular staff with a whole range of duties not attributed to infrastructure projects.
There is nothing illegal in the accounts as there can be many ways a company chooses to categorise its finances, but the PL make specific exemptions for some costs and not for others. So then it becomes a matter of the PL viewing things one way, and the City viewing them another.
Another example with a multinational might be that a department in the USA is paid as USA employees, perfectly legitimately, but once in a while they do some work for the UK branch and countercharge the UK. The countercharge might be far less than it would have cost to employ folks in the UK directly. Is this a form of disguising your real costs? I would say no, it's simply how multinationals work by using the most favourable country to gain the best tax advantages, labour and materials costs. Would the PL be irked by this? Very probably.
As for some additional damning evidence... disclosure will reveal each other's hand, so at this stage it would appear neither side has conceded and settled. It would appear both sides have maintained their stance in full knowledge of each others evidence and arguments and await the panel's decision. That really does suggest there is no smoking gun or very damning evidence, only a tight set of subjective interpretations. We can't know that for certain, but it seems a reasonable interpretation in the absence of no settlement or major leak.
I think the point we are making is that CAS considered the evidence of our accounts an supporting testimony and conclude that City did not conceal owner investment as sponsorship revenue. This means that the PL would have to show that "on the balance of probabilities" evidence presented to the IC undermines the accounts and supporting testimony. The examples you have given of possible bad faith show that two views can be put forward of anything, but it does not constitute evidence which shows "on the balance of probabilities" that there has been deceit or dishonesty. The argument put forward is that it is going to take something compelling to contradict the evidence of our accounts and the evidence supporting them as full, complete and accurate. As Stefan says the starting point has to be that criminal activity is highly unlikely to have been perpetrated. In other words "innocent until proved guilty"?You can have a perfectly legitimate and audited set of accounts that the PL still deemed to be in bad faith and misleading (In terms of how you chose to account in order to circumvent their own set of rules).
If you sell shirts at the stadium shop on matchday, that could be deemed matchday revenue. However, you could alternatively just attribute them to merchandise regardless of matchday. Neither is wrong, but the PL might try to argue you've chosen a specific categorisation to give a skewed picture that favours FFP. That becomes very subjective very quickly and any club on their right mind would always choose to account for things favourably. I seem to recall Liverpool declaring huge figures for infrastructure consultancy and the PL not batting an eyelid.
As an example, you may have an internal team working on infrastructure improvements and their costs are attributed to infrastructure. The PL may take a view that they were just regular staff with a whole range of duties not attributed to infrastructure projects.
There is nothing illegal in the accounts as there can be many ways a company chooses to categorise its finances, but the PL make specific exemptions for some costs and not for others. So then it becomes a matter of the PL viewing things one way, and the City viewing them another.
Another example with a multinational might be that a department in the USA is paid as USA employees, perfectly legitimately, but once in a while they do some work for the UK branch and countercharge the UK. The countercharge might be far less than it would have cost to employ folks in the UK directly. Is this a form of disguising your real costs? I would say no, it's simply how multinationals work by using the most favourable country to gain the best tax advantages, labour and materials costs. Would the PL be irked by this? Very probably.
As for some additional damning evidence... disclosure will reveal each other's hand, so at this stage it would appear neither side has conceded and settled. It would appear both sides have maintained their stance in full knowledge of each others evidence and arguments and await the panel's decision. That really does suggest there is no smoking gun or very damning evidence, only a tight set of subjective interpretations. We can't know that for certain, but it seems a reasonable interpretation in the absence of no settlement or major leak.