PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[journolud]

I think most contributors or readers of this thread expect us to be found at least partially guilty at some point.
It’s not how well or not we have adapted to the rules that irks most of us, it is the fact the rules were put in place to hinder City’s progress at the behest of teams that historically mostly have had financial injections of there own.
I am at the point where I will celebrate our innocence or walk away from the game altogether.
The incessant fiddling with the rules, VAR, woke terraces, and the lack of physicality in todays game is all leading me away anyhow, this might just be the final nail for me and many more.
CTID

I don’t expect us to be found guilty of anything.

What do you mean by woke terraces?

 

[Damocles]

What do you mean by woke terraces?

You know what he means.

 

[wolviedinho]

The charges are clearly serious but at the same time not worth the hassle.

A hacked email has uncovered what exactly?

Fraud? Yes sure. If you want to fraud the footballing world to achieve success, the first thing you do is talk about it in emails. Fucking emails? Hahah.

If we decided to fraud the premier and everyone else. We could do it better than this knowing the risk.

As has been said before, the league could have came after us for 6 legit issues that they wanted answers for not 115/130 hoping that something shows we have played outside the rules.

The main clubs that control the league hate us for making them look stupid and wasteful. Spurs are a perfect example of a club that wastes money to achieve nothing.

The old guard don’t like the new upstart and can’t see anything but loading debt onto clubs to achieve the status quo. How dare mansour not take his cut. He can’t be trusted.

City have not cheated. All this lawyer this and lawyer that does not prove anything apart from how dirty the fight for football has become.

It should never have gotten this far to begin with.

So roll out the 30 barristers and let’s all pretend this is anything other than corporate warfare.

 

[Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese]

Not worried about them but the serious charges allege widespread false accounting for a decade and that many people have conspired. I’m not worried aside from the seriousness of the allegations

The scale of the allegations of false accounting (fraud) that would have to involve so many people and of course some very respected auditing/accountancy firms has always given me a degree of 'comfort' as I just think there are too many checks and balances in place for this to happen.
I'm more concerned that things like 'non cooperation' may be more in the eye of the beholder and therefore legally less black and white in terms of definition.

 

[KS55]

So how did the Premier League let United have £40million in allowances for Covid 19
Did they really lose £40million in match revenue ?? that's over £2million a game, the maths just doesn't add up

Also, we all know about the fake attendance figures they put out compared to the official police figures

All cubs tend to quote tickets sold including seasons rather than actual attendance.

 

[ancoats]

All cubs tend to quote tickets sold including seasons rather than actual attendance.

Arsenal 60.000 capacity and they were only allowed £2million for the whole season
United 72.000 capacity and United allowances was £40million for the season = £2million a home game

the maths doesn't add up, every club had major losses in covid 19 for home games and agreed to limit the allowances allowed for losses

 

[KS55]

I think you've got a blind spot on this, which stems from your seeming belief that the PL is acting rationally and independently in this matter, and there's no malicious intent on the part of certain clubs in these charges.

I'd agree that if the PL were acting in the way you seem to believe, there would be no particular reason to go down this route as there seems to be little or no mileage in it. But, as I've said before, one of the key elements revealed in the APT case verdict was that other clubs felt we were misreporting related parties. And the senior club official who said to me (referring to the UEFA charges) "We know who's behind this. It's the US-owned clubs and there's a geopolitical element". And that's verbatim.

I suspect they took their cue on this from CAS, who mentioned this in their verdict. There's a clear theme or linkage here but you've naysayed this when it's been brought up previously. But perhaps I've got a blind spot on this and its confirmation bias. We'll only know for sure when the IC publishes its findings.

But if there's a dead body found, having died from stab wounds, and there's a knife next to the body covered in the victim's blood and the wounds are consistent with being inflicted by the knife that's next to the body, the first assumption will be that this knife was used to kill that person.

If we go back to the PL's press release of the charges (ignoring the fuck-up over some of the rules we'd been charged with breaching) it specifically says "...sponsorship revenue and related parties". I'd say that's a fairly clear indicator that the issue of RPs is a large part of this.

Where we clearly do agree on this, is that if that's the best they've got, they're pretty desperate and aren't likely to be successful. But again, that presupposes that their main intention is to uphold their rules, which they believe we've driven a coach and horses through, rather than drag our name through the mud and win any little point that will give our enemies some ammunition to level the cheating accusations.

And you're of course right that some of the charges precede the PL's introduction of rules around presenting accounts that meet regulatory and other accepted reporting standards. But IAS 24 (and its predecessors) has been in existence since before I started my accountancy training. So the more subjective rule of acting with utmost good faith (i.e. not meeting longstanding accounting standards) could be used in this respect prior to 2013/14, as it clearly seems to be.

You're right that there seems to be little mileage in these avenues of attack on FMV and Related Parties. And that leads to you saying that you don't think this is the substance of the charges. But some of us, rightly or wrongly, believe these charges aren't about substantive and material issues of accounting. Including the Mancini contract, that we both agree is a complete red herring, surely reinforces that.

Call me cynical, paranoid, glass half empty, even a tin-foil hat wearing blinkered crackpot, whatever. But, in my opinion, this is about landing any little blow on us they can, even some minor and insignificant thing that our detractors can hang their hat on and say "We told you so. They're cheats" regardless of whether it brought us any material or sporting benefit at all. And even if they fail in that, they've succeeded in throwing enough mud that people will say that regardless of the evidence or outcome.

“Clear and obvious.”

 

[Bellamy's Caddy]

I think you've got a blind spot on this, which stems from your seeming belief that the PL is acting rationally and independently in this matter, and there's no malicious intent on the part of certain clubs in these charges.

I'd agree that if the PL were acting in the way you seem to believe, there would be no particular reason to go down this route as there seems to be little or no mileage in it. But, as I've said before, one of the key elements revealed in the APT case verdict was that other clubs felt we were misreporting related parties. And the senior club official who said to me (referring to the UEFA charges) "We know who's behind this. It's the US-owned clubs and there's a geopolitical element". And that's verbatim.

I suspect they took their cue on this from CAS, who mentioned this in their verdict. There's a clear theme or linkage here but you've naysayed this when it's been brought up previously. But perhaps I've got a blind spot on this and its confirmation bias. We'll only know for sure when the IC publishes its findings.

But if there's a dead body found, having died from stab wounds, and there's a knife next to the body covered in the victim's blood and the wounds are consistent with being inflicted by the knife that's next to the body, the first assumption will be that this knife was used to kill that person.

If we go back to the PL's press release of the charges (ignoring the fuck-up over some of the rules we'd been charged with breaching) it specifically says "...sponsorship revenue and related parties". I'd say that's a fairly clear indicator that the issue of RPs is a large part of this.

Where we clearly do agree on this, is that if that's the best they've got, they're pretty desperate and aren't likely to be successful. But again, that presupposes that their main intention is to uphold their rules, which they believe we've driven a coach and horses through, rather than drag our name through the mud and win any little point that will give our enemies some ammunition to level the cheating accusations.

And you're of course right that some of the charges precede the PL's introduction of rules around presenting accounts that meet regulatory and other accepted reporting standards. But IAS 24 (and its predecessors) has been in existence since before I started my accountancy training. So the more subjective rule of acting with utmost good faith (i.e. not meeting longstanding accounting standards) could be used in this respect prior to 2013/14, as it clearly seems to be.

You're right that there seems to be little mileage in these avenues of attack on FMV and Related Parties. And that leads to you saying that you don't think this is the substance of the charges. But some of us, rightly or wrongly, believe these charges aren't about substantive and material issues of accounting. Including the Mancini contract, that we both agree is a complete red herring, surely reinforces that.

Call me cynical, paranoid, glass half empty, even a tin-foil hat wearing blinkered crackpot, whatever. But, in my opinion, this is about landing any little blow on us they can, even some minor and insignificant thing that our detractors can hang their hat on and say "We told you so. They're cheats" regardless of whether it brought us any material or sporting benefit at all. And even if they fail in that, they've succeeded in throwing enough mud that people will say that regardless of the evidence or outcome.

In the eyes of most football fans we're totally guilty, regardless of whatever the outcome is. They don't give a shit about that. We could be cleared of every charge and that would be down to our 'expensive lawyers'.

As you say, the damage has been done by the very fact there were charges against us. If any at all land (whether significant or not) that will be the focus of the headlines.


Personally I can't wait for the whole thing to be done with and I just hope whatever the outcome, its nothing as significant as a points deduction.

 

[Stoned Rose]

I think you've got a blind spot on this, which stems from your seeming belief that the PL is acting rationally and independently in this matter, and there's no malicious intent on the part of certain clubs in these charges.

I'd agree that if the PL were acting in the way you seem to believe, there would be no particular reason to go down this route as there seems to be little or no mileage in it. But, as I've said before, one of the key elements revealed in the APT case verdict was that other clubs felt we were misreporting related parties. And the senior club official who said to me (referring to the UEFA charges) "We know who's behind this. It's the US-owned clubs and there's a geopolitical element". And that's verbatim.

I suspect they took their cue on this from CAS, who mentioned this in their verdict. There's a clear theme or linkage here but you've naysayed this when it's been brought up previously. But perhaps I've got a blind spot on this and its confirmation bias. We'll only know for sure when the IC publishes its findings.

But if there's a dead body found, having died from stab wounds, and there's a knife next to the body covered in the victim's blood and the wounds are consistent with being inflicted by the knife that's next to the body, the first assumption will be that this knife was used to kill that person.

If we go back to the PL's press release of the charges (ignoring the fuck-up over some of the rules we'd been charged with breaching) it specifically says "...sponsorship revenue and related parties". I'd say that's a fairly clear indicator that the issue of RPs is a large part of this.

Where we clearly do agree on this, is that if that's the best they've got, they're pretty desperate and aren't likely to be successful. But again, that presupposes that their main intention is to uphold their rules, which they believe we've driven a coach and horses through, rather than drag our name through the mud and win any little point that will give our enemies some ammunition to level the cheating accusations.

And you're of course right that some of the charges precede the PL's introduction of rules around presenting accounts that meet regulatory and other accepted reporting standards. But IAS 24 (and its predecessors) has been in existence since before I started my accountancy training. So the more subjective rule of acting with utmost good faith (i.e. not meeting longstanding accounting standards) could be used in this respect prior to 2013/14, as it clearly seems to be.

You're right that there seems to be little mileage in these avenues of attack on FMV and Related Parties. And that leads to you saying that you don't think this is the substance of the charges. But some of us, rightly or wrongly, believe these charges aren't about substantive and material issues of accounting. Including the Mancini contract, that we both agree is a complete red herring, surely reinforces that.

Call me cynical, paranoid, glass half empty, even a tin-foil hat wearing blinkered crackpot, whatever. But, in my opinion, this is about landing any little blow on us they can, even some minor and insignificant thing that our detractors can hang their hat on and say "We told you so. They're cheats" regardless of whether it brought us any material or sporting benefit at all. And even if they fail in that, they've succeeded in throwing enough mud that people will say that regardless of the evidence or outcome.

Some post this.

 

[Stoned Rose]

So - looking at latest posts from @slbsn @ @Prestwich_Blue - it’s looking less and less positive. The technical detail goes over the head of most people so in simple terms - are we done?

Not sure how you’ve reached that conclusion mate.

 

[KS55]

My positions aren’t contradictory. It’s serious but City are confident. Honestly I’ve got no idea how anyone can think a 10-12 week hearing with 16 barristers is anything but a very serious process. I think some people have deluded themselves into thinking it’s all just theatre.

There is one overwhelming serious allegation of false accounting. Much of the rest is deliberate theatre to appease the redshirts….”We did our best, lads.”
It can be both, Stefan.

 

[CC1]

Not sure how you’ve reached that conclusion mate.

Probably read too much of the technical stuff & misunderstood it :-)

 

[KS55]

Dont forget Henry asking throgh the media "what was the second highest bit"
When we agreed the Etihad deal.
It was not his to talke about others team contracts.
I knew from that moment that Liverpool was against City but I never thought they would go this far.

That organisation are vipers. Ask their opponents in USA.

 

[ancoats]

In the eyes of most football fans we're totally guilty, regardless of whatever the outcome is. They don't give a shit about that. We could be cleared of every charge and that would be down to our 'expensive lawyers'.

As you say, the damage has been done by the very fact there were charges against us. If any at all land (whether significant or not) that will be the focus of the headlines.


Personally I can't wait for the whole thing to be done with and I just hope whatever the outcome, its nothing as significant as a points deduction.

Correct..

The aim was to damage our image in the media and if some of the shit sticks then it was a bonus.
It all started with the Sky Sunday Supplement attack on Mancini and Yaya, Manchester City should have taken action and taken them to court and stopped it dead in the tracks.

Our weak media team did nothing and from that moment on it was a free-for-all, So many witch hunts and claims of cheating, We were even cleared by CAS of any wrongdoings and they still called us cheats,

 

[Mr Fraser]

You know what he means.

AI provides a definition
The term "woke terraces" is a derogatory slang term used to describe neighborhoods or housing developments perceived as having a high concentration of left-leaning or progressive residents. It is often used by right-wing commentators and social media users to mock or criticize these areas.
The term is considered offensive by many, as it is seen as a way to stereotype and dehumanize people based on their political beliefs. It is also seen as a way to dismiss or downplay legitimate concerns about social justice issues.
The term has been used to describe a variety of neighborhoods and housing developments, including those in urban areas, suburban areas, and even rural areas. It has also been used to describe specific housing developments, such as those built by developers who are known to be progressive or those that are marketed to progressive buyers.
The use of the term "woke terraces" is often accompanied by negative stereotypes about people who live in these areas, such as that they are all wealthy, white, and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. These stereotypes are often inaccurate and misleading, and they can serve to further divide and polarize society.
It is important to note that the term "woke terraces" is not a neutral or objective term. It is a loaded term that is used to denigrate and dehumanize people based on their political beliefs. It is also a term that is often used to spread misinformation and disinformation about these areas and the people who live there.
If you are interested in learning more about the term "woke terraces," I recommend that you do some research on the topic. There are many articles and blog posts written about the term, and it is also a topic that is often discussed on social media. However, it is important to be aware that the term is often used in a derogatory and offensive way.

 

[KS55]

True..
But because nobody dares question United accounts they always will get away with it, but allowing £40million in allowances for Covid 19 is crazy when others had been turned down or only claimed around £2 million, other clubs' allowances per week to United is not £2million a week,

Quick Question Stefan...

The Legal fees City has been involved in like the PSR win and Now the 115 charges can City put them in the allowances like United did with the sale of shares, I would like to know how much legal fees City have had over the last season

Our lawyers officially represent CFG at these hearings. Do City reimburse CFG?

 

[slbsn]

Our lawyers officially represent CFG at these hearings. Do City reimburse CFG?

I don’t really see how that is technically correct but I do think most of the cost is in CFG and not recharged in full

 

[ancoats]

Our lawyers officially represent CFG at these hearings. Do City reimburse CFG?

Legal fees fall onto the Premier League hands because we won the PSR fight or I think we did hahaha
Nothing has been said about the damages and losses we have had because of the ruling,

I heard the renewal of the Etihad deal was one of the sponsorships the Premier League blocked and it was BIG and for another ten years of being our major sponsor, this could have been anything from £800million to £1billion

 

[KS55]

I don’t really see how that is technically correct but I do think most of the cost is in CFG and not recharged in full

Handy.
Not sure what is technically incorrect seeing what the court papers show.

 

[slbsn]

Legal fees fall onto the Premier League hands because we won the PSR fight or I think we did hahaha
Nothing has been said about the damages and losses we have had because of the ruling,

I heard the renewal of the Etihad deal was one of the sponsorships the Premier League blocked and it was BIG and for another ten years of being our major sponsor, this could have been anything from £800million to £1billion

Costs were probably split in the APT hearing but we may never know. It would be a very good indicator who the Tribunal assessed as the overall winner.

Etihad has gone through for at least this season (look around) and it’s very large. We don’t know if City have successfully gone back on the rejected deal or simply accepted a lower amount as approvable. The ten year deal with the compounded uplifts in the later years will exceed £1bn.