PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

So first i'll out myself as dumb for using twitter. Although in my defence i only follow about half a dozen people (i have a list setup with only @slbsn, @RealTolmie, @BlueCityBrain, @prestwichblue, @SwissRamble, @mancity, @bluemoon_mcfc ). I'm on bluesky too, but it just doesn't have the momentum

One thing that is abundantly is the difference between people on twitter and people in real life.

People online are filled with vitriol, emboldened by the safety of anonymity. I occasionally get sucked into defending us which usually ends up with having to block someone.

Not all real life people that follow the red cartel see us as guilty, but they sure as damn enjoy the mess we're in.
They'll take the mickey that we're guilty in one breath then admit its a stitch up in the next.

I live close to Crystal Palace these days and mostly i get "so whats going on then". My work colleagues and local friends include too many spurs fans, a number of chelsea fans, palace fans. A few united fans and a few liverpool fans. They all know i can be "triggered" by 115 talk but they don't want me to go on about it so they generally don't. In a serious conversation there's only really one of the liverpool fans and one of the spurs fans than make it obvious they think we're guilty. and even they reckon the rules exist to stitch up.

I'm glad i don't live in north london, manchester or liverpool or i reckon life would be a nightmare.
 
Moss Side's Finest said:
Disagree

1. Grealish was not booed at Villa, apart from by local rivals, until the rumour of him coming to us started.

2. How can yesterday's commentary have talked about Liverpool having £250m of players on the pitch when the matchday squad was pretty much all youth players.....
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"1. Grealish was not booed at Villa, apart from by local rivals, until the rumour of him coming to us started."

He was hated and he played up to it and fair play to him, I love players with his type of personality on the pitch.

Their front line was all first team players, the point I was making is football is full of tired cliques, Grealish the pantomime villain, Plymouth/ Orient the plucky underdog, it's football, it's what football does.
 
Moss Side's Finest said:
Disagree

1. Grealish was not booed at Villa, apart from by local rivals, until the rumour of him coming to us started.

2. How can yesterday's commentary have talked about Liverpool having £250m of players on the pitch when the matchday squad was pretty much all youth players.....
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I would also add before we moved in for him, he was strongly linked with the rags and at the time a vast majority on here commented (including me)thought he was the typical rags player, cocky and arrogant!

but as we have seen off the pitch he is a very different character, probably too sensitive and insecure but that's irrelevant, he is still the City pantomime Villain!!
 
manimanc said:
The other thing that makes me laugh is that out of the 20 clubs in the league it's only us being accused of fiddling books and lying about figures.
Yeah ok then.
All the other 19 clubs are squeaky clean are they and don't sail close to the waterline?

Yeah ok then, just us.
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There’s a reason why, those other 19 clubs haven’t broken records like 4 titles in a row and 100 points. Completing a treble in the middle of those four titles. Those other 19 clubs don’t want to do the hard work City have done to build a club that has dominated English football for the last 12 years. The easy option for them is to have us vanish, unfortunately they are realising their latest attempt to take City out is doomed to failure, better get back to paying to hack the servers again to desperately find some more shit to throw at the club.
 
GSW Blue said:
I put an Arsenal fan in his box last week after he started banging on about titles being stripped after 115.

Just asked him if Arsenal had George Graham’s titles stripped!
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95% of the cunts harping on about are influenced by shite like AFTV and Goldbridge believing what they say as gospel when you actually put facts to them they dont have a response ..................like you say Graham i raise you Herbert Chapman the man who probably turned Arsenal into the club it is now who didnt half run out of LeedsCity quickly when the shit was gonna hit the fan
 
Mazzarelli's Swiss Cheese said:
I think it's that the 115 are added to the heinous charge of finishing in the top 4 and winning things that they become more serious. Our spending was as I recall a source of much merriment as we would never be able to "buy success". Now said success has been bought it appears to be a more serious issue.
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The media is still running the story ridiculing Robinho's signing for City.
 
KS55 said:
I never know on what basis some of these arguments [PwC disagreeing on RPTs in 2014] turn. I have seen one serious lawyer completely misunderstanding the Sheiks title of ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ to mean he was at that time a member of the gov of UAE. It is a courtesy title and there are currently three of them. So, without more background, I am often sceptical as to whether these people know what they are talking about.
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I'm not quite following the initial part of the post. Unless I'm missing something, DPM in the UAE is a title that, in the 21st century there, has been conferred on people who are influential members of the Cabinet, either upon their appointment to their Cabinet role or later.

The four (not three) current incumbents are respectively President of the Presidential Court (Mansour), Minister of the Interior, Minister of Finance and Minister of Defence. They're all members of the Cabinet, and those roles arguably earned them the title DPM. Mansour has been in the Cabinet 5 years longer than he's held the DPM role. I don't see how one can mount a credible argument that he's not a member of the UAE government in those circumstances. Anyway, just a throwaway point. I don't really give a toss about that.

As far as what PwC's thought process was, here goes. The argument rested around the wording in IAS 24 that was copied over into UEFA's FFP rules as Appendix 10, applying to City's case in 2014. I don't have time to find the exact quotation, but it doesn't just cover influence achieved by common familial and business connections. There's also a catch-all wording about otherwise having an opportunity to exercise influence achieved otherwise and this is what PwC seized on, with their main evidence being the Etisalat sponsorship.

IIRC, they believed (I forget on what basis) that City had procured an increase in the Etisalat contract to take it above market value in the year that Mancini and his staff were dismissed. This was allegedly done with a view to keeping our losses for that year below a threshold figure where a sanction would have been triggered had we exceeded it. City had hoped at the time to avoid a sanction for the first FFP reporting period by deducting GBP 80 million or so of pre-2010 wages.

IIRC, PwC argued: (i) the above showed that City had the opportunity to influence Etisalat because it was impossible to contemplate that an arm's-length sponsor would agree to amend a contract that still had time to run so that it would pay more for the services received; (ii) that one could credibly infer that an Abu Dhabi publicly owned company had thus been influenced owing to the positions of Mansour, Khaldoon and Pearce in that Emirate; and (iii) if City had the opportunity to influence Etisalat on this basis, the same would apply to other AD sponsors.

NB - The above is from memory. If anyone ahs the time and inclination to go back and dig through it all (both in terms of the wording of IAS 24 and of PwC's arguments, please do. In the discussion below, meanwhile, I defer to accountants who know more about IAS 24 than I do.

However, I have been involved in various tax cases where there were related party issues. In other words, a tax authority relied on a statutory right to adjust the value of a related party transaction (RPT) that wasn't at fair market value and resulted in less tax being paid than should have been. My recollection is that it's necessary to demonstrate, for a transaction to qualify as an RPT, that not only does the opportunity to exist, but the fact of influence being exercised on more than just a one-off basis must also be present.

PwC's argument seemed weak to me in this event, as it appeared to be based on what in effect was a one-off request for a favour from mates being viewed as ongoing influence. City, I suspect, believed that PwC had prized supplying an analysis that would be palatable to their client, UEFA, over one in which the rules were outlined and applied properly and Cliff's comments suggest the club was prepared to litigate. Ultimately, UEFA didn't push the point and the settlement agreement treated the AD sponsors as non-related.

One more quick point. I saw @slbsn criticised on here last night for misrepresenting the seriousness of the case against City. Seems to be way back in the thread, where it much better placed, but such arrant nonsense really deserves to disappear altogether. Stefan is the Lord Pannick of the commentators on this thread (and elsewhere, too). The rest of us are mere hapless juniors with the odd valuable contribution to make but otherwise floundering slightly as we try to keep up.
 
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Has it ever been confirmed why the settlements received by City and PSG in 2014 were much MUCH larger/harsher than any by UEFA which followed?
 
That´s a post from a german forum:

What else is he supposed to say? He's annoyed because he keeps getting asked the same questions after such a transfer window. So he comes up with something to talk his way out of it so that the press conference is over at some point and his employer is happy with him so that he can get on with his actual job.

The push against the APT rules was also to be expected somewhere along the line. When you have a luxury hobby and unlimited possibilities, it does not fit into the horizon of a sheikh to be restricted in terms of spending. After all, you are deprived of your sharpest weapon.

This will now be a battle of lawyers, in which shrewd advocates will look for loopholes to undermine the rules. First of all, the rules apply. Otherwise, the BPL must also be interested in continuously reviewing the APT regulations and rectifying any leaks.

Once the rules are in place, then of course everyone should utilise them to the full. And if that still offers ManCity enough opportunities to upgrade, then so be it. There is no longer a balance in world football. Their actions also have a downside and you have to play on that. One is excessive demands for transfer fees and the other is dissatisfied players who pile up over time if you keep buying more expensive players. You can then get them cheaply again and ManCity can keep their money.

Maybe wrong thread, sorry for that.
 
Keeper! said:
I was watching the last 20 mins of the dippers yesterday, the commentary on that was the usual narrative of the dippers had 250m of players on the pitch, Plymouth's team cost 20 pence,
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Was it? (scratches head trying to think) Because that's really not my experience, admittedly I wasn't paying full attention, but there wasn't the same level of glee yesterday as there was on Saturday when we were 1 down.
Fucking interviewing the LO captain as he left the pitch AT HALF TIME!!!! Asking for his feelings on the goal. Asking about the tactics for keeping it at 1-0. AT HALF-FUCKING-TIME!!
 
petrusha said:
I'm not quite following the initial part of the post. Unless I'm missing something, DPM in the UAE is a title that, in the 21st century there, has been conferred on people who are influential members of the Cabinet, either upon their appointment to their Cabinet role or later.

The four (not three) current incumbents are respectively President of the Presidential Court (Mansour), Minister of the Interior, Minister of Finance and Minister of Defence. They're all members of the Cabinet, and those roles arguably earned them the title DPM. Mansour has been in the Cabinet 5 years longer than he's held the DPM role. I don't see how one can mount a credible argument that he's not a member of the UAE government in those circumstances. Anyway, just a throwaway point. I don't really give a toss about that.

As far as what PwC's thought process was, here goes. The argument rested around the wording in IAS 24 that was copied over into UEFA's FFP rules as Appendix 10, applying to City's case in 2014. I don't have time to find the exact quotation, but it doesn't just cover influence achieved by common familial and business connections. There's also a catch-all wording about otherwise having an opportunity to exercise influence achieved otherwise and this is what PwC seized on, with their main evidence being the Etisalat sponsorship.

IIRC, they believed (I forget on what basis) that City had procured an increase in the Etisalat contract to take it above market value in the year that Mancini and his staff were dismissed. This was allegedly done with a view to keeping our losses for that year below a threshold figure where a sanction would have been triggered had we exceeded it. City had hoped at the time to avoid a sanction for the first FFP reporting period by deducting GBP 80 million or so of pre-2010 wages.

IIRC, PwC argued: (i) the above showed that City had the opportunity to influence Etisalat because it was impossible to contemplate that an arm's-length sponsor would agree to amend a contract that still had time to run so that it would pay more for the services received; (ii) that one could credibly infer that an Abu Dhabi publicly owned company had thus been influenced owing to the positions of Mansour, Khaldoon and Pearce in that Emirate; and (iii) if City had the opportunity to influence Etisalat on this basis, the same would apply to other AD sponsors.

NB - The above is from memory. If anyone ahs the time and inclination to go back and dig through it all (both in terms of the wording of IAS 24 and of PwC's arguments, please do. In the discussion below, meanwhile, I defer to accountants who know more about IAS 24 than I do.

However, I have been involved in various tax cases where there were related party issues. In other words, a tax authority relied on a statutory right to adjust the value of a related party transaction (RPT) that wasn't at fair market value and resulted in less tax being paid than should have been. My recollection is that it's necessary to demonstrate, for a transaction to qualify as an RPT, that not only does the opportunity to exist, but the fact of influence being exercised on more than just a one-off basis must also be present.

PwC's argument seemed weak to me in this event, as it appeared to be based on what in effect was a one-off request for a favour from mates being viewed as ongoing influence. City, I suspect, believed that PwC had prized supplying an analysis that would be palatable to their client, UEFA, over one in which the rules were outlined and applied properly and Cliff's comments suggest the club was prepared to litigate. Ultimately, UEFA didn't push the point and the settlement agreement treated the AD sponsors as non-related.

One more quick point. I saw @slbsn criticised on here last night for misrepresenting the seriousness of the case against City. Seems to be way back in the thread, where it much better placed, but such arrant nonsense really deserves to disappear altogether. Stefan is the Lord Pannick of the commentators on this thread (and elsewhere, too). The rest of us are mere hapless juniors with the odd valuable contribution to make but otherwise floundering slightly as we try to keep up.
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Excellent as always.
Laughing at the Lord Pannick reference because only last night I had exactly the same thought :).

The errant poster has argued his version of the law previously and, IIRC, all of slbsn, you, Chris in London, halfcenturyup, PB, GDM and others have pushed back on it. None of whom can be considered hapless juniors IMO. Except halfcenturyup of course who always defers to you all but challenges everyone with his great range of questions.

I for one completely agree with halfcenturyup that the best analysis of this is on here and here alone and so grateful for the input.
 
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