Great post.Okay. I opened this thread this evening and wondered why it had grown by 50 pages overnight. The answer seemed to be "someone got asked to speak to the media when the decision is out" and that has induced a combination of unrivalled optimism and blind panic.
So this post is based in part on what I know and in part on what I think and I will be very clear about which bit is which.
Here's what I know.
When you have a big trial, the advocates get a pretty clear impression of the way it is going during the hearing itself. This comes from a variety of sources: there are the questions the panel asks the advocates. There are the embarrassed pauses during cross examination when a witness is asked a question they can't answer. There are the times during the legal submissions when an advocate is floundering in the face of looks of mild incredulity on the panel's faces. These things let you know which way the wind is blowing.
Then again, even the most experienced advocates are in for a shock from time to time, because the case that was going swimmingly blows up in everyone's faces, or the case that seemed to have little hope results, contrary to pessimistic expectations, in a resounding victory.
These cases are the exception, not the rule. 75% of the time, your feeling at the end of the trial/hearing proves to be more or less right. It is definitely a minority of cases, even if not an absolutely tiny minority of cases, where by the end of the case you haven't managed to form a fairly clear impression of what the ultimate decision will be.
So the noises that came out of the rival camps, insofar as any noises did, at the end of the hearing are more than hunches, but they are not more than educated guesses (very educated guesses, even) and they can still result in a nasty surprise. And that is before the rival camps try to spin it in their favour for PR purposes.
This is still what I know rather than what I think.
The way the decision is announced is not entirely straightforward. Generally what happens is that the decision is first delivered by way of a draft judgment. It is not draft because the tribunal is open to letting the losing party have a go at persuading them to change their minds: by then the substance of the decision is for all intents and purposes final, and the reason the judgment is delivered in draft is so that the parties and the advocates have an opportunity to correct basic factual or grammatical errors. So if the draft judgment said "the PL began its investigation in December 2008" when it was actually 2018 that is the kind of factual correction that would be made before the final judgment is released. It is in the tiniest fraction of cases that the tribunal makes such a colossal error about the basic facts that it completely disturbs the panel's decision, so for our purposes, when the draft judgment is handed down, subject to factual corrections and typos, that is the final decision.
At this stage, even if it is a judgment that it is intended will be made public as soon as it is made final (like a High Court judgment), the draft judgment is confidential to the lawyers and the parties until the typos etc have been sorted out.
The delay between the judgment being delivered in draft on that confidential basis and the finalised decision being made public is generally not great. Even in the Supreme Court or the Privy Council it can be as little as a couple of weeks between the draft judgment and the final judgment. The Court of Appeal can be a shorter period still and the High Court might be only four or five days. It is in this period, and only in this period, that the parties and the lawyers know the outcome but the rest of the world does not.
Now, we move away from what I know to what I think.
First, I really do not think that we are as yet in that "we know something you don't know" phase. I very much doubt that the PL will be able to prevent the decision from being leaked when the draft judgment becomes available. If I think back to the APT 1 decision, reports of City having "some success" were fairly widespread some time before the decision was made public. I think the pressure to shout it from the rooftops will be overwhelming from the PL's perspective if they have won substantially on all/any of the major charges. Even if they win on the non-co-operation charges and lose on everything else I can imagine there will be leaks of that.
By contrast, again this is my opinion and my opinion only, there will be little PL appetite to leak if the outcome if very or entirely favourable to City. Will there be leaks from City's end? Possibly, but I think the chances of the PL leaking if they win are much higher than they are of City leaking if the club wins.
But if those leaks do happen the resulting tweets etc from the favoure hacks will be many levels of intensity up from the Sam Lee straws in the wind/Richard Masters says 'separate hearings' nonsense (I will mention this again below) that we've been reading about recently. Again, think back to Ziegler following APT1.
Either way, when we see those leaks coming at a rate of knots, especially from sources who have been right in the past, and with a high degree of confidence attached, that's when we might start thinking "chances are, this is right." Again, in my opinion, we are at present nowhere near that point based on what has been discussed over the last 50 pages or so.
The second point is that when we do finally see those leaks coming thick and fast, it will not be long, probably a matter of a few days or a couple of weeks at most, until we get the final official judgment. I really don't think we are in that territory yet. Whether you are a doom merchant or a happy clapper, stand down for the time being.
Some further thoughts.
Reading the room and hearing the mood music over the last few months generally my opinion is this.
We had a good hearing. The tribunal was asking the sorts of questions we wanted them to ask, none of our witnesses got severely torn to shreds, we were confident that we had we had said everything that we wanted to say. Our lawyers' own assessment was that they thought we would do well - by which I mean, dismissal of the serious "tantamount-to-fraud" allegations but maybe no so clear cut on the non-co-operation charges.
This is a very good sign but it is a long way short of a guarantee. Grounds for cautious-but-confident optimism.
One of the things that got discussed during the hearing was whether the tribunal wanted to be addressed during that 10 week hearing on what the sanction should be if any of the charges were made out. "No," said the panel "because (a) we've got enough to be getting on with, and (b) there are so many possible permutations of what happens if some of the charges but not all are made out that it is much more sensible to wait and see what the panel decides and then think about the appropriate sanction if any of the charges land at all."
So do not read anything into this other than the tribunal has not heard anything from either side about what happens if the charges or some of them are made out. Masters was not giving the slightest thing away either way by saying 'there will have to be another hearing IF the charges are proved.'
Finally, and most importantly, I really doubt that even now the lawyers know what the outcome is. (No offence @BlueMooney but the fucking sports team at 5Live certainly doesn't.) They may have a hunch. They may have been given a steer. But if they have, and I really don't think they have, it is nothing more than the lawyers' feeling about how it went. I wouldn't even want to read too much into CIty's apparent confidence in the outcome based on matters such as the Haaland extension, the January signings and so forth. Yes I agree the club seems confident. Yes I agree that confidence is probably not misplaced. But just hold your horses before you pop the prosecco corks. Too many lawyers have come out of a hearing and lit up a big cigar only to be scratching their heads three months later thinking "what the fuck just happened?"
Even now, whilst we have a good idea how difficult it will be for the PL to make some of the nastier accusations stick, we still have no idea what evidence they have been able to bring to bear. For instance, I remain very cynical the PL ever had any realistic prospect of success on the "fraud" charges, though I'm 50/50 on the non-co-operation charges. But that is based on no knowledge whatsoever of what evidence the panel has heard, and based very heavily on what we think the evidence in support of the allegations is (like the Der Spiegel emails and the Open Skies materials.) Again, grounds, I would say, for cautious optimism but nothing more than that.
So I've not started looking at roadmaps trying to find parking in Grimsby and Darlington - that fucking shithole in Wycombe is indelibly burned into my brain already - but neither am I drafting my angry letter calling for Richard Masters' head on a pointed stick.
Yet.
Also if you get to darlington early enough you can park on the main road next to south park for free, it's a 5 min walk to the ground.