UEFA FFP investigation - CAS decision to be announced Monday, 13th July 9.30am BST

[paulchapo]

Just watching BBC News and their sports reporter mentioned the deal with Etihad, saying “who as we know are owned by the owners of Manchester City”. This is categorically untrue. It’s shoddy journalism at best, or deliberately misleading at worst.

They need to be called out and made to apologise for all these lies. If we allow them to keep on lying with impunity people believe it to be true. A few apologies and people will then start doubting everything they say or write. We have to really start the fightback at every level, however small it appears.

 

[KS55]

Excuse my French but bloody hell UEFA.
I'm a Liverpool fan but seriously UEFA you're having a laugh, telling an owner that they can't spend their own money is ludicrous.
I genuinely thought city would just get a fine and a we are watching you warning and draw a line under it. I'm enjoying the rivalry between our two clubs and sincerely hope cas overturns UEFA decision and gets ffp scrapped

Thanks for a fair post. Of course, you will know that your club have been working assiduously on UEFA to get us banned. Perhaps you could have a word?

 

[Bellamy's Caddy]

Whatever the outcome I reckon there will be an even bigger shunning of the CL by our support in future. Many, like me, have been ambivalent towards this competition in recent years so even if we get the ban overturned this ambivalence will increase. If we do serve a one or two season ban then loads will never go to a CL game again in my view.

I'm one of those who is anti UEFA and I despise the Champions League. I don't go to the games and I only watch them because its City and I want us to do well in any competition we are in.

I haven't always felt like this, I remember our first Champs League home game against Napoli and was excited to hear the Champs League anthem play in our stadium and watch City compete against the best in Europe. What has followed in that time is some memorable nights (victories against Barca, Aguero's hattrick v Bayern, Napoli away and Aguero's record breaking goal etc) but mainly games being overshadowed by dodgy officiating and the ridiculous fine City received for being late for kick off in comparison to the fine given to Porto for fans racially abusing our players.

The games against Liverpool were the final straw for me. Inexplicable refereeing decisions against us in both legs of that game cost us and it was clear that the two teams were playing to a different set of rules. I haven't been to a champs league game since.

Bizarrely, I'm more up for the Real Madrid game than any other champs league game I can remember. This is City with their backs against the wall and a chance for us to really stick it to UEFA and their poster boys Real Madrid. I hope the boos ring out louder than they ever have before and we play them off the park. I'm a realist. There's no way on earth we will be allowed to get near the final this year. It would be a PR disaster for UEFA if there was the slightest chance that this years winners will not be competing in next years competition... For City, though this is a chance for us to send out a message as fans and hopefully the players that we don't bow down to UEFA. They might keep us out for 2 years (assuming that is not overturned) but we're not going to sit back and take it we're going to give as good as we get and we'll be coming back stronger than ever.

 

[cookster]

Good question. We don't really know what UEFA means by this but we know from Der Spiegel that they looked at all the Abu Dhabi sponsorships as part of their original investigation. The concept of applying the market or fair value test only applies if the sponsor is deemed to be a 'related party'. If not, they can pay whatever they want. So if John Wardle had been both chairman of JD Sports and City at the same time, any sponsorship from them would have to be at market value. However Sports Direct, assuming Ashley had not other rleationship with the club, could sponsor our shirts for whatever we agreed, even if that was double or treble what JD Sports had paid. No market value test is applied to non-related parties.

UEFA claimed these companies were 'related parties' but that the Etihad deal would be deemed fair value. However it said that other Abu Dhabi deals weren't. We contested that but it was never tested in court and we voluntarily agreed not to increase those. I think Aabar was ultimately owned by a company chaired by Sheikh Mansour, although that's not enough in itself to prove conclusively that Aabar is definitely a related party. So even if we fully accpeted what UEFA had said (which we didn't) we'd have had to reduce two lesser sponsorships by about £10m or thereabouts, which would have made little impact in the overall scheme of things and certainly wouldn't have led to any further punishment than we actually received.

But I assume at the time UEFA weren't aware that Etihad and the other companies weren't paying the full amount of those sponsorships (although they should have known as that information about Etihad was already in the public domain as part of the Open Skies case in the USA courts). What they seem to punishing us for now is that we used those sponsorships to funnel ADUG money into the club. But if it's not a related party, as we claimed, then that's outside the FFP rules if that's the case. But it entirely depends on who paid the money. If it was the Executive Council, as as the case in the document filed in the New York courts, then that's a completely different matter to the money coming directly from ADUG. There's an email between Simon Pearce & Ferran Soriano where soriano asks Pearce to ask someone called Muhamad (not HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed as they'd never refer to him in that way) to split the remittances into those from Etihad and the other sponsors (which are revenue) from those coming directly from ADUG as equity investment. We don't know exactly who Muhamad is but I'm assuming he's someone in finance at ADUG.

You could read this two ways. One one hand, it's very sensible and allows us to show the monies from sponsors as separate amounts from the monies for, say the CFA build or to cover transfers. Etiahd and the other parties could have sent the money to ADUG, even if some of that was sourced from ADEC (the Executive Council). On the other hand, it could be interpreted as showing that ADUG just paid us a flat remittance that incorporated all the income we needed and got whatever was due from Etihad (£8m out of the full sponsorship, whatever that was, £40m or £50m).

Der Spiegel never published anything that conclusively proved that latter scenario though although it was clear Etiahd wasn't paying the full sponsorhip out of its own pocket. There were references to 'His Highness' which was taken by Der Spiegel and other jounralists to mean Sheikh Mansour but that wasn't correct. As I said, 'HH' without qualification would be Mohammed bin Zayed and there's absolutely no way someone like someone like Simon Pearce would get something like that wrong or allow someone else to. I'm told by someone who should know that it's even quite a serious breach of protocol. This is quite important as it shows that MBZ, rather than ADUG/Sheikh Mansour, was arranging the money.

In summary, if Etihad is deemed a related party by UEFA but also that the sponsorship represents market value, then there should be no issue, regardless of how the money was sourced. Even if the other companies were deemed related parties and their sponsorships weren't deemed market value, at worst we'd have knocked our revenue down a bit and we'd have failed FFP by £10m more, which isn't significant and doesn't justify the new investigation in my view. Particularly as the 2014 settlement had already been over this ground. So we can assume it's not about that per se therefore.

The most likely explanation is that UEFA is accusing us of hiding the fact that the sponsorships weren't fully funded by the companies involved, which it didn't know in 2014 (but the information was there, in the public domain so you could argue that it was a known fact that Etihad weren't responsible for the full funding of our sponsorship). But if they were related parties, as claimed by UEFA seemingly, then as I said above, it doesn't matter.

If they weren't related parties, which we and our auditors claim, then it's potentially more of a case. I said at the time that it would have been the clever move to accept that they were related. But UEFA would need to prove that the money came directly from ADUG and not from other sources within Abu Dhabi, which is why the definition of 'HH' is is quite crucial. If Etihad paid us £50m in one or more remittances and all but the reported £8m came direct from ADUG then we'd possibly have a problem, although it's far from certain. If however Etihad paid that full money to ADUG and it was sourced from somewhere else other than ADUG then it's none of their business.

What would land us in the shit is if UEFA could see separately identified remittances of £8m from Etihad and £42m from ADUG both booked as commercial income under the Etihad sponsorship arrangement. But if that was the case, they'd have seen that at the time of the 2014 investigation presumably.

Thanks for the update PB. It sounds like this could go either way!

 

[Sky Blue]

I don't speak for my fellow Liverpool fans.
I have friends and family who support a variety of different teams and I try to view situations like this on a pure football basis.
We all know man city success has been built on "winning the lottery" but don't take that as a dig.
Extra competition injected by city has upped the quality level of the premier league e.g.. 100 points required to win the league compared to 78-80 twenty years ago.
Like I said I hope cas tells UEFA to shove it

Thanks for that, Littlewoods.

 

[MillisleBlue]

Credit where it's due - our enemies are well organised, widespread, incredibly influential and will be celebrating this like pigs rolling around in their own shit. After their delirium and short-term gratification has passed, we'll still be here.

 

[Gordyola]

Morning,

i am aware there is a massive UEFA ban thread but that is covering everything from rage to legal eagles, and it's hard to pick out particular themes in the storm of posts...

Can people explain the crux of these emails to me? it's the emails, after arguing how fucked the situation with UEFA is, that fans of other clubs keep battering me with.

So, as i understand (probably incorrectly):

City got some internal emails hacked and published on Der Spiegel. They purport to show that City were in knowledge that they were topping up an £8m sponsorship from Etihad to the tune of ~£60m, directly from the club ownership. City deny this vehemently and have said to have produced many more emails and unredacted versions that counter this, which has been ignored (?)

what have i missed?

Pretty much you got it

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

What’s your take on this PB... you seem to be the voice of reason in this matter

I've just posted a long reply giving my view on the technical case against us. But everything I've heard suggests that UEFA as an organisation didn't want it to come to this but that representatives of clubs who make up part of that organisation did. Ceferin wa desperately trying to get a deal hammered out late last year. Whether he'd have got that through the AC (which is supposed to be independent of UEFA) is another matter but if he thinks he could have done, then it throws that claimed independence into doubt doesn't it?

You can look at it two extreme ways. One is that UEFA is serious and that will involve a fight to the proverbial death between us and them over this. The other is that it's a carefully staged process between the three main parties, us, UEFA and CAS, knowing that the case will be thrown out at CAS. But even then, the mud they've thrown will stick and we can't afford to ignore that. We have to therefore deal with the elements causing this as they won't go away unless we do.

 

[Rammy Blue]

Each of the companies that have provided sponsorship will have published,independently audited, accounts showing that flow of money.

It's like saying i own a florists and a chip shop and have agreed that each will provide some sponsorship for the club. The club might say we would like £100 in total please and I say OK I'll give you £30 for the chippies sponsorship and £70 for the florists, hows that?

The purpose of the sponsorship is to promote my separate businesses, UEFA has assessed the sponsorships for fair value and were happy.
It now seems they are saying the money came straight from the owner, in one sense it does but only through the businesses that he owns or part owns.

Unless UEFA have evidence that directly shows the owner putting that money directly into each business and then it coming straight back out as sponsorship for the club then it's hard to see where this is going. Even then it's a matter of public record that I own or am associated with these businesses and I would be giving them the money in order to promote those very same businesses.

How can UEFA decide that I am doing anything but that? The businesses are genuine businesses and sponsorship and self promotion is part of every single business around the world.

Eggfuckingxactly.

 

[Plain Speaking]

Just watching BBC News and their sports reporter mentioned the deal with Etihad, saying “who as we know are owned by the owners of Manchester City”. This is categorically untrue. It’s shoddy journalism at best, or deliberately misleading at worst.

Agreed complain to the BBC and ofcom which channel/program?
I have complained about their organisation being institutionally biased in the past