Ok so I've steered away from the 115 on this forum for obvious reasons, but seeing as you've brought it up..... Bringing up the charges by opposing fans is inevitable regardless of guilt or not. Same reason Partey kept getting booed despite charges dropped.
Re the 115 charges I can tell you with 100% certainty that whatever happened did so with full awareness of the PL, with the assumption that it was all compliant and above board. If in retrospect someone doesn't like how that panned out it's a case of the horse has already bolted but understand clearly that it was in the PL's interest to have a new superclub in the top flight that helps the PL get ahead of Laliga/Serie A etc in overseas revenues. So tacit acceptance went on. It's in everyone's interest right?
However people are sneaky fucks and will bury others to get ahead in life, what will end up happening is some kind of denial and in the end an agreement to pay a fine and maybe token points deduction will take place. You aren't going to be a league 2 team anytime soon.
The reason I personally don't care too much about the 115 is that every single leading PL club has sailed close to the wind on finances in recent history and the last thing anyone wants to do is open Pandora's Box and delve into the finances of Chelsea, Rags, Arsenal, Newcastle etc going back 20 years.
So I expect it to be buried because it's in everyone's interests to do so, particularly the clubs of those very fans who chant about the 115!
Well I've not seen that take before.
The PL have accused us of what amounts to fraud. They weren't complicit because they weren't aware of the alleged payments - direct from our owner.
The FFP regulations were brought in to stop clubs like City from challenging those who already had substantial revenue thanks to their historic success and status. The PL didn't want another challenger, they were more than happy with the rags, dippers and arsenal winning and Chelsea were at the top table too by then and they didn't have a problem. They were there to stifle us not help us.
Every team plays accounting tricks, long contracts, amortisation etc. They're trying to stamp down on those things, but that's all legal. What we're accused of is illegal.
It comes from the hacked emails where on face value it appears that the club are trying to figure out how to balance the books and where money has to come from. The reference to HRH was wrongly assumed to be our owner. UEFA punished us, we appealed to CAS and we won. The fine for non-cooperation was not guilt. It was because we didn't provide UEFA with information they requested, because previously sensitive information sent to them ended up with the NY Times. CAS acknowledged concerns over this, but had to fine us as it's a matter of procedure.
The PL were then pressured to do something and finally took the plunge when the threat of an independent commission was looming - note when the charges were brought!
We will not accept a points deduction or fine because that would be admitting we've fraudulently accounted for our transactions which simply isn't the case.
Another key point, and apologies for the lengthy reply, is that the season in which the hacked emails are taken from was one where our submitted accounts failed UEFA's FFP regulations anyway. And we took our punishment. So we did a shit job if we were trying to cook the books!
