CAS judgement: UEFA ban overturned, City exonerated (report out p603)

KS55 said:
Question is whether G14 see it that way. I dont think they do: blinded, inter alia, by fear of losing income and by racial hatred. They still want to crush us.
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City being on a seat in the ECA and this are not mutually exclusive. Both parties keen to have each other where they can see them.
 
Marvin said:
Are the American owned clubs acting together? Do we have evidence for that?
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I certainly see an easy conduit between some of the related owners, whether they are coordinating affairs, is another matter.

For the NFL franchises, you have Kronke (Arsenal and LA Rams), Glazers (United and Tampa Bay) Spurs (major deal for NFL games)

On top of that, you have the baseball interests of Henry (Liverpool and Red Sox).

I suppose it only takes a phone call.
 
projectriver said:
City being on a seat in the ECA and this are not mutually exclusive. Both parties keen to have each other where they can see them.
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My point was that their blindness leads them to think they don't need City to be where they can see us.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Correct. As for the last sentence, I think we should have focused on establishing ourselves in the main corridors of power before what I see as the vanity project of CFG. Any benefits that CFG brings are, in my view, insignificant compared to the ones that having a seat at the top table would have brought us.
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Ever since Sheikh Mansour bought our club UEFA have been hostile. This may well be because Platini was well and truly panicked by the reaction of the G 14 to his initial FFP proposals - the threat of legal action because debt is an accepted way of raising capital for investment and the threat of secession if necessary - but he surrendered control of the development of FFP almost immediately to those who were fierce opponents of regulation in the Platini style but also implacable opponents of City's plans. Platini only ever spoke of City and echoed the "City's money ruining football" mantra coming out of OT, Klanfield and elsewhere. In his interview with Martin Samuel, he argued that FFP had allowed him to secure the dissolution of the G 14 while satisfying pleas from both Milans that they couldn't keep financing the losses made by their clubs while trying to compete with new money clubs. The situation was simple - no-one felt they could compete with City and concentration on spending rather than debt seemed the way to keep the clubs happy.

Platini's demise and the advent of Ceferin really didn't change anything. He was the voice of the smaller leagues and believed in FFP as a way of protecting them from the unbridled spending of clubs like City. He has been in post almost exactly 4 years and, to me, he appears to have shifted his position dramatically and I'll explain why I believe this. A mechanism of regulation put in place to deal with one club and any others of the same ilk is unsustainable, especially when the premise on which it is based is false. Only a few PL clubs ever believed City were going to spend, spend, spend to make the PL and European club football uncompetitive thought it was a good slogan for others to use. Ceferin must have seen that Sheikh Mansour meant, and has carried out, every word of his open letter to supporters in September 2008: a period of heavy investment preparing the way for a successful but self sustaining club. The period of investment was 3 years, accelerated to meet UEFA's deadlines, which is actually shorter than that allowed to other clubs by the "reform" of 2015. If there is one club which is a shining advert for the way FFP should work it is Manchester City. If there are adverts for the stupidity of this form of regulation it is just about every other club in Europe: FFP has done nothing to help the smaller leagues and many Dutch and Belgian clubs with honourable European pasts don't even register any longer. The G 14 clubs are still racking up the debt but still spending, spending, spending. But even worse, the persecution of City resulted in complete humiliation for UEFA. This adds to the air of seediness which surrounds all football authorities with prosecutions for corruption at FIFA, Al Khelaifi at UEFA and now the humiliation of UEFA for trying to get a successful club stitched up on charges for which there is not one shred of evidence but mountains of the stuff to show how baseless the charges are. We are concerned at the damage done to our reputation, but I see no evidence that any attitudes to our club have actually changed, but the damage to UEFa's is immense. but I agree with Billy Shears - City's influence in UEFA will grow and that of the G 14 will decline.

I think Ceferin sees all this. He was clearly trying to stop it going so far but his hand was so weak and City's so strong when he appeared at our Cl games. He has talked of the need to allow investment, which is blindingly obvious in the midst of the present crisis. When he looks for a model of good governance, of how new life can be breathed into a club and how it can be run to maintain that vigour and success, it is obvious where to look. Not everyone has City's resources but everyone has more than presently at their disposal. I would quote, as an example, Bournemouth recently relegated but with a rich owner who surely will invest if allowed to if the EFL's version of FFP wasn't there to stop him. City have held out an olive branch, not just in February of this year but also as early as 2014 when Khaldoon also spoke of our friends at UEFA and I think Ceferin will take it now. It won't be easy because, like mos governing bodies, the weight of inertia is heavy, and it may take some time,
 
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