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

projectriver said:
I think if that case had been brought in the High Court in England and lost, the Bar Council may have reprimanded the QC. Obviously the witness evidence could have looked very different in a full trial though and they would have had many more documents to play with.
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The Bar Standards Board are responsible for disciplining the Bar, not the Bar Council.
 
Martin wrote about Newcastle’s potential investor pulling out for today’s copy... and based on that, he must be around. Just find the silence from Martin highly unusual considering his interest in this matter.
 
petrusha said:
I haven't been able to post my views since publication of the report. I'll also face difficulties in posting for some time to come (this is a one-off contribution and I won't be able to respond to replies to it).

But the conclusion to that article, especially the closing paragraphs, is the ultimate takeaway from CAS. This is all the more valuable as it comes from a legal professional who's (presumably) neutral in terms of fan allegiance.

I also note that CAS has been called not fit for purpose by some of our detractors in recent days. Not so. What's shown itself up as most unfit for purpose in this saga is the British football media.

City were charged with inflating revenue under sponsorship contracts whose fair value wasn't contested by UEFA, under which the relevant services had been provided, and which were underwritten by organs of the Abu Dhabi Emirati government.

All of this was in the public domain. And it showed, as many of us on here repeated ad nauseam, that MCFC would highly likely prevail before CAS unless UEFA possessed evidence hitherto unknown to us. Of course, they ultimately didn't.

Yet the British football media unanimously gloried in the prospect of our demise from the publication of Der Spiegel's revelations onwards. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall one media outlet (and I mean literally not a single fucking one) ever at any stage suggesting that City may prevail.

It was all in the emails, they gloated. Well, chaps, take a look at what the CAS says about that. Should hardly have required the Brain of fucking Britain to work it out, should it.

Now, your level of performance has been truly execrable on an objective level from any body of professionals with pretensions to even bare adequacy as a group. One issue is that we find football writers trying to grapple with complex issues of finance and law when they're, perfectly understandably, lamentably ill-equipped to do so - even those who claim expertise in the relevant areas. But there's a deluge of cases where the ineptitude is bound in with bad faith: they're also desperate for us to fail.

Well, it isn't failure, is it? Quite the contrary. On the main point, the one that matters, the one on which UEFA's AC tried to hang an extended ban, it was rather emphatic: as has been said elsewhere, count the usage of terms such as 'no evidence' in the report. Anyway, try to convert the result into football terms and you're probably looking at something like 4-0.

By all means indulge your incompetence and bias by trawling through the rest of the report, the flim-flam, for out-of-context phrases you can use to discredit City for the delectation of your clickbait sheep. Go big on the barely relevant obstruction point if you want to. We're happy to have obstructed an investigation mired in illegally obtained materials, prejudicial conduct, and vicious and self-interested third-party lobbying, all egged on by vacuous press cheerleading.

The thing is, you've shown us what you are now, haven't you? We knew all along, of course, but you used to try and gaslight us. You reported on us fairly and we were too thin-skinned to see it, you used to say. That won't wash any longer, will it? Act as PR shills for our enemies in the way you seem to want to. Fine. Don't expect a reaction from us other than utterly fucking despising you for it, though.

A final mention for David Conn, the self-appointed conscience of football. I long regarded his professional success as an example of Emperor's new clothes syndrome as others queued up to praise him extravagantly. I did, however, respect him for what seemed to be an ethical approach and genuine integrity.

What a sad state of affairs, then, to see his tendentious output over the last few months. It truly rivals the worst imaginable from any bigoted, comically biased, bottom-feeding hack scum that's out there. Still, chin up, David. You can always trot off back to FC United and help your mate Walsh be the exemplar of soul in modern football. Oh.

OK, maybe The Guardian will let you write a bit for the front end of the paper. Oh, no, another no-go. You did those stories on Orgreave a while back and they were fucking dreadful so you were sent back to the toy section. Looks as though you've found your level, then, doesn't it. As have City, however much you and your journo mates wish it were otherwise.
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Mic drop. The thread should have been locked after this post.
 
projectriver said:
He didn't think we would prevail either. In fairness, people probably assumed that Uefa had some of that thing they call evidence. At least enough evidence to justify gratuitous allegations of deceit, concealment and false accounting. I think if that case had been brought in the High Court in England and lost, the Bar Council may have reprimanded the QC. Obviously the witness evidence could have looked very different in a full trial though and they would have had many more documents to play with.
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Fair point and notwithstanding your comment about "evidence" would you not agree that his stance has always been against the cartel and supportive of City in that based on what was available, we'd done nothing wrong?
 
BigJoe#1 said:
Excellent piece, though I must take issue with the following comment:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall one media outlet (and I mean literally not a single fucking one) ever at any stage suggesting that City may prevail.

Whilst the Daily Mail as a publication may have had a negative view, Martin Samuels, throughout this saga has stuck his neck out and put his cock on the block in defending us. There can be no doubt about that , and as such we need to recognise our allies, we don't have too many of them.
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Samuel has been fantastic in defending City with regards to our spending, etc, and has opposed FFP (or at least the way it cements the status quo) going all the way back to around 2007 which pre-dates our takeover so he can hardly be accused of being biased towards us. However, I don’t think at any point he said he felt we would prevail at CAS or wrote any articles about the specifics of this case. Souness is another who has fought our corner but again he hasn’t spoken about what the case entailed or whether he felt we would win the appeal (just to make clear that I’m not knocking either of them).

As far as I know, only 1 person in the media stuck their neck out and said he felt we would win. That person is Gary Neville.
 
projectriver said:
He didn't think we would prevail either. In fairness, people probably assumed that Uefa had some of that thing they call evidence. At least enough evidence to justify gratuitous allegations of deceit, concealment and false accounting. I think if that case had been brought in the High Court in England and lost, the Bar Council may have reprimanded the QC. Obviously the witness evidence could have looked very different in a full trial though and they would have had many more documents to play with.
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Surprising that the hearing lasted for the 3 days allocated.

The CAS officials must have been shocked when UEFA had no evidence, apart from the a few photocopies of der spiegel.
 
projectriver said:
He didn't think we would prevail either. In fairness, people probably assumed that Uefa had some of that thing they call evidence. At least enough evidence to justify gratuitous allegations of deceit, concealment and false accounting. I think if that case had been brought in the High Court in England and lost, the Bar Council may have reprimanded the QC. Obviously the witness evidence could have looked very different in a full trial though and they would have had many more documents to play with.
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"allegations of deceit, concealment and false accounting" These are highly serious and damaging charges.

UEFA appear to have got off lightly judging by your comment, had the charges been brought through the High Court in England and the decision still found in favour of City.

Would there be any possible actions or sanctions beyond a reprimand of their QC?
 
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