City launch legal action against the Premier League | City win APT case (pg901)

Maybe I misunderstood what you were saying. It appeared that you were saying that he was qualified to comment rather than the unnamed sources in the article. If so, there are various manifest problems with this approach, given, in particular, the anonymity of the sources and the author’s ability to cherry pick tendentiously.

I think you are overstating his experience in the second paragraph. On the face if it, he would have been little more than an errand boy within a firm that failed and had its licence to practise revoked. I highly doubt he will have been ultimately responsible for any heavyweight work, or possible even exposed to any. So one billion percent might be a little OTT!

And it’s ‘judgment’ :-)

My American autocorrect says judgement so the IT overlords have ruled I'm afraid.

Mate, we've read the same things from these journalists about CAS and the like for years now, we know exactly how educated they are on these matters. I don't care if the lad is someone who chauffeured around a sports lawyer's second cousin, he'd still be vastly more qualified than these hacks based on osmosis alone. These are the people solely responsible for the "City got off on a technicality" narrative.

I'm getting away from the point here. The point that I was making is that I don't listen to sports journalists because they have no idea what they're talking about on legal issues. Not even a bit of a clue. And you can times that by a thousand in terms of what they write several hours after a 175 page technical document has come out and how that knocks on for everyone else. The only people worth listening to about legal issues are the legal community and those legally trained. You have you view and I appreciate that but from what I've read, it appears at odds with the general consensus of the legal industry who have expressed opinions. I tend to go with the general consensus in expert domains without compelling arguments. Almost all opinions fall on the "we'll see" side of the spectrum and I don't see any outside of the aforementioned sports journalists who are touting this as a large City win.

The one exception to this of course is Simon Cliff. But Simon Cliff is currently working under a legal strategy for one of the sides of the argument so not what I'd call exactly a fair source. Facts are facts and in the legal arena, facts are useless things to have. Everybody is trying to sell their interpretation of the facts that benefit them the most, and this is what I think Cliff is doing so I'll eye his proclamations with more scrutiny than professionals who are not involved in the case.

I just don't see this large City win. I'm not even sure I see this as anything but a minor event that will have little to no bearing on anything going forward. On the face of it, and this is just my opinion with all the caveats I've put above, the idea that the entire APT ruleset now needs redrafting or is currently null due to this judgment seems far fetched. It seems much more likely based on the wording that I've tried to understand that the blue pencil test will apply; they can modify these without having to completely rewrite the entire ruleset so the rules stand as is. I'd love for someone qualified enough to explain why that isn't the case and show me what I'm missing.

I'd even go one step further and argue that maybe all of the people I've quoted including yourself, the Professor and Stefan have jumped the gun a bit and we won't really know the impacts of this for a decent while yet because there's going to be meetings and redrafts and possibly tribunals and more legal action from us or other clubs and only when we've got some distance from it can we really see who "won" or "lost".

Even with all that, I'm not even sure what winning even means in this case. We own shares in the Premier League. We're a shareholder suing the board, why others want the company to fail based on that I can't really work out.
 
I’ve just checked the author, Christian Smith, out on LinkedIn.


His only practical experience in the UK was as an associate for three years for a sports law firm called Solesbury Gay Limited, that ceased operating whilst he was there and whose licence to practise was revoked the month afterwards, following which he appears to have decided to engage in a career in journalism. It’s not clear why their licence was revoked, but at best I would suggest it was because they were unable to generate enough work to meet their regulatory obligations, at worst because of matters of professional misconduct. If they been moved on as a going concern then I wouldn’t expect to see a revocation, especially so promptly. SRA link here:


He didn’t attain his legal qualifications in the UK (New Zealand) and whilst that of itself isn’t a bar to having a successful legal career in this country, it’s certainly a worthwhile factor to consider when taken in conjunction with someone’s career achievements.

So, based on the foregoing I would say he has insufficient real and practical experience on the subject matter to hold a legal opinion that should be given any meaningful weight. The extent of his practical legal experience was as an associate for a firm that failed, following which he decided to switch careers.

That will have entailed a huge reduction in his potential earnings. Not holding that against anyone, but it is perfectly reasonable to take that into account when evaluating what weight to attach to an article where he offers his opinion on a finding of law and its implications. It’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that if his opinions and analysis were worthwhile then he’d still be in practice. And he’s not.

So his assessment may not be biased, but personally speaking, in the context of being invited to give it any weight, I don’t think it’s worth a wank.

The equivalent of Gary Neville advising Pep how to pick a successful team.
 
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Ive done a little work on what I think Khaldoons speech should look like if he attends the Premier League meeting next week. Thought with the room being filled with yank owners this may be something they understand.

We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, dicks. And Liverpool, united and Arsenal are pussies. And Masters and the Premier League are assholes.

Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes — assholes who just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls.

The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate — and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes.


I don't know much in this crazy, crazy world, but I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!

Fuck yeah.
Makes more sense then @slbsn position and views :)
 
I think it's fair to say neither side 'won' the case completely but what we have done is prove that the Premier League is not infallible and therefore it's authority is undermined. That said, I do have a very little bit of sympathy for the Premier League's position. They are trying to treat football as a sport when, certainly in England, it's become apparent that football is about money and therefore businesses. There seems to be so many financial loopholes (what was to stop an owner loaning a club 20 billion at 0% interest and the club putting the money in a bank account and earning 5% interest, 1 billion, every year!). Bottom line for me is that the Premier League is out of it's depth and seems to be in the pocket of the red shirted businesses (as is much of the media). It's not City that needs changing it's the Premier League.
They’ll have to change mate - they’re in a fight they can’t possibly win. Once Abramovich came in with his billions, then our good Sheikh with even more billions and then the Saudi Arabian State - with untold billions, their cosy little world has gone and it’s never coming back.
 
Ive done a little work on what I think Khaldoons speech should look like if he attends the Premier League meeting next week. Thought with the room being filled with yank owners this may be something they understand.

We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, dicks. And Liverpool, united and Arsenal are pussies. And Masters and the Premier League are assholes.

Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes — assholes who just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls.

The problem with dicks is that sometimes they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate — and it takes a pussy to show them that. But sometimes, pussies get so full of shit that they become assholes themselves... because pussies are only an inch and a half away from assholes.

I don't know much in this crazy, crazy world, but I do know that if you don't let us fuck this asshole, we're going to have our dicks and pussies all covered in shit!

Fuck yeah.
I’d send that to him…he might use use it
 
I’ve just checked the author, Christian Smith, out on LinkedIn.


His only practical experience in the UK was as an associate for three years for a sports law firm called Solesbury Gay Limited, that ceased operating whilst he was there and whose licence to practise was revoked the month afterwards, following which he appears to have decided to engage in a career in journalism. It’s not clear why their licence was revoked, but at best I would suggest it was because they were unable to generate enough work to meet their regulatory obligations, at worst because of matters of professional misconduct. If they been moved on as a going concern then I wouldn’t expect to see a revocation, especially so promptly. SRA link here:


He didn’t attain his legal qualifications in the UK (New Zealand) and whilst that of itself isn’t a bar to having a successful legal career in this country, it’s certainly a worthwhile factor to consider when taken in conjunction with someone’s career achievements.

So, based on the foregoing I would say he has insufficient real and practical experience on the subject matter to hold a legal opinion that should be given any meaningful weight. The extent of his practical legal experience was as an associate for a firm that failed, following which he decided to switch careers.

That will have entailed a huge reduction in his potential earnings. Not holding that against anyone, but it is perfectly reasonable to take that into account when evaluating what weight to attach to an article where he offers his opinion on a finding of law and its implications. It’s perfectly reasonable to conclude that if his opinions and analysis were worthwhile then he’d still be in practice. And he’s not.

So his assessment may not be biased, but personally speaking, in the context of being invited to give it any weight, I don’t think it’s worth a wank.
As a certain bespectacled Germanic person would say BOOM…
 

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