What "crimes" have City been accused of exactly? A wealthy individual investing his own legit money in his own legit business is legal. The "rules" City are alleged to have broken are themselves of dubious legality and UEFA ducked out of having their day in court on the matter, which should tell you an awful lot about FFP. It was simply a protectionist construct put together at the behest of certain elite clubs.Your comment doesn't make sense.
The reputation of Manchester City and Sheikh Mansour are being damaged by these stories and if they were blatant falsehoods we would deny it.
If you were accused of robbing a bank and you knew it was false, would you "refuse to comment on speculation" or wholeheartedly deny it?
That still doesn't add up for me. If we knew we were being lied about in the media we wouldn't just sit back and more comment. Doing just that harms our reputation because we are giving their story credibilityI imagine our legal team is waiting for the idiots writing this shit in Der Spiegel, and drooling gibbons like Ducker to make enough rope to hang themselves out to dry. Once they get past the 'allegedlys' and find specific evidence pointing to lies demeaning either City, Sheikh Mansour or one of our sponsor companies I would assume that all this will go very quiet quite quickly.
This does seem to be gathering some momentum. Taking our city hats off, do we really have anything to worry about here? It started with just social media, but it feels more and more of the mainstream media are jumping on this now.
Looks like I wasn't far off
One sponsor I think: the major one Etihad. Aabar is irrelevant because SM owns them and everyone knows that. Even if the Etihad payments are true, what does this amount too? City received the real value.Not totally sure, but the worrying part for me isn't the amount, its the fact that these sponsors weren't actually paying the yearly amounts and were being directly subsidised by our owners to make up the real value.
The author of the email would be a senior exec at City, including people like Simon Cliff & Simon Pearce. They would certainly know the difference.Your argument is predicated on the basis that the author of the email is as pedantic on the subject as you!
This is a good point about it being associated with a particular part of our history Marvin and something pretty crucial occurred to me last night which, while we were all talking about this, we’ve forgotten.I think this is a historic problem associated with a particular period of City's history when City were in dispute with UEFA. The question is whether the new claims impact that investigation. I don't see that they can. The issue should be whether City are receiving monies that we are not entitled to. Etihad Airlines sponsor City. Does it matter how those monies reach City? So do Aabar investments. UEFA have already viewed the Etihad deal and ratified it. I don't see that the evidence of cash flow changes anything
All these leaked emails do seem to focus on a certain period, whats to say that the same doesn't apply to more recent years? What if, over the past 3 or 4 years where we have been passing FFP, the same allegations apply to us?The author of the email would be a senior exec at City, including people like Simon Cliff & Simon Pearce. They would certainly know the difference.
This is a good point about it being associated with a particular part of our history Marvin and something pretty crucial occurred to me last night which, while we were all talking about this, we’ve forgotten.
The leaks are talking about inflated sponsorships, disguised owner investment etc. but we didn’t pass FFP; we failed it. So it wasn’t the difference between passing and failing. Even if people are saying we cheated, it did us no good anyway.
It might be far more serious if we had inflated subsequent figures, which helped us evade further sanctions.
Pass this post on to James duckegg, the penny might drop then.The author of the email would be a senior exec at City, including people like Simon Cliff & Simon Pearce. They would certainly know the difference.
This is a good point about it being associated with a particular part of our history Marvin and something pretty crucial occurred to me last night which, while we were all talking about this, we’ve forgotten.
The leaks are talking about inflated sponsorships, disguised owner investment etc. but we didn’t pass FFP; we failed it. So it wasn’t the difference between passing and failing. Even if people are saying we cheated, it did us no good anyway.
It might be far more serious if we had inflated subsequent figures, which helped us evade further sanctions.
my concern would be around the allegations that the Sheik continues to subsidise our sponsorship ‘up to the recent past’ which takes the allegations outwith the timescales of the initial FFP investigation. If these allegations are untrue then the club does need to respond in an appropriate manner.Just to be clear, I don’t think anything will come of this whatsoever - there’s nothing that I’ve seen that worries me in terms of uefa (and they’ve already said they’re not investigating us). I’m only talking from my own perspective of it not sitting comfortably with me.
I get the argument that ffp was wrong in the first place (I actually didn’t mind the thought of it, but only when i thought it was around protecting clubs, which is not what it turned out to be at all. I always thought it should have existed but focussed on the balance sheet and stopped owners from loading debt on to clubs, not curbed investment). I also think that fans of other clubs need to be very careful, people in glass houses and all that.
I also agree that there is no moral high ground here whatsoever. That doesn’t mean that if everyone’s at it, then fair enough though, at least not to me. I’ve never believed the means justify the ends for others, I don’t for ourselves either.