Media thread 2022/23

[bluealf]

We love slabhead on here. He's the new Phil Jones.

lol that's a different kind of love :p

 

[citymad]

Carragher says Coady better than Stones at the moment. You mean liverpool supporting conor Coady? Spitting at girls clown

Tbf Coady’s been in good form and Sir John hasn’t had many games. Overall I think this is probably England’s best pair. Slabhead is a disaster waiting to happen. Has a turning circle of a battleship. England can’t afford to risk him in big games.

 

[BringBackSwales]

Bloody hell.
That’s had me in bits.

Whether you have a good game or a poor game Jack you will always be a thoroughly decent human being. Top man

 

[Gingers Dad]

Carragher says Coady better than Stones at the moment. You mean liverpool supporting conor Coady? Spitting at girls clown

Seriously? What a fckin joke

 

[jimmygrimblesboots]

Carragher says Coady better than Stones at the moment. You mean liverpool supporting conor Coady? Spitting at girls clown

If you asked Spit who split the atom he would say his Sammy Sign-on from Bootle , he thinks Murkyside is the centre of the universe , his opinions should only be considered for comedic value.

 

[knuckles]

Top Man Jack.

Just amazing, what a great guy!

 

[Spanishbob]

I missed this, but came across the exchange when going through the thread looking for something else. Apologies for responding only so belatedly.

Anyway, I think it must be you he's referring to, having constructed an artificial story around the facts to make himself sound like a great investigative reporter. I remember you sharing the link to that information with me at the time and then you discussing it on here. It stretches credulity for him to claim that he had a "whistleblower" at the same time alerting him to remarkably similar information about Etihad funding only GBP 8 million of the City sponsorship.

But Harris presents the information with a crucial difference from the way it was disclosed in the documents that you found. As you've said, those were filed in the New York District Court with regard to the Open Skies case and, in them, it was said that it was the Abu Dhabi government that was footing the bill for all but GBP 8 million of Etihad's City contract. Mr Sporting Intelligence (arf!) follows up by averring without qualification that: "... the rest [of the sponsorship money] was being paid in disguised – and banned – funding via other entities controlled by Sheikh Mansour".

As we've done to death on here, the Abu Dhabi government and all manifestations thereof including agencies or other bodies under its aegis are most definitely not "controlled by Sheikh Mansour". Moreover, although ownership has recently passed to ADQ, a sovereign investment fund, the Abu Dhabi government was then Etihad's sole shareholder. It's not an uncommon practice, in jurisdictions all over the world, for a significant shareholder to meet certain of a company's expenses. It categorically isn't a corollary that such a move inevitably evidences wrongdoing, and it's irrelevant in the context of UEFA's FFP.

So has fearless Nick, through his "whistleblower", uncovered an example of a state-owned Abu Dhabi company perjuring itself in an American court by filing documents giving a false account of its financial practices to disguise Mansour's funding of City? That would be a hell of a scoop, for sure.

Let's be honest, though: the chances are vanishingly small. It's not remotely tenable that the executives at Etihad would risk the potentially calamitous consequences of the company taking such a course of action, with no ostensible benefit to its position in the case at hand, simply to protect our high-profile but ultimately rather minor cog in Abu Dhabi's colossal investment wheel.

So why would the estimable Nick make such an incendiary claim? Well, one possibility is that his "whistleblower" misled him and he, in good faith, took the source's word. As the assertions were of highly dubious veracity, did he act in good faith, merely being gullible? Maybe so. It would presuppose that his knowledge of the financial and business side of sport is overwhelmingly shakier than he groundlessly flatters himself, but he's demonstrated this on countless occasions in the past. Even a High Court judge declined to designate him as an "expert" in the field!

But there's another, more troubling possibility: are we dealing with something more malign? Surely Harris couldn't, shamelessly and intentionally, be a serial purveyor of manifest untruths, could he? The circumstances surrounding his claims over the Etihad contract suggest that if he isn't a liar, he's just thick. I'll leave it to you to decide which one is closer to the mark, noting only that they aren't mutually exclusive.

I've banged on at length about this, as I'm wont to do, but I make no apology for it. The episode shows exactly what City have been up against for many years. The club claimed that the CAS cased resulted from an "organised and clear" attempt to cause the club irreparable damage. Reptiles like this guy and Delaney were egging UEFA on with glee, trying to set a media agenda with fundamentally flawed reporting. It's crucial we don't forget what they are.

TL, DR - Nick Harris is a ****.

I need to get my pocket collins dictionary out just to keep up with what you have spoken. But got the jist. Is that the rite spelling. :-)

 

[eversince 76]

Great personality Jack Grealish.

 

[Spanishbob]

Whilst sewing my socks today( I’m a poor pensioner) i was harking back to when we got took over in 2008 and thinking at the time we are stuffy bastards winning the lottery. But deep inside I thought we had not so much cheated but not quite earned where we are now because of the money push we had got. But thank Christ there are people on here that dispelled that feeling when I found out by more learned experts that we are in fact no different from the red tops who by certain means attained their status by similar means or has close to it has possible. So I suppose what I’m saying I’m quite content where we are and how it was expertly done. So fuck off the Moores family and fuck off spurs for giving the rags the idea in the first place and thank you spurs for fucking up the rags.

 

[Spanishbob]

Whilst sewing my socks today( I’m a poor pensioner) i was harking back to when we got took over in 2008 and thinking at the time we are stuffy bastards winning the lottery. But deep inside I thought we had not so much cheated but not quite earned where we are now because of the money push we had got. But thank Christ there are people on here that dispelled that feeling when I found out by more learned experts that we are in fact no different from the red tops who by certain means attained their status by similar means or has close to it has possible. So I suppose what I’m saying I’m quite content where we are and how it was expertly done. So fuck off the Moores family and fuck off spurs for giving the rags the idea in the first place and thank you spurs for fucking up the rags.

What I meant by spurs was them going public on the stock exchange and the rags thinking that’s a great idea and we will blow them out of the water with our 650 mill fans. Turned out well didn’t it.:-)