Media thread 2022/23

Status
Not open for further replies.
I thought Sam Lee gave a fairly balanced view on Football Focus.

The most interesting comment came when he said that the public confidence that City are showing is exactly as it is behind the scenes. This was good to hear and good that plenty of neutrals watching this will have seen it.
 
Personally never felt it so toxic as it is now. Been called just about everything you could imagine for basically daring to be a city fan this week and refuse to tow the line about city being obviously guilty. It's absolutely wild. People really need to give their heads a wobble.
 
Elbow beards said:
Oh goody, they've got Sam lee on football focus. Ffs
Click to expand...
Don't normally watch FF but as I put the telly on it was on, I just caught the last bit of our segment.

I thought it was Sam Lee and looking at the other two feared the worst but, he actually seemed to have a balanced argument and certainly shut the other 3 up.
 
Ric said:
Comments about her intelligence (or lack of) are fine, we haven’t said differently as far as I’m aware? Stuff about her private life, or just calling her a “stupid fucking woman” etc, is what we don’t want on here.
Click to expand...

So perhaps " a female presenter with very limited charisma, delivery or in-depth knowledge of anything connected with football,apart from Liverpool FC, would appear to be very fortunate to have secured such a high profile position within the Sky Sports hierarchy " ?
 
petrusha said:
This is going to be a very long post, and no doubt excruciatingly dull for the vast majority of posters on here. Nonetheless, when it's completed, I'll hit reply, having spent a big chunk of my Saturday morning on it, because I think it's helpful to try to clear the issue up when there seem to be differing interpretations of just how serious the charges brought by the PL will be seen to be when the issues behind them are known.

In the post quoted above, the assertions that I've bolded might be correct. Not only don't we know what evidence the PL has in order to substantiate the charges against us, but the PL hasn't even seen fit to provide the slightest detail regarding what the charges relate to.

Nonetheless, I personally consider that the chances of such an analysis proving correct are very slim. Of necessity, for it to be right in the light of what was said (which I quote below) by the CAS Panel in 2020 in the proceedings regarding the charges brought by UEFA against City, the PL's current charges must be completely unrelated to the accusations UEFA made against the club. I don't buy that.

Reports by journalists with extremely close connections to the most influential clubs reportedly pressing the PL to investigate and charge City have indicated that the purpose behind those exhortations has been to attempt to cover once more aspects of the case that UEFA prosecuted incompetently (in the meddlers’ view) before the CAS and to catch matters that might have been time-barred in the CAS proceedings. In the light of this, I think that by far the more reasonable conjecture is that the essence of the charges UEFA brought is replicated in the new charges.

So let's look at the CAS's award dated 13 July 2020 and see what the Panel itself, comprising three highly eminent and extremely experienced practitioners, thought of UEFA's charges.

Para 206 of the Award states as follows: "The Panel is satisfied to accept that the allegations in these proceedings are particularly severe. It not only concerns alleged arrangements between MCFC and ADUG as its main shareholder but also Etihad as one of its principal sponsors, concerning equity funding being disguised as sponsorship contributions over a significant period of time, resulting in an influx of relevant income for monitoring purposes, with the consequence that it could spend significantly more money (more than GBP 200,000,000) than it would have been able to spend without such arrangements."

In para 207 of the Award, the Panel notes that the alleged conduct described in para 206 would constitute dishonest concealment. Importantly, it then goes on to equate such dishonest concealment to corruption, noting that an approach developed in CAS jurisprudence with regard to matters of corruption is: "... not only applicable to cases involving corruption, but also to cases concerning an alleged dishonest concealment of equity funding as sponsorship contributions ...".

Further, looking at the skeletal information so far given by the PL of what the charges involve, it seems extremely difficult to conceive of a situation in which the accusations are true but City's accounts haven't been fabricated in a material way. The charges involve the provision of false financial information over a period of nearly a decade, and the prospect seems negligible that we could have done that but nonetheless have prepared and filed true and accurate accounts throughout that time.

Here, let me quote the opinion of @projectriver, whose knowledge of the legal aspects of City’s regulatory difficulties comfortably exceeds that of any other poster on here and that of any 'expert' I've seen in the media. He's read all the available relevant materials, for a start, which fact on its own seems to put him ahead of almost every other 'expert' commentator in terms of being qualified to deliver opinions.

In case anyone doubts his experience and abilities, I take the liberty of outlining Stefan's credentials in a post that he himself made on Tuesday, 8 February: "[I am] someone who personally led the defence of major false accounting claims in civil proceedings, prosecuted a civil claim for negligence against an auditor and for over 5 years led the (successful) defence of a public company being investigated by the SFO".

As for substantive assessments, Stefan said the following in posts on this forum on Tuesday, 8 February: "It is an ALLEGATION of wholesale false accounting over 9 seasons." Later the same morning, he wrote: "They are, in effect, claiming City deceived the PL, their auditors and multiple other bodies and filed fake accounts and fake financial forecasts. For at least 9 years."

So, assuming we're going over many of the same allegations made by UEFA and played out before the CAS, how should those be characterised? Well, the CAS made a comparison between corruption and the level of dishonesty that would have been involved had such a set of events occurred. And if we look at the criminal law in England and Wales, there's plenty of evidence there, too, as to just how serious these matters are.

The principal piece of legislation relating to criminal liability for fraud and obtaining services dishonestly is the Fraud Act 2006. However, more relevant for our purposes is section 17 of the Theft Act 1968, which relates to the criminal offence of false accounting. After all, where a relevant specific offence exists, it's proper to look at that rather than a similar but more general offence.

Section 17(1)(b) of the 1968 Act provides that a person "shall, on conviction on indictment, be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years" if that person "dishonestly, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another" when he "in furnishing information for any purpose produces or makes use of any account, or any such record or document as aforesaid, which to his knowledge is or may be misleading, false or deceptive in a material particular".

I'm not claiming that City's directors would necessarily face prosecution for this offence even if the PL’s Panel makes an adverse finding against us. When to prosecute for this offence is a complex issue that was debated at some length on here in response to a post of mine back in the context of the CAS proceedings. I don't want to reopen that discussion.

For now, I simply note that I see no reasonable interpretation of the CAS Panel's description of UEFA's accusations that doesn't, on a word-by-word analysis, meet the definition of false accounting under section 17 of the 1968 Act on the part of MCFC's directors. In other words, UEFA implicitly suggested criminality on the part of officers of the club.

The CAS Award backs this up. In para 254, the Panel expressly acknowledges that to find City guilty "would require a conclusion that the evidence of several high-ranking officials of large international commercial enterprises [both inside and outside MCFC] were false and that at least [one, possibly more] would be subject to criminal sanctions". Thus, the thrust of UEFA's allegations is absolutely clear. Until presented with evidence to the contrary, we're entitled to infer that the PL's charges entail similar issues.

It's also worth discussing whether 'fraud' is a loaded term that we should avoid in this context. I submit that it isn't. First, though the body of the criminal offence of fraud under English law entails specific factors listed in the Fraud Act 2006, the term has common currency in standard English. Oxford Languages, publishers of the OED, define fraud as "wrongful or criminal deception intended to result in financial or personal gain".

I don't believe that, on a message board where most people aren't lawyers, we need to shy away from using words in their standard English meaning when there's also a more narrow or specific legal meaning. And in the standard English meaning, that's exactly what UEFA accused us of (see para 206 of the CAS Award) and what the PL presumably has, too.

But even if we should only use the term 'fraud' if there's a legal ground to do so, one exists by virtue of the Theft Act 1968. If we look at the Table of Contents of the 1968 Act, we see what heading covers the section of the Act in which false accounting falls and remember that the description of that offence is technically a match for the conduct of City's directors had UEFA's allegations been proven as well as presumably for the PL's charges.

The heading in question reads 'Fraud and blackmail'. Well, blackmail plainly isn't relevant here, so we're left with a clear suggestion that fraud is. In other words, we can infer that the 1968 Act, in the form in which it's still in force, regards false accounting as a particular form of fraud.

For all the reasons I've stated, I think it's highly likely that the substance of the PL's allegations against City are as serious as it would be possible for them to be. Furthermore, I regard the use of terms such as 'dishonest concealment', 'false accounting' and 'fraud' in this context to be highly justified. It seems rather fanciful to me to argue that only a few administrative breaches are at play, and at worst we'll receive a slap-on-the-wrist fine, being told to go away and be good boys and girls in future.

The odds, strongly, are that our club's in an existential fight for its future, at least in terms of its ability able to compete at the very top of the English and European game. That doesn't mean we have to slash our wrists and I think there are some grounds for us to be bullish - but that's for another post another time. In the meantime, nor do I think we should doubt the probable severity of the allegations made against us. Deluding ourselves is ultimately unhelpful.

For now, let’s enjoy the rest of Saturday. And let’s hope the players show a bit of the passion Pep did yesterday and take out all of our frustrations on Villa with a good performance and a win tomorrow afternoon.
Click to expand...
Excellent as always, Peter, if somewhat sombre in tone. Glad you made the "bullish" reference towards the end. Your contributions, along with those of Stefan and PB, are much appreciated. Let's hope we the team shows up on Sunday. We all need a lift.
 
twosips said:
Personally never felt it so toxic as it is now. Been called just about everything you could imagine for basically daring to be a city fan this week and refuse to toe the line about city being obviously guilty. It's absolutely wild. People really need to give their heads a wobble.
Click to expand...
Reading through some of the commentary on social media, YouTube etc it’s like some sort of gathering place for total morons. Some comments are fucking unbelievable. Like an IQ test in reverse.
(I thought you did great on TV by the way so if you’re getting extra stick I’d take it as a compliment !)
 
blue b4 the moon said:
Don't normally watch FF but as I put the telly on it was on, I just caught the last bit of our segment.

I thought it was Sam Lee and looking at the other two feared the worst but, he actually seemed to have a balanced argument and certainly shut the other 3 up.
Click to expand...
To be fair we are quick to jump on him when he writes or tweets something,but he’s been fair here and give both points of the argument,which makes a change ..
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Great post as ever Peter but I've a couple of observations.

'Fraud' surely implies that a person or group of people took a conscious decision to hide something from the accounts that should not have been hidden. My ex-bosses conspired to hide large claims at the insurance company they were directors of. That inflated profits and gave a completely false view of the company's liabilities. They went to jail for a total of 14 years.

If City senior execs knowingly did something similar, you can't possibly condone that and they would deserve punishment if so. However, my view at the moment, based on what I know from the UEFA/CAS case, is that many decisions were taken (including deciding to withhold cooperation) after careful legal & financial advice.

The law and financial decisions are always based on opinion around stated laws or standards, so an opinion may not be regarded as correct or right when examined in court. But I'm assuming we took advice on everything we did regarding Mancini's contract and image rights. I assume that Mancini was told that he had to perform the duties outlined in the Al Jazira contract.

The point is that being given and acting on well-meant advice, which was backed by legislation or precedent, is not fraud. Of someone says "That's not legal but they'll never find it" then that's a completely different matter of course.

And a question about limitations occurred to me when writing my KOTK article yesterday that maybe you or another lawyer can answer. The Limitations Act specifies a standard 6-year period for claims. I believe this doesn't apply where criminal acts are involved. But I'm presuming that the PL Commission won't be in a position to state whether there is any criminal element or not. So how can they justify going back to 2009/10? Is it enough for them to say they think there may be a possibility of a criminal act having potentially been committed?
Click to expand...

I'm about to go out but will deal with this quickly.

The accusation the CAS regarded as one of dishonest concealment, concerned the Etihad sponsorship and in particular presenting a number of injections of equity funds by Mansour as sponsorship . There was no question in the proceedings of City having done what was alleged, but in good faith following the advice of reputable lawyers or accountants. The defence was that we didn't do it. Full stop.

The CAS agreed with us, but had we been guilty, IMO that conduct by our directors would have corresponded to the body of the offence of false accounting. It would have been dishonest (sophisticated businesspeople like them know the rules for stuff like this) and it would have been with a view to gain (allowing the club to spend £200 million that otherwise wouldn't have counted as income for FFP as referred to in para 206 of the CAS Award). It would have occurred through our using various sets of accounts the directors knew to be "misleading, false or deceptive" given that those sets of accounts would've collectively misrepresented the true nature of £200 million of equity funding.
I would suggest that the PL over the last few years, pushed by our rivals, has been desperately seeking evidence in its investigation to enable it to have another go on the Etihad sponsorship point. It would seem crazy for the PL to charge us on this issue if there's no more evidence than went before the CAS. Either, then, the Etihad matter doesn't underpin any of the PL charges or, as I suspect given that our rivals' client journos continue to insinuate that the Etihad deal is dodgy, they've found something which they think makes it worth another crack. We'll see.

With regard to matters where we would have followed the advice of reputable professionals, I think you're right that this would be unlikely to constitute false accounting or another dishonesty-based offence. If we thought we were doing things that were perfectly proper in legal and accounting terms, the element of dishonesty would be absent.

As for the limitation point, what will be relevant is section 32 of the 1980 Act, which allows for the limitation period to be postponed in case of fraud, concealment or mistake. I suspect that the PL would be looking to section 32(1)(b), and claiming that the limitation period should be extended because we concealed matters on which a claim would have been based. Thus the limitation period would run from when the PL became aware of the matter in question. Mancini's consultancy contract with Al-Jazira might be an example where they'd argue this.

Here's a news item on the website of the international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, which deals with a case where a claimant failed to persuade a court to extend the limitation period on this ground. You'll see that, in reaching its decision, the court pointed to two factors that have been cited in case law as particularly important criteria when considering this issue.

The following is a direct quotation from the Norton Rose Fulbright piece:

The court drew out two (closely related) points from the established case law on s.32(1)(b) LA 1980 important to the case:
  1. Claimants must meet the “statement of claim” test, which requires the facts which have been concealed to be those which are essential for a claimant to prove in order to establish a prima facie case. The test is not met if the relevant fact merely makes a claimant’s case stronger.
  2. There is a need to distinguish between concealed evidence which merely supports an allegation essential to the cause of action, on the one hand, and concealed facts without which the claim is incomplete, on the other.
I'm not an expert in this area by any means, but my first instinct reading the above is that we might struggle with regard to something like Mancini's contract.

I hope this is useful, but if you need more, let me know by PM and I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, must dash.
 
Time to put a permanent end to this thread.

I said exactly the same after UEFA banned us and the media threw ‘GUILTY!’ at us three years ago, and I’m saying it again (I’ve actually been saying it for well over a decade!)…

We should fucking not be giving a platform for free advertising for these sycophantic cunts to have their articles given exposure and clicks.

I have no idea how or why you all do it to yourselves. All you’re doing is winding yourselves up and by giving them the platform and exposure, you’re partly giving them the drive to keep doing it.

Bring a City fan is a much nicer experience when you pay fucking no attention whatsoever to the media.

Don’t buy Sky packages, don’t buy BT, stop paying your TV Licence, stop listening to the phone-ins and to talkSPORT, stop watching SSN, don’t buy/suscribe/read newspapers… none of them deserve our money!

Aha
Woah oh
We’re gonna get along without you now.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
twosips said:
Personally never felt it so toxic as it is now. Been called just about everything you could imagine for basically daring to be a city fan this week and refuse to tow the line about city being obviously guilty. It's absolutely wild. People really need to give their heads a wobble.
Click to expand...

It will be even worse if/when City are found innocent of the main charges.
 
Not that I've read them but there has been article after article and pundit after pundit saying what will happen if City are found guilty.

Has there been anything/anyone wondering what happens if we are found innocent? What happens to the PL, will there be criticism of the other teams for pushing this investigation?
 
OB1 said:
I didn't find your post dull but I do need to comment on one point where you state:

When talking about filing accounts, the correct term is true and fair and there is reference to that in the EPL announcement of charges.

The distinction between fair and accurate is very important and I am not going to get into a long discussion of that as it will bore but - odd as it may seem to laymen - there is no requirement under law to file totally accurate accounts. In fact, it's almost fucking impossible with any sizeable business.

Fair does though mean that accounts should be materially correct - and materiality varies depending on circumstances.

Fair also means that transactions have been reported appropriately and that is where trouble might arise for City, as I guess the EPL are going to try and argue that transactions not in City's books, and which legally were not required to be, should have been reported - at least in some way - to the EPL.

Good luck with proving such a thing (obviously I don't actually wish the EPL anything but the worst of fortune). I very much doubt that all the various auditors involved have not done sufficient work to ensure that their clients' account were not true and fair under the relevant laws of the land.

The EPL look like they may be wishing to redefine the meaning of true and fair and other accepted accounting terms such as related party.

I hope that City's lawyers can ultimately put them in their place on that score. If not, then it could indeed lead to very serious punishment but I have to beleive that right will prevail and City will win: as I have send many time, in maby ways, this is a fight against protectionism of a particularly awful (red and green) hue.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this. I'm aware of the point, but this is what one gets when rushing as I was when writing this morning and you're right to point it out. 'True and accurate' is something I'm used to writing in other contexts. The PL certainly does seem to be trying to change widely accepted accounting rules in an idiosyncratic way to protect the narrow self-interests of a grasping and entitled minority of its member clubs. I too hope that City prevail and think our doing so would serve the interests of justice.

Blumooniac said:
Excellent as always, Peter, if somewhat sombre in tone. Glad you made the "bullish" reference towards the end. Your contributions, along with those of Stefan and PB, are much appreciated. Let's hope we the team shows up on Sunday. We all need a lift.
Click to expand...

Funnily enough, I woke up this morning intending to write a different post altogether - one along the lines of why I still back the powers that be at MCFC (even though I wish they'd show some meaningful sign of appreciating what it seems fashionable now to call the legacy fans!). However, I just thought that it would be a bit dangerous if the idea takes hold that we don't have too much to worry about. IMO, we need to be aware at all times of what they're trying to do to us.

I suppose that the more sobering post followed whenever I find the time by one that might set out a few more grounds for optimism is the right way round to address it, though, so I guess it's for the best.
 
twosips said:
Personally never felt it so toxic as it is now. Been called just about everything you could imagine for basically daring to be a city fan this week and refuse to toe the line about city being obviously guilty. It's absolutely wild. People really need to give their heads a wobble.
Click to expand...
Exactly the reason why Pep coming out firing yesterday was needed, as others have alluded to, not every City fan is in their twenty’s fighting fit with a gob like Lilly savage, no doubt this was a welcome remedy for a good few, even kids in the school yard are getting it
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top