PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[applecentral]

I think it was Peter Drury, I’m not certain though.

Or his brother Ian.

 

[Bez]

I find that all the more remarkable that out of the millions of emails there are only an isolated handful taken out of context and at times spliced together, that are supposedly the smoking gun.
I do find that mind boggling that this is the basis of a case against City.

It doesn’t surprise me, but it always seemed like clutching at straws to me.

Having said that I do think we’ve already lost and the objective of our detractors has been achieved.

There is no proof of innocence. It’s immaterial. I’m growing to hate this game the more I learn about it.

The only victory that would change this for me is for us to get a counter message out there to fans of the rest of the league that a cartel is running this show and the rest of the league are just complicit puppets.

I don’t see that happening though.

I agree. The game has become more odious in recent years. Too much money and too many egos.

At least Pep has called out the big clubs. That message has landed and I think some people have taken note, for now at least.

 

[MillisleBlue]

Still reckon the likelihood of a fair trial is somewhere between zero and fuck all. Wonder if that's a possible angle for our legal folk?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

If there was anything untoward why didn't uefa go after it Colin?

UEFA were aware of the arrangement apparently and had discussions with us about it. The arrangement seems to have ended in 2018 but UEFA seems to have been satisfied that it wasn't an attempt to deceive FFP. So they seemingly had concerns but not enough to make it a breach of FFP.

Hence they didn't pursue it. It's all in that Reuters article linked to above. Reading that, I'm even more confident this is going nowhere.

 

[Ric]

This is the relevant bit from the Reuters’ article that Colin mentions above:

UEFA investigators, tasked with making sure clubs complied with Financial Fair Play rules, examined the image rights arrangement. In June 2015, UEFA’s Club Financial Control Body told Man City in a letter that the club could not offload costs via the MIR deal. The control body required the club to take back into its accounts more than 10 million pounds in image rights payments a year.

The evidence submitted by the club “did not provide the necessary comfort … about the economic rationale of the transactions,” the letter said. UEFA’s control body did not say in the letter that Man City had intended to evade its Financial Fair Play rules or deceive it.

UEFA’s control body ultimately did allow the club to retain the benefit of the 24.5 million pounds it received for selling the rights. UEFA’s control body did not disclose the reasons for that decision. The 24.5 million boost to its income helped the club comply with UEFA rules limiting the amount of losses clubs can incur.

 

[abu13]

If I am understanding this correctly we are basically being accused of submitting fraudulant accounts, but if we can prove that what we have done is within the UK law then it is irrelevant how we move money around the organisation.

I just get the feeling that since we were taken over the whole business model of football club ownership has been redefined. We have truly global business men making decisions based on current best practice. As long as what we have done is legal then I don't see any reason why we would lose this case.

I just can't believe that with the scrutiny we have been under from day 1 that no accountants or auditors have challenged our methods. If they were in any doubt there is no way they would have signed them off.

 

[aguero93:20]

I don’t know.
How much is a loaf in MCFC.

Never seen Tesco run out of chips.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

So why do you think there’s 4 Rowland owned businesses on the corporate structure sheet?

I never said Fordham’s existence was disguised, the allegation is that the money came from ADUG via the Rowlands 4 companies and it’s that which seem to be getting disguised.

Well all thr money ended up in Fordham SIR eventually. And as I said, UEFA were aware of it and discussed it with City. I think it said in 2015 in that Reuters piece, so that was well before the Der Spiegel articles. They told us that we couldn't offload costs via FSIR.

If that's the case then this came up as a result of the 2014 settlement, so it wasn't news to UEFA in 2018.

 

[wolviedinho]

It’s possible that City kept papers back as they didn’t want our rivals to see our strategy rather than anything illegal. City didn’t disclose all the documents to UEFA and then gave them all to CAS. If I remember correctly CAS fined City because they thought, had the papers been disclosed earlier, it may not have reached CAS in the first place.

Seems like we’ve done the same again. Why hand over documents to your rivals when you have done nothing wrong. Wait for the independent panel and then produce them.

I even think I heard Pep say “wait, we have a lot more documents” When it comes to it out comes the “irrefutable evidence”

We are all speculating but we do have a past example of City’s strategy. It’s reasonable to think we just follow the winning formula of last time.

Thats my theory. It’s not clever or based on law, but it is what happened last time. In my job, if I don’t understand something complicated (all the time) I look for a previous example and try to copy it!

My money is on us.

At the expense of our reputation as a football club? I agree with you but it’s a hard pill to swallow.

 

[journolud]

I don’t know.
How much is a loaf in MCFC.

Well there’s the advertised ticket price and then the under the counter extras