PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

Dinas said:
You're right - the standard of reporting is abysmal. Right the way through from web articles written by kids (or so it seems) to so-called quality broad sheets. The quality of writing is superior in the latter but the content is normally biased and uninformative. It all adds up to provide fodder for belligerent key warriors to do their stuff on social media and turn the whole football community against us. Why haven't any of these analysed the charges like our legal and financial colleagues on here - pointing out that there are really 4/5 charges and not 115. That would be good analytical writing making a contribution to what is a complex subject. But of course they would prefer to trumpet the 115 charges so that social media dimwits can peddle the line of how can you not be guilty - some of these charges must be true. I get the fact that football is tribal and do not expect or want support from our red friends - but it is not unreasonable to expect the media to be informative and objective. I can honestly say I have only garnered information and perspectives from this thread - particularly those who have a legal and financial background and I am extremely grateful for all their efforts.
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Certainly the BBC News team have different levels and editorial standards to meet than the sports department. The former take pains to explain how stories that could be influenced by vested interests is 'verified'. Sports department say what they want, even ignoring known facts to smear shit.
 
tolmie's hairdoo said:
What did we do up to 2018, that cannot be included in the charge sheet up to the present date?

Didn't we change the way we paid image rights?

If so, is that an admission of guilt, or an agreement?
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As Man Ure, Newcastle and 3 others were found to have actually broken HMRC tax rules on Image rights in an actual HMRC investigation and had to pay up and cancel their existing deals then what have we done differently?
Oh yes we saw the way the wind was blowing and canceled our deal and retrospectively paid the tax we owed without a HMRC tax investigation. HMRC were happy with that.
We all know why the PL aren't
 
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tolmie's hairdoo said:
What did we do up to 2018, that cannot be included in the charge sheet up to the present date?

Didn't we change the way we paid image rights?

If so, is that an admission of guilt, or an agreement?
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The image right deal may have had a fixed duration.

Notwithstanding that, accounting is a wonderful profession. Two parties can account for an issue in completely different ways, both of them correct from an accounting point of view, but acceptable to one party for one reason and unacceptable to the other party for a different reason. What I am trying to say is that just because an accounting treatment was ended in negotiation with a third party doesn't mean that the original treatment was wrong, just that there was more than one way of accounting for it, and the other party, in this case a regulatory body, prefers the other way. Does that make any sense?

Btw, accountancy is a jungle, where men are real men ;)
 
Phoenix900000 said:
What I don't understand is surely other clubs in this league had done some kind of wrongdoing but we never hear or see a case being made about them.

Just pointing out
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I always used to say - regarding the Rags back in the day – absolute power corrupts absolutely... there has been many scandals regarding them out in the press from time-to-time, but they always got swept under the carpet (absolute power again?).
United and Liverpool will have been up to all sorts of shit in the past, but in the days of handwritten accounts and brown envelopes, the evidence of that will be hard to find/prove.
Now we live in a technical world, where everything's online and pricks can hack into your systems... and it's so easy to edit emails, photos etc... and add to that, the power of social media to be used as a tool to influence an opinion!
I hope that City learned a hard lesson from the UEFA accusations and have been getting their own shit about every other club in the league/CL so we can fuck them all over once we're cleared!
 
tolmie's hairdoo said:
What did we do up to 2018, that cannot be included in the charge sheet up to the present date?

Didn't we change the way we paid image rights?

If so, is that an admission of guilt, or an agreement?
Click to expand...
Apart from the non-cooperation charges, which go up to this financial year, that's the only information they have, as the Der Spiegel articles were published then. But the image rights arrangement appears to have ended in 2018, as Fordham stopped trading and our wage bill went up by a noticeable amount (c£50m). We also know UEFA discussed the Fordham arrangement with us in 2015.

My guess is that we weren't including it in the figures for player remuneration from 2013 to 2015 but did after that discussion with UEFA. I'd also guess that the c.£50m increase is about 3 or 4 years of the Fordham payments. That's complete speculation on my part but based on the amounts that seemed to be going through Fordham (which is difficult to see accurately as they didn't publish a P&L account). It's possible therefore that we 'transferred' the accumulated 2016-18 image rights payments back into our own books (but had reported it to UEFA after 2015 assuming we hadn't before).

That'd be my guess but, if I'm right you'd have to ask why UEFA didn't bring charges for that? On the surface failing to report around £15m a year (give or take a couple of million), might seem a pretty egregious breach of FFP. They almost certainly had us bang to rights, yet didn't charge us even after Der Spiegel had published the arrangement. It's possible that we argued it was an entirely personal payment to the players, which while clubs generally paid it directly, we'd legally assigned the rights to a third-party (Fordham), received a consideration for that and that it was a matter between Fordham and the players after that. That still begs the question, what did Fordham get out of it?

But UEFA's lawyers could have looked at it and thought that, while it was rather 'cute', it didn't actually break any rules and there was little or no prospect of successfully arguing the case (and they wouldn't have known about CAS at that point).

I've always said that the sponsorships/related party issue and the Mancini contract are red herrings, blind alleys, whatever you want ot call them but that Fordham was probably the most questionable. But if it was that questionable then I'm sure UEFA would have charged us, which is why I'd question the chances of the PL succeeding.

UEFA took 3 or 4 months from the publication of the Der Spiegel articles to the CFCB issuing the 2-season ban. The PL has taken over 4 years and come up with not very much. The haste with which they appeared to issue the charges, and the subsequent withdrawal of some because they'd completely messed up, plus the rumours that Levy was allegedly pressuring them just before they were issued, suggests to me they knew they had very little but decided to go ahead anyway, as it least it muddied the waters.
 
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tolmie's hairdoo said:
What did we do up to 2018, that cannot be included in the charge sheet up to the present date?

Didn't we change the way we paid image rights?

If so, is that an admission of guilt, or an agreement?
Click to expand...
Didn't Prestwich_Blue say that the image rights details were on public record... and the company set up to pay them was listed on Company's House, and again in the public demain for all to see...
...if so, it's not as if the Club was hiding anything!?
 
dario2739 said:
Didn't Prestwich_Blue say that the image rights details were on public record... and the company set up to pay them was listed on Company's House, and again in the public demain for all to see...
...if so, it's not as if the Club was hiding anything!?
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1684928161684.png

We really tried hard to cover our tracks.
 
I keep on hearing that we pay Haaland £835k a week more than double what anyone else was prepared to pay, do people seriously believe this?

I know he is a top class player but really.

Lets assume that Madrid offered him £400k a week, he is a known City fan who had the chance to play for us, not only that but also to play under Pep and with a genuine chance of clearing up a serious amount of silverware over the next 5 years. With this in mind do people really think that we topped it up by another £435k on top just to make sure we got him.

And that's before we talk about the supposed £50 million signing on fee split between him and Alfie.

The same people then claim he will walk away from this to go and play for Madrid in a couple of years, almost like they can't decide which bullshit to believe.
 
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