PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

SilverFox2 said:
I think that the same applies to the legal Panel PL have chosen to examine our 115 charges.
Anything other than complete fairness will ruin their non football careers.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that there is more to our involvement with the ESL than meets the eye in that it wasn't a simple misjudgement, but not on this point.

The rules don't give a right of appeal for a reason. Who is going to suggest that it isn't "fair" if the judgement finds against us. It would be met with universal approbation across the media and the people concerned would be feted as the "saviours of football".
 
halfcenturyup said:
Our guys do billion dollar deals every week. I doubt they have ever (at least I hope they have never) done one without understanding exactly what they were getting into. That is the part that is missing for me.

Khaldoon never said they didn't understand what they were doing, iirc, just that it was a mistake. There is a huge disconnect there which I would really like to know more about but never will, I suppose.
Click to expand...
It's quite simple really. I was told, very reliably, that Soriano had been planning for City joining a Super League for a few years. So when the opportunity came, we jumped at it even though we weren't part of the founding group.

Then (a) we found out we weren't being offered an equal deal and (b) there was a fan backlash. It'd be nice to think that we went in solely with the aim of screwing it up for the US-owned clubs but, sadly, I suspect the financial deal was the killer.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
It's quite simple really. I was told, very reliably, that Soriano had been planning for City joining a Super League for a few years. So when the opportunity came, we jumped at it even though we weren't part of the founding group.

Then (a) we found out we weren't being offered an equal deal and (b) there was a fan backlash. It'd be nice to think that we went in solely with the aim of screwing it up for the US-owned clubs but, sadly, I suspect the financial deal was the killer.
Click to expand...

Seriously ? "We jumped at it", signed an Agreement and allowed Glazer to put out a press statement which we published on our website, even though we had no idea of the terms we'd be getting ? That just doesn't ring true to me.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
It's quite simple really. I was told, very reliably, that Soriano had been planning for City joining a Super League for a few years. So when the opportunity came, we jumped at it even though we weren't part of the founding group.

Then (a) we found out we weren't being offered an equal deal and (b) there was a fan backlash. It'd be nice to think that we went in solely with the aim of screwing it up for the US-owned clubs but, sadly, I suspect the financial deal was the killer.
Click to expand...

Do you know the extent of any due diligence PB, surely the club didn't just sign up without understanding the consequences? Pretty amazing, and a little concerning, if it's the latter. And neither of us like Soriano very much, and it certainly has his lack of understanding of the fanbase all over it, but he couldn't have done this on his own. It must have been approved? It's all a very strange story given the perception of how professionally the Board normally operates.
 
petrusha said:
Obviously, I'm not going to leave this without some kind of response. What I'd say is that, when discussing legal issues, words matter and there may well be reasons why lawyers choose the formulations they do.

I've quoted at length the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1996, which is the only basis under which aspects of this arbitration procedure can end up being litigated in the courts of the land. In the light of that, I find idiotic and comical one poster's assertion yesterday that the discussion on recourse to the courts that had developed throughout the day could be based on "simply bad information". My comments were based on, and quoted freely from, the Act of Parliament that's relevant to the situation, which is as sound a source of information as could be cited.

The Arbitration Act 1996 was conceived and drafted, and now operates, to enshrine the principle that parties who've agreed to arbitrate any dispute that arises between them (as City and the PL in effect have) should receive an outcome determined by that arbitration process. The general legal position is that they shouldn't then get a second chance to go to court, when they've already agreed with one another to exclude that method of resolving disputes. Only in rare and exceptional circumstances does the Act allow a departure from that principle.

This is simply a matter of fact and I disagree that a better way to explain the right to appeal would be to say that there IS a right of appeal in certain, unlikely circumstances. The difference is certainly nuanced but nonetheless IMO significant and the way I've described it deliberately reflects the way that a court would approach the issue. People may want reassurance in this situation but they if they expect me to frame things in a way I'm unhappy with just to make others on this board feel better, then they're going to be disappointed.

Ironically, I started out in the discussion yesterday thinking that I was providing reassurance in that posters were saying that the final PL ruling could blatantly shaft us and we had no chance of an appeal to the courts. I think in certain circumstances we could have, and I hoped that might provide a degree of comfort to posters by saying so. But it's extremely difficult to prevail in those circumstances and I'd be doing no one any favours by failing to stress that.

In addition, I'm cautious because I've been posting on City message boards since discovering the original Blue View back in 1996, half a lifetime ago, and have long since discovered that a small proportion (but a surprisingly large number in absolute terms) of internet users are utter cunts. I've received unwarranted personal abuse in the past when people have claimed that postings crafted in the most optimistic way possible misled them despite my including all necessary caveats. I prefer not to have this happen again if I can avoid it.

Now, as it happens, I'm relatively sanguine about our prospects based solely on the little information that's so far in the public domain. As I've already said more than once, I think that the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1996 do afford us sufficient rights to keep a PL panel relatively honest given that they know that we'll be making every possible use of each opportunity to go to the High Court that any errors or bias on their own part may allow us.

If people want other grounds for optimism, they can find them in the discussions of a need for a particularly "cogent" standard of evidence given the nature of the allegations and of a need for the PL to prove fraud or concealment so that the general limitation period stipulated by the Limitation Act 1980 wouldn't apply. There's been considerable discussion of these points further back in this thread. I appreciate that non-lawyers may not remember the salient reasoning, but the search function should enable anyone who's interested to find the relevant posts.

However, ultimately we know very little about the charges against us. The whole process is so far being conducted in such a way that it's easy for hostile media outlets and venal commercial rivals to smear us without the club being able to defend itself in the court of public opinion or City fans being able to reassure ourselves as to the prospects for the overall proceedings. I don't see we have any real alternative but to suck that up, unfortunately.
Click to expand...
When you say 'hostile media outlets', don't you simply mean 'media outlets'?
:)

It's always really good to read informed opinions on any subject, btw. Thanks for taking the time to post.
 
petrusha said:
Obviously, I'm not going to leave this without some kind of response. What I'd say is that, when discussing legal issues, words matter and there may well be reasons why lawyers choose the formulations they do.

I've quoted at length the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1996, which is the only basis under which aspects of this arbitration procedure can end up being litigated in the courts of the land. In the light of that, I find idiotic and comical one poster's assertion yesterday that the discussion on recourse to the courts that had developed throughout the day could be based on "simply bad information". My comments were based on, and quoted freely from, the Act of Parliament that's relevant to the situation, which is as sound a source of information as could be cited.

The Arbitration Act 1996 was conceived and drafted, and now operates, to enshrine the principle that parties who've agreed to arbitrate any dispute that arises between them (as City and the PL in effect have) should receive an outcome determined by that arbitration process. The general legal position is that they shouldn't then get a second chance to go to court, when they've already agreed with one another to exclude that method of resolving disputes. Only in rare and exceptional circumstances does the Act allow a departure from that principle.

This is simply a matter of fact and I disagree that a better way to explain the right to appeal would be to say that there IS a right of appeal in certain, unlikely circumstances. The difference is certainly nuanced but nonetheless IMO significant and the way I've described it deliberately reflects the way that a court would approach the issue. People may want reassurance in this situation but they if they expect me to frame things in a way I'm unhappy with just to make others on this board feel better, then they're going to be disappointed.

Ironically, I started out in the discussion yesterday thinking that I was providing reassurance in that posters were saying that the final PL ruling could blatantly shaft us and we had no chance of an appeal to the courts. I think in certain circumstances we could have, and I hoped that might provide a degree of comfort to posters by saying so. But it's extremely difficult to prevail in those circumstances and I'd be doing no one any favours by failing to stress that.

In addition, I'm cautious because I've been posting on City message boards since discovering the original Blue View back in 1996, half a lifetime ago, and have long since discovered that a small proportion (but a surprisingly large number in absolute terms) of internet users are utter cunts. I've received unwarranted personal abuse in the past when people have claimed that postings crafted in the most optimistic way possible misled them despite my including all necessary caveats. I prefer not to have this happen again if I can avoid it.

Now, as it happens, I'm relatively sanguine about our prospects based solely on the little information that's so far in the public domain. As I've already said more than once, I think that the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1996 do afford us sufficient rights to keep a PL panel relatively honest given that they know that we'll be making every possible use of each opportunity to go to the High Court that any errors or bias on their own part may allow us.

If people want other grounds for optimism, they can find them in the discussions of a need for a particularly "cogent" standard of evidence given the nature of the allegations and of a need for the PL to prove fraud or concealment so that the general limitation period stipulated by the Limitation Act 1980 wouldn't apply. There's been considerable discussion of these points further back in this thread. I appreciate that non-lawyers may not remember the salient reasoning, but the search function should enable anyone who's interested to find the relevant posts.

However, ultimately we know very little about the charges against us. The whole process is so far being conducted in such a way that it's easy for hostile media outlets and venal commercial rivals to smear us without the club being able to defend itself in the court of public opinion or City fans being able to reassure ourselves as to the prospects for the overall proceedings. I don't see we have any real alternative but to suck that up, unfortunately.
Click to expand...
I missed this post a month back but it's excellent work again bud.

"However, ultimately we know very little about the charges against us. The whole process is so far being conducted in such a way that it's easy for hostile media outlets and venal commercial rivals to smear us without the club being able to defend itself in the court of public opinion or City fans being able to reassure ourselves as to the prospects for the overall proceedings. I don't see we have any real alternative but to suck that up, unfortunately."

This part especially, all Blues should take note of. I'm the same, wanting to know everything now, but it's just not going to happen. It will get resolved when everything is finally sorted and even then we may not get all the information we want. We'll just have to accept it and move on with a 'cleared on all counts' verdict :)
 
Newman Noggs said:
Seriously ? "We jumped at it", signed an Agreement and allowed Glazer to put out a press statement which we published on our website, even though we had no idea of the terms we'd be getting ? That just doesn't ring true to me.
Click to expand...

halfcenturyup said:
Do you know the extent of any due diligence PB, surely the club didn't just sign up without understanding the consequences? Pretty amazing, and a little concerning, if it's the latter. And neither of us like Soriano very much, and it certainly has his lack of understanding of the fanbase all over it, but he couldn't have done this on his own. It must have been approved? It's all a very strange story given the perception of how professionally the Board normally operates.
Click to expand...
I don't know for sure what the process was, but I think we had to give a decision in principle initially, then we found out we would be second-class citizens once we'd agreed to join. We didn't have long to make that initial decision iirc.

Basically the financial playing field was rigged in favour of the usual suspects.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

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

SIGN UP
Back
Top
✖
  AdBlock Detected
Bluemoon relies on advertising to pay our hosting fees. Please support the site by disabling your ad blocking software to help keep the forum sustainable. Thanks.