Just to take the Mancini issue, it’s even more complicated than that. It’s already in the public domain that Mancini had a contract with Al Jazirah to do a certain amount of coaching For which he would be paid a certain amount of money. A contract, as you know, is a legally binding agreement that one party will do X and the other party will do Y. So City’s defence to that particular charge should be as simple as pointing to the contract and then saying “there you go, he was employed by AJ, not us.”
Which is almost certainly exactly what did happen during the 4 year PL investigation. But the PL is nonetheless alleging that payments apparently made pursuant to a legally binding agreement between RM and AJ were actually made by us. And we then concealed that arrangement in our accounts.
This inherently involves an allegation that the AJ contract was a sham. It is no small thing to allege that a contract is a sham. It is an allegation of dishonesty, one that has to be made against not only MCFC but also RM and AJ too. It is an allegation that requires a substantial weight of evidence before it can be made out.
So the PL charge is based on what evidence exactly? Absolutely nothing that is in the public domain at least. I stress I know no more about the facts of all this than everyone else, based on what is already in the public domain. What I do know is that on this issue the PL has got an absolute mountain to climb in legal terms and they appear not to have a scrap of evidence to help them on their way.
