This is what I cannot understand and what worries me. Why would they bring charges as serious as these unless they had compelling evidence and had taken legal advice beforehand
It used to be the case that to allege fraud in a civil law suit required stringent conditions to be met before the case even started (can’t remember the details as it’s years since I was in practice) but I think Counsel (barrister) had to sign off or something like that.
I wonder if it is the utmost good faith aspect on which they are pinning their case - a technicality. Specifically information that is not necessarily required to be disclosed in financial accounts for say tax purposes or shareholders must be disclosed under utmost good faith provision and hence our decision not to disclose documents that we considered were not relevant for commercial accounting.
The alternative is that the Premier League have rushed out the charges without objective legal advice beforehand and/or a full consideration of the consequences - which would indicate a staggering lack of competence and professionalism on their part.
The media Tower of Babel is in full swing because of the Everton case even though it has no bearing whatsoever on City’s case. The position re City is no more or no less of concern than it was last week and the pundits continue to demonstrate their utter idiocy when they bay for the case to be heard soon, or City should be punished, without having any knowledge whatsoever of the background details.
Also when Pep was asked about it shortly after the charges were released he said, as I recall, words to the effect of who am I going to believe, these people (Levy et al) or my people. I chose my people. He also said if the club were lying to him he would have left, or will leave and that (if they lied) the club hierarchy would no longer “be my friends”. I cannot imagine for a second that our chairman and exec. board would lie to Pep.
Thanks to the likes of PB I remain fairly optimistic but Stefan is correct when he says if guilty, City face very serious sanctions but as others have said it’s a massive if.
Oh for the days when we just watched the football
