PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[Newman Noggs]

The only bad actor here is the Premier league which is not acting in good faith.

This is what has been irritating me from day 1. This whole saga began with illegally obtained emails. UEFA's starting position was that the emails were genuine and showed we had breached their rules. Flimsy intelligence to start off with, but it could be argued that UEFA had no option but to investigate. From there, instead of having to build a case, it became incumbent on us to prove our "innocence". Something of an inversion of justice, but okay, at an independent panel we'll do just that.

So we then prove that those emails were taken out of context and in the case of "one" of those emails, also manipulated. For me, that should have been an end to the matter other than investigating why and who by those emails were manipulated.

Instead, and knowing all that, the PL have used the same source material to embark on a fishing exercise requiring production of more and more commercially sensitive information covering longer and longer periods. To me, that smacks of an investigation conducted in very bad faith indeed.

 

[Centurions]

Wonder who did the email merging, the hacker or Der Speigel. ?

Der Speigel, 100%. Pinto just handed the hard drives over.

 

[cheekybids]

Der Speigel, 100%. Pinto just handed the hard drives over.

Interesting if Pinto becomes our witness

 

[Dribble]

Der Speigel, 100%. Pinto just handed the hard drives over.

Didn't Pinto claim to have more info on City he'd be willing to hand over in exchange for a plea deal?

 

[cheekybids]

Didn't Pinto claim to have more info on City he'd be willing to hand over in exchange for a plea deal?

Is that a wild tabloid claim?

Strange that Der Spiegel didn’t hand everything over to UEFA & PL.

 

[Centurions]

Running two together when in reality they were years apart is falsification. The words need not be changed for falsification.

Is that right? I'd missed that in that case.

 

[KS55]

Is that right? I'd missed that in that case.

Just going by memory. City, I think, said that there was a gap of several years between the two that were mashed together. Memory only, not verified, but I don’t think I imagined it!

 

[Centurions]

Just going by memory. City, I think, said that there was a gap of several years between the two that were mashed together. Memory only, not verified, but I don’t think I imagined it!

I think the 6 emails released were in some instances years apart as they refer to different subjects, but I think (I may be wrong) the two concatenated ones were part of the same email chain.

 

[KS55]

Ordinarily you'd highlight the pertinent points to support your case, but also provide the full exchanges as an appendix so they can be forensically scrutinised.

It's not stated that UEFA did this, but if they didn't, it's extremely amateurish of them. If I were defending, the first thing I'd highlight is why hasn't the full exchange been provided, but only selected sections spliced together, which in isolation paint a wholly different picture to the reality of the situation?

CAS said that UEFA relied on partial emails, ie selected text, and copied parties were omitted. Since they specifically mentioned this in their judgement, I would guess that had an effect on CAS verdict.
In the second batch that Der Speigel released, one of the authors had clearly been changed at the foot but not the header.

 

[jimmygrimblesboots]

If we comprehensively beat the charges it will not change the attitudes of the media and opposing fans , we have been already been found guilty by the great unwashed , the Premier league have already done the damage at the behest of the red 'istree clubs.
It was always the intention of to at least get the charges in the public domain and it was job done , similar to the UEFA charges despite CAS finding in our favour it did little to change the narrative around our club. Its a back handed compliment when you realise how desperate some clubs have got , when the Sheik got involved we were a vanity project/sports washing and he would get bored , it hasnt quite worked out for our antagonsists has it , we are now the most succesful and best run football club in the world and even post-Pep Guardiola we will have a plan in place, we are here to stay.