All the mood music from within the club indicates the charges are being systematically destroyed year by year. The confidence levels are even higher now than on "charges day" back in February 2023. This begs the question, how the hell is the IC/PL going to extricate itself from this omnishambles. I suspect they will go down the route of "NOT PROVEN" for the substantive charges, i.e., a compromise based on the verdict used in Scottish criminal law. They will no doubt throw in a non-cooperation verdict, probably with another ridiculously high fine, to appease the City haters and afford the PL a wee bit of credibility. This is all my own guesswork, but I can see a situation where the PL will claim a complete lack of jurisdiction over City's sponsors, Etihad, Etisalat, and Aabar, making it impossible to prove the contracts were in any sense illegitimate. I think the same will apply to the Al Jazira/Mancini contract. All independent experts suggest the image rights charges are completely dead in the water, as anything that was dubious would be investigated by HMRC, who clearly are not the slightest bit interested.
So what would the legal advice be to City and the sponsors given a "Not Proven" outcome. The sponsors would have to demonstrate that the IC/PL ruling would cause material damage to their businesses. I doubt they could prove this, so they would probably take no further action. That just leaves the club's response. I'm guessing again, but I think a settlement whereby the PL stated publicly and unequivocally that all historical investigations into City's accounts from 2008 to the present day have been terminated in perpetuity. Of course, the downside would be that this outcome would allow the professional City haters to continue to scrape a subsistence living as click bait life forms, i.e., continuing to spread the inevitable slurs and tropes. Hopefully City's response would involve a newly uplifted long term partnership with Etihad Airways, Let's hope it's a whopper and a world beater, as befitting for the best team in the world.
One thing we have all learned since 2008 is the following: when Khaldoon Mubarak says something is going to happen, we can be pretty sure it will, and that includes his "plenty to say" promise in last year's end-of-season review. Let's just say the chances of Richard Masters being the CEO of the Premier League after this case are virtually zero. He could perhaps form a comedy duo; the "Masters and Harris" podcast would be a sensation with at least 20 subscribers.
