I would suggest the fact that we are where we are, already puts the Premier League beyond the point of no return on that score. You don’t levy 100 serious charges against a club and not even have the courtesy to contact them before publishing said charges in the press, unless your relationship with that club is pretty broken. They would have known full well what the City hating media’s reaction would be, and that a compromise settlement or leniency would be very difficult as a result, without being slaughtered by the same ’red’ lap dogs.
The PL doesn’t give a shit about City or whether crucifying us would be to damage their own product in the process, or at least if it does, they may have other priorities. As an organisation they’ve always operated under the threat of United and Liverpool leaving them, and I don’t doubt that threat is being leveraged against them now. This is total war. If we lose, get used to the idea of being thoroughly fucked. The Court of Public Opinion will demand relegations and stripped titles. We have no friends out there. None. Forget about talk of Khaldoon whispering in Downing Street ears. How would it look for the government to have had a backstage word with the PL? How would it look, on top of everything else, if even a whisper got out of our trying to influence proceedings?
I know feck all about finance (although the Fordham thing worries even a journeyman like me), but I just hope we’ve got all our ducks in a row, cos this is their (and by ‘their’, I mean the American owner backed tail wagging the PL dog) last chance to destroy us, which is what they want. Fines, points deductions, punishments we can ride out for a year or two and then bounce back from, are of no use to them. In the words of John Kreese in the Karate Kid, they want us “out of commission permanently”.
On a separate note - and my apologies if they’ve already addressed the matter elsewhere - I’d be interested in whether
@projectriver or
@Prestwich_Blue think we’d be better off grasping the nettle and getting the hearing out of the way quickly, or frustrating the process for years (leaving to one side the fact that the complex nature of what’s involved, might point to a long, drawn out affair in the Courts anyway)? Just thinking practically, in the immediate short term, of how we would attract new players to the club, if we have the possibility of having any titles we might win subsequently removed, hanging over our heads. It surely can’t be in our interests to have the stink of this wafting around us in the long term, albeit that the reputational damage is already effectively done, can it? Whatever, fingers crossed that we’re going to get a fair trial and not one of the Speckled Jim variety!
