PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[cibaman]

My assumption is that it's the accounts supplied to the PL.

I would be surprised if the PL have jurisdiction over anything to Companies House, or any right to question them. It seems unlikely to me that CH have much interest in things like where money came from, just that it was there or not; that's all PL-only stuff.

They will not prepare a completely different set of accounts to submit to the PL. They’ll start with the statutory accounts and make specific adjustments to them (eg for allowable academy costs) to arrive at the figures submitted to the PL. The PL will start with the assumption that the statutory accounts are correct and just review the adjustments.

Where the money comes from does fundamentally affect the accuracy of the statutory accounts submitted to CH. Theres a complete difference in the accounting treatment of money received from third parties for sponsorship and money put into the company by the owners.

 

[cibaman]

One of the rules in question relates to the provision of audited accounts that give a true and fair view. That can only really mean the statutory accounts filed at Companies House. I am 100% sure we have filed accounts and provided them to the PL, so they must be saying those accounts are incorrect.

Incredible, really.

That’s exactly what they are saying

 

[halfcenturyup]

Theres a complete difference in the accounting treatment of money received from third parties for sponsorship and money put into the company by the owners.

There is nothing to stop owners putting sponsorship into a club and recording it as income. That is what King Power does at Leicester and what Ashley did at Newcastle.

What the PL are alleging is that Mansour paid money to Etihad so they could pay sponsorship to the club. So that part of the income should have been shown as an equity injection in the accounts and not income and, as a result, the club should have failed FFP.

Which is, to my mind, firstly, a bollocks financial argument and secondly, so crazy as to defy belief. Yet here we are.

 

[SWPISHOME]

It amazes me that anyone can live in Manchester and not be friends with a few United fans.

Do you have friends outside football? Or is that pretty much your social circle?

I know people who support United but I wouldn't be friends with any of them. I work with United fans and again they are work colleagues not my friends.

I have friends outside of football which are all blues apart from two who actually don't watch football.

I have an uncle who is a United fan, He's a ****. We don't speak at all.

 

[jimmygrimblesboots]

The lack of specifics in the charges only confuse the situation , what are they actually accusing us off , cooking the books , false accounting if this is the case then how the f*ck are they going to prove it when companies house and HMRC havent instigated any charges.
It appears Masters was desperate to appease the red'istree clubs and the Premier league threw everything they could at us , 115 charges is just sensationalism there is actually half a dozen repeated several times ,but the charges have done what Master's paymasters wanted , if we 100% prove all the charges incorrect our reputation has been damaged and the smear campaign would have been successful.

 

[SilverFox2]

Going back over two days and more than 20 pages in the thread, but I liked this post when I saw it and think it raises an important but oft-overlooked point. I fully agree with your final sentence, but what most people generally haven't realised is that it would be manifestly straightforward for City to operate successfully, from the club's point of view, within the rules we're accused of breaking.

It's commonly asserted that we have access to the best and most expensive professional advice (not invariably the same thing, but the aphorism that one gets what one pays for is as true here as in any other context). Why is it so hard for people to believe that, having recourse to the services of leading professionals, we were able to find ways to circumvent the rules in question?

Now, you'll get the usual simpletons bleating risibly about the "spirit of the regulations" or other similar nonsense, in the way I believe Shaun Custis has been on Talksport this morning with reference to our recent signing of the American teenager Cavan Sullivan. However, as @Chris in London posted some time back, the "spirit of the [regulations we're accused of having breached] was to give the established G14 teams a competitive advantage at our expense [so] I frankly don't give a fuck".

This all illustrates how invidious the coverage of the entire issue has been. The Football Leaks/Der Spiegel revelations have been almost universally presented as a metaphorical smoking gun when, as many of us said at the time, they represented no such thing. They could be read in that light, but were equally consistent with a business trying to find ways to operate lawfully within the relevant rules notwithstanding that such rules had been deliberately crafted to stymie us.

A coterie of bad-faith liars have sought to drive coverage in that direction. Others, with no understanding of the business side of football, tag along, fearful of the derision that would ensue were they to gainsay the prevailing groupthink. And the result now is that we're habitually confronted by a disheartening parade of imbeciles who witlessly parrot the line about 115 charges, thinking that they're outlining a telling line of reasoning. Pathetic.

Thank you so much for that post.
Your command of the English language uses a phrase or two where I need several sentances and fail to get real meaning.

We all value your posts.

 

[Maly]

Let’s not forget that in the latest Everton case, the PL accused them of not cooperating and the IC disagreed, saying they had. With that in mind, it’s not a given that the PL will even be able to land the non-cooperation charges against us.

Aren’t the non-cooperation charges for 2018 onwards only?

I’ve always presumed we’ve told them to fuck off for any information post Der Speigal, hence the non-cooperation?

No idea if that’s correct tho

 

[halfcenturyup]

Aren’t the non-cooperation charges for 2018 onwards only?

I’ve always presumed we’ve told them to fuck off for any information post Der Speigal, hence the non-cooperation?

No idea if that’s correct tho

We could only "not co-operate" after 2018 because that is when the investigation started. We couldn't "not co-operate" before they had even started :)

 

[halfcenturyup]

Thank you so much for that post.
Your command of the English language uses a phrase or two where I need several sentances and fail to get real meaning.

We all value your posts.

Teacher's pet!

 

[Rammy Blue]

Going back over two days and more than 20 pages in the thread, but I liked this post when I saw it and think it raises an important but oft-overlooked point. I fully agree with your final sentence, but what most people generally haven't realised is that it would be manifestly straightforward for City to operate successfully, from the club's point of view, within the rules we're accused of breaking.

It's commonly asserted that we have access to the best and most expensive professional advice (not invariably the same thing, but the aphorism that one gets what one pays for is as true here as in any other context). Why is it so hard for people to believe that, having recourse to the services of leading professionals, we were able to find ways to circumvent the rules in question?

Now, you'll get the usual simpletons bleating risibly about the "spirit of the regulations" or other similar nonsense, in the way I believe Shaun Custis has been on Talksport this morning with reference to our recent signing of the American teenager Cavan Sullivan. However, as @Chris in London posted some time back, the "spirit of the [regulations we're accused of having breached] was to give the established G14 teams a competitive advantage at our expense [so] I frankly don't give a fuck".

This all illustrates how invidious the coverage of the entire issue has been. The Football Leaks/Der Spiegel revelations have been almost universally presented as a metaphorical smoking gun when, as many of us said at the time, they represented no such thing. They could be read in that light, but were equally consistent with a business trying to find ways to operate lawfully within the relevant rules notwithstanding that such rules had been deliberately crafted to stymie us.

A coterie of bad-faith liars have sought to drive coverage in that direction. Others, with no understanding of the business side of football, tag along, fearful of the derision that would ensue were they to gainsay the prevailing groupthink. And the result now is that we're habitually confronted by a disheartening parade of imbeciles who witlessly parrot the line about 115 charges, thinking that they're outlining a telling line of reasoning. Pathetic.

Beautiful.