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.
