PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

TedofChume said:
Hopefully this will cheer you all up!


I have done some analysis of the PSR case based on the information provided by Rui Pinto and Der Speigel, here:

www.spiegel.de

Manchester City's Cozy Ties to Abu Dhabi: Sponsorship Money – Paid for by the State

Since the sanctions imposed on Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, links between English football clubs and authoritarian states have been in the spotlight. Internal documents show that Manchester City has received funding from a government agency in Abu Dhabi.
www.spiegel.de www.spiegel.de

Der Spiegel released the above information two months after City were charged, with the aim of driving the nail in the coffin, but their evidence really sucks and their analysis of it is just naive.

Firstly from reading the PDFs of the documents they share to download (RM.pdf, ADUG,pdf and FFP.pdf), I am pretty certain City haven't actually done anything wrong and should be cleared of all charges.

Allegation 1 is complicated to understand, but the evidence doesn't match what they are claiming at all and it just doesn't add up. A more logical explanation is the one I put forward. I might be wrong about this, but it makes sense to me, you might need to be an accountant to follow the argument though.

The other points I make should be a lot easier to follow.

I've done a worst case PSR calculation (Allegation 4), by going through City's accounts and adding it all up, and concluded that the sums would be:

2013-2016: -£108,113,000
2014-2017: -£75,263,000
2015-2018: -£66,157,000

The limit is -£105,000,000

In other words a minor breach of PSR in the first period of £3million (c.f. Everton £19m & Forest £30m).

Remember, this is if we have done everything they have accused us of and our combined sponsorship deals are re-valued at the Thomas Cook rate (£2m) that we had way back before the Eithad deal. Valuing the deals at say £3.1m or higher means City don't break PSR at all.

How could the Premier League have got this so wrong? Well, we know they rushed it all through, and I don't think they considered that City can adjust their earnings (AEBT) by the depreciation on the building of the Etihad Campus. This completely destroys their case.


Summary: Overview of the Allegations

The Flawed Case Against Manchester City: - Man City Stuff

A Deep Dive into Der Spiegel's Misguided Allegations On April 7th, 2022, Der Spiegel published an article aimed at substantiating the claims against Manchester City, drawing on a collection of redacted emails and scanned documents as their primary evidence. However, after closely examining the...
mancitystuff.co.uk

Allegation 1 Analysis : Inflated Sponsorship

Allegation 1 – Inflated Sponsorship Deals Paid for by ADUG - Man City Stuff

Part 1 - Financial Issues This section references the downloadable files found on this article at Der Spiegel - HERE In the complex and secretive world of football finance, discerning truth from manipulation is no easy task. The case surrounding Manchester City and the emails leaked by Rui...
mancitystuff.co.uk

Allegation 2 Analysis : Mancini and Toure

Allegation 2 – Mancini and Toure - Man City Stuff

This section references the downloadable files found on this article at Der Spiegel – HERE Preamble In the murky world of leaked documents and high-stakes legal battles, it's hard to discern what's authentic and what isn't. UEFA, in its case before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)...
mancitystuff.co.uk

Allegation 3 Analysis : FFP - The Own Goal

Allegation 3 – The Own Goal – City Breached UEFA FFP - Man City Stuff

In the intricate landscape of football regulations, one of the key charges against Manchester City revolves around the allegations made by the Premier League is that the club breached UEFA’s Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules for three consecutive seasons. However, this charge by the Premier League...
mancitystuff.co.uk

Allegation 4 Analysis : It simply doesn't add up

Manchester City Allegation 4 – Analysis - Man City Stuff

A proper look at how the numbers add up. In the intricate web of football finance, where numbers and figures can often be as slippery as the pitches the players compete on, the case against Manchester City and the financial practices under scrutiny require a deep dive into the club's financials...
mancitystuff.co.uk


I've also got a video that I have put together showing how the Premier League have altered their statement on 06 feb 2023 multple times since and a few other points about this. I need time to finish them off. I will rpeort back when they are live!
Click to expand...
I would urge all Blues to set aside 30 minutes and read the entire article. Excellent information, great to learn about city finance and City finance. Thanks for putting this together.
 
TedofChume said:
All the reported values are £40m for Etihad and £10m for Etisalat deals.

There are various alleged payments from ADUG for £67m, £90m etc but if true without seeing what money went from City to ADUG it's impossible to draw any conclusions. I get the impression City leant ADUG money to invest and these are repayments.
Click to expand...
The core allegation was that Etihad only directly contributed £8m, while the rest came from somewhere else. UEFA claimed it was from ADUG, therefore should be treated as equity investment. City & Etihad denied that, and presented evidence at CAS that this additional money had come from central Abu Dhabi funds, for marketing purposes, which CAS accepted as the truth.

Anyone who's followed my postings on here will hopefully confirm that I already knew that, via a document that was in the public domain via a court in New York that was hearing a case under the 'Open Skies Agreement'. This was a presentation which was prepared for Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and explicitly stated that the Etihad sponsorship was being paid by the Abu Dhabi Executive Council. That's why I was quite confident we would beat UEFA at CAS, and that we'll beat the main substantive PL charge.

As to why varying amounts were paid under the Etihad contract, there was no explanation of that but my view (which was slightly supported by the leaked emails) was that we could call off what we wanted, when we wanted it, subject to the overall terms of the contract. I recall Nick Harris getting all giddy and saying that the Etihad contract was for far more than we said it was, due to the amounts paid in 2013, 2014 and 2016. He added those up and divided by 3, but there was nothing stated for 2015. So the assumption must be that either we received no cash from Etihad or relatively little, having called off additional cash in the previous years.

If Etihad were paying us £600m over 10 years, that doesn't have to mean they'll pay us £60m each and every year. We would probably declare £60m a year in the accounts but how the actual cash flows are structured is completely irrelevant.
 
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TedofChume said:
All the reported values are £40m for Etihad and £10m for Etisalat deals.

There are various alleged payments from ADUG for £67m, £90m etc but if true without seeing what money went from City to ADUG it's impossible to draw any conclusions. I get the impression City leant ADUG money to invest and these are repayments.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. I'll look through your numbers in detail when I have time.
 
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