PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[GaudinoMotors]

I was sagely informed by a United fan today that…

City have accepted full guilt and are instead working on arguing that Sheikh Mansour has plausible deniability

We are delaying frantically until 6 November as that is apparently some kind of cut-off date for being sued by other clubs

So that’s nice to know.

Was he a rather rotund, out of shape, dough boy that charged you £20 to go to the pub?

 

[Metal Biker]

I was sagely informed by a United fan today that…

City have accepted full guilt and are instead working on arguing that Sheikh Mansour has plausible deniability

We are delaying frantically until 6 November as that is apparently some kind of cut-off date for being sued by other clubs

So that’s nice to know.

 

[manimanc]

No, just an answer from Richard Masters on the talkSport interview recently, where he said they are close to wrapping up the investigation already, in so many words. Here it is:



A lot of Chelsea fans seem to think they'll be fine because it was under a different ownership. That has never been a valid excuse in the past and it will easily be torn to shreds the PL tries that one, given how they've went after City. Self reporting shouldn't be a huge factor either, I imagine the PL had to do their due diligence just as much as ClearLake did before the takeover was approved. If they saw too much, I wouldn't be surprised if the PL were the ones who told them to report it.

Yet they've spent over 200m on signings.

Weird.

 

[bobbyowenquiff]

If we are found guilty then we probably won’t be in the CWC.

It is a FIFA competition and we qualified by winning a UEFA competition. Can’t see how the PL could stop us. Not sure if we need a PL licence to take part like the CL.

 

[BringBackSwales]

No, just an answer from Richard Masters on the talkSport interview recently, where he said they are close to wrapping up the investigation already, in so many words. Here it is:



A lot of Chelsea fans seem to think they'll be fine because it was under a different ownership. That has never been a valid excuse in the past and it will easily be torn to shreds the PL tries that one, given how they've went after City. Self reporting shouldn't be a huge factor either, I imagine the PL had to do their due diligence just as much as ClearLake did before the takeover was approved. If they saw too much, I wouldn't be surprised if the PL were the ones who told them to report it.

Never mind the Abramovic era, what about the Boehli era? All those signings, all those player wages, a small stadium and 2 years with no CL football? By which measure are they within FFP or PSR? Scandalous

 

[jimharri]

I see Jordan is turning into prime Martin Samuel. How embarrassing for him after the bollocks he has spouted for so many years.

Tbf, he said he was wrong and was naive and he now feels PSR (as it is) isn't achieving any good for the game. He also says the PL needs leadership to decide what it wants financial regulation to achieve and how.

On YouTube as part of @slbsn 's talks this morning. He must have been reading Bluemoon :)

I wouldn't trust Jordan as far as I could kick him. Didn't he nearly run Palace into the ground?

 

[dadnlad]

Never mind the Abramovic era, what about the Boehli era? All those signings, all those player wages, a small stadium and 2 years with no CL football? By which measure are they within FFP or PSR? Scandalous

And the loan that of course wasn't owner investment being written off

 

[GSW Blue]

Never mind the Abramovic era, what about the Boehli era? All those signings, all those player wages, a small stadium and 2 years with no CL football? By which measure are they within FFP or PSR? Scandalous

Some nonsense about selling hotels to themselves!

 

[BerkshireBlue]

Some nonsense about selling hotels to themselves!

which is perfectly acceptable and also the 8 year contracts which was perfectly acceptable until the red tops decided they didn't like it so changed the rules

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

I've said before that I don't buy the fraud argument. If I'm right and fraud isn't seen as an avenue to go down then the 6-year limitation comes into play. If they follow the logic that CAS used then the key date will be the date that the PL made public the alleged breaches and passed the case to the IC. That was February 2023, so the cut-off date for alleged breaches will be Feb 2017, meaning all the 2016/17 FY will be in scope.

That leaves maybe one year of both Fordham (although that arrangement may have ceased by then) and Etihad, with the earlier part of the Etihad contract, all the Etisalat one and the Mancini contract time-barred in theory.

With Fordham, it's quite possible that after the 2015 discussion with UEFA, we either stopped the arrangement or, more likely in my opinion, added it to our own wage bill. If that's the case, then there would be no case to answer for the 2017 FY.

And UEFA only queried the Etihad payments in 2013, 2014 and 2016, not 2015 or 2017.

I was also thinking about points deductions. The IC's rationale for these was that the clubs so punished had gained a sporting advantage by spending more than they were entitled to under PSR. But what if we were found to have breached PL rules with the Fordham arrangement, and when the amounts were added back we were still within PSR/FFP? In that case, it would be arguable that there was no sporting advantage as it was an accounting issue only. That would merit a fine.

Update to the Fordham issue: There was something at the back of my mind about this so I went back to check something.

Our wage bill increased by over 30% for no apparent reason from 2016 to 2017. I couldn't understand or explain this at the time, as we'd won nothing in Pep's first season, so it couldn't be performance related, but I'd take a guess that this was the Fordham payments going onto the club wage bill. That doesn't necessarily mean they weren't declared to UEFA though.

The increase was aboit £65m from 2016's £197m, so around a third, which suggests all the Fordham payments from 2013 onwards were accumulated for that increase, as about £12-13m per annum seemed to be going through Fordham.

That means Fordham was not an issue after the 2016 financial year.

Edit: Ignore this, it's wrong. See @halfcenturyup's post and my response.