PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[BerkshireBlue]

@BerkshireBlue you’re arguing with someone who will intellectually decapitate you.

I'm not arguing, we're agreeing

 

[Kippax77]

Yes that's true, and I do love the mathematical coincidence going around...

City PL champions in 21 + 22 + 23 + 24 + 25 = 115, and 5 in a row ! (hopefully)

That would be a lovely banner for 1894 to produce the next time our Alison comes a callin..

You are Carol Voderman and I claim my... £115

 

[KS55]

Where is this?

In my imagination, Stefan.
Ziegler will certainly post something like this soon; he has jumped the shark. His stuff is full of unnamed, unchecked sources, fake experts and the like.

 

[KS55]

I don't think they need to prove that on Mancini. They only need to prove, on the balance of probabilities, that the arrangement was made for a financial benefit to the club and deliberately concealed from the PL. It's up to the club's counter-evidence to show a reason it was done that on the balance of probabilities wins the argument. Shouldn't be (too) difficult.

Well, yes but there was no rule at the time to require disclosure of any outside contracts that managers had. The rule is explicitly limited to disclosure of a contract with the club.

 

[Chris in London]

Why would this be the case? Who is responsible for each side’s costs?

You are responsible for your own costs but you may (usually will) if successful get an order that the other side should pay your costs. That however doesn’t mean the other side will pay all your costs, simply that proportion the court thinks was reasonably incurred. So if spend £1m pursuing a case and are awarded costs of 50K you have to pay the rest yourself.

If the PL spent £10m pursuing Everton and only recovered £1.7m that could be said to be eye-watering

 

[halfcenturyup]

Well, yes but there was no rule at the time to require disclosure of any outside contracts that managers had. The rule is explicitly limited to disclosure of a contract with the club.

Yep. It seems to me there are two issues with Mancini.

First, the disclosure requirements around P7 and P8. After the Leicester verdict, it's pretty unlikely that those were breached according to how they are written.

So that leaves the impact of Mancini on the true and fair view given by the club's financial information. It's an uphill battle to prove the Mancini component, I think, due to materiality (it's small), the common nature of the arrangement (probably supported by legal and tax clearances) and the fact, as you say, there was no financial benefit in covering it all up as FFP didn't exist then and the losses at the time were huge anyway (certainly when the first contract we know about was signed).

 

[Chris in London]

So unless we refused to provide annual accounts and future financial information, apart from the specific mention of a breakdown of revenue to include sponsorship & advertising, there seems to be very little substance to the actual rules themselves and there is nothing about expenses (i.e. manager remuneration).

Difficult to see how a simple failure to provide accounts isn’t time-barred in any event

 

[halfcenturyup]

I've just been looking at the rules we're alleged to have infringed in (as a specimen) 2012/13. That covers the Mancini contract and the sponsorship issues.

There are five rules mentioned:
B16: "...each Club shall behave towards each other Club and the League with the utmost good faith."
That's really pretty subjective, unless the PL can prove that we deliberately deceived them.

E3: "Each Club shall by 1st March in each Season submit to the Secretary a copy of its
annual accounts in respect of its most recent financial year ... to be prepared and audited in
accordance with applicable legal and regulatory requirements) together with a
copy of the directors’ report for that year and a copy of the auditors’ report on
those accounts."
I find it hard to imagine we didn't do that.

E4: "The accounts referred to in Rule E.3 shall:
E.4.1. include separate disclosure within the balance sheet or notes to the accounts, or by way of supplementary information separately reported on by its auditors by way of procedures specified by the Board, of the total sums
payable and receivable in respect of Compensation Fees, Contingent Sums and Loan Fees;

E.4.2. include a breakdown within the profit and loss account or the notes to the accounts, or by way of supplementary information separately reported on by its auditors by way of procedures specified by the Board, of revenue in appropriate categories such as gate receipts, sponsorship and advertising, broadcasting rights, commercial income and other income."

E11 & E12 require clubs to submit future financial information by 31 March, prepared on the same basis as the annual accounts.

So unless we refused to provide annual accounts and future financial information, apart from the specific mention of a breakdown of revenue to include sponsorship & advertising, there seems to be very little substance to the actual rules themselves and there is nothing about expenses (i.e. manager remuneration).

That reinforces Stefan's point that, if the IC interpret the rules as written, we couldn't have broken any rules around Mancini's Al Jazira contract as there were no rules to break.

You don't think the inclusion of the "in good faith" rule catches all of the alleged transgressions around filing accounts that don't show a true and fair view and filing other financial information in respect of revenue, related parties and expenses?

 

[Saddleworth2]

Apologies if posted but it seems we made a net gain of £115.8m in the transfer window that has just ended

115 is truly the magic number

in independent scientific tests recently, Kyle Walker scored an incredible 115 IQ proving that he is, in fact, incredibly bright.

That is just so fucking spooky.
Wow.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

You don't think the inclusion of the "in good faith" rule catches all of the alleged transgressions around filing accounts that don't show a true and fair view and filing other financial information in respect of revenue, related parties and expenses?

Well that's what they're using so clearly that's the PL's intention. But it's such a nebulous concept, and clearly open to wide interpretation.

I sure that we had good legal and other justification for doing things like Fordham but the problem is that we could demonstrate all the reasons why it was OK, and that there was no intention to mislead or deceive the PL but it's possible that the IC could still decide we didn't act in the utmost good faith. Whereas FFP, for example, is very much more specific about what is and isn't acceptable, as is the PL's PSR, yet there are still cases and appeals around these.

As you know only too well, there's no certainties when trading legal arguments. Also it's not a rule that seems to have been applied against a certain Merseyside-based club, who certainly didn't act in utmost good faith towards us back in 2013. If a clearly criminal act, or the constant verbal sniping from Anfield, isn't a case of not acting in utmost good faith then what the hell is?