PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

TedofChume said:
I've just had a look at the Nick Harris article on SportingIntelligence. He's put a screenshot of an email from Simon Pearce at the top indicating this is part of his "new evidence" - that email has been freely available to download from this der Spiegel article since 07/04/22. Hardly anything new:

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

It's quite possible he is just bullshitting and all he is showing behind his paywall is just various emails from this article. There are about six pdfs containing multiple emails you can download.

Most people haven't downloaded and read them. I have, and I can assure you all, unless you are thick as pigshit, the emails der Spiegel share as damning evidence are nothing of the sort.

Luckily for me, I do understand how businesses work and what is normal practice. If you've never run a business, you could easily be deceived by them. The der Spiegel emails including this one do not indicate the sort of wrongdoing that der Spiegel suggests.
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Hasn’t City’s stance on this all along that the emails are taken out of context? Out of millions of emails, I’d say it’s very easy to manipulate certain context in those emails and spin it as corruption.
 
Manchester_lalala said:
Hasn’t City’s stance on this all along that the emails are taken out of context? Out of millions of emails, I’d say it’s very easy to manipulate certain context in those emails and spin it as corruption.
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City's stance is firstly that they didn't do anything that is alleged, secondly that the evidence provided by the PL is presented out of context and lastly that they have irrefutable evidence to counter the allegations anyway.

The stance of every sane analyst who knows what they are talking about is that the standard of proof required for the PL to prove the allegations is so high that it will be nearly impossible to reach it, even if the club did what was alleged.

The stance of every psychotic analyst who only knows what they want to happen is that the der Spiegel leaks are clearly the definitive evidence that the allegations will be proven.

It's been this way since February last year and nothing has changed. I know which way I am leaning.
 
halfcenturyup said:
City's stance is firstly that they didn't do anything that is alleged, secondly that the evidence provided by the PL is presented out of context and lastly that they have irrefutable evidence to counter the allegations anyway.

The stance of every sane analyst who knows what they are talking about is that the standard of proof required for the PL to prove the allegations is so high that it will be nearly impossible to reach it, even if the club did what was alleged.

The stance of every psychotic analyst who only knows what they want to happen is that the der Spiegel leaks are clearly the definitive evidence that the allegations will be proven.

It's been this way since February last year and nothing has changed. I know which way I am leaning.
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I basically agree with all of that. Just one or two things to add.

First, I'd be very disappointed if City turn out actually to have done what's alleged, at least as regards any offence that, if made out, would be serious enough to entail a potential points deduction. I think it should have been easy enough for the club's execs to operate within the rules and still achieve their objectives.

Second, the PL will surely have more than the emails given the length of their investigation as well as the powers they had to demand documents and information. We have to assume they'll have uncovered during that process further pieces of evidence that they regard as bolstering the case against the club.

It's hard to imagine what they could realistically have that takes them to the necessary standard of proof, especially having regard to the requirement - much discussed some time back on this thread - for cogency. Nonetheless, the safer assumption is that they'll have something.

Third, as you say, we're no better informed now about the detail of the parties' arguments than we were in February 2023, although that hasn't stopped discussion of and speculation over that topic helping to nudge this thread beyond 75,000 posts. To be fair, there are some very high-quality contributions in here among all the ones that don't really add much. IMO, the best contributions on this thread offer the best analysis of the case available more or less anywhere.

Nonetheless, the essential dichotomy that I discussed at the outset still remains. City's confidence about having irrefutable evidence and the entirely reasonable assumption that the PL wouldn't have accused the club in this way without being confident of having a strong case are mutually exclusive. Something doesn't add up.

We know what we want and hope it to be. Nonetheless, it won't be confirmed until the matter is determined and we have the reasoning. But someone is surely going to emerge looking stupid.

BREAKING:

The Lawyer magazine cancelled my subscription some time back in response to my living in Mordor, but they still send digests, more than once a day, summarising legal news. I've just received this morning's, which is headed as follows from the publication's Litigation Tracker: The Hearing - The end is in sight for Manchester City case

That's followed by this text: The trial of the Premier League’s 115 charges against Manchester City is due to wrap up in December, but the length and complexity of the case means that a decision is unlikely to be published for several months.

So, looks like the hearing is still ongoing. However, I can't break the paywall, even using archive.ph.

If anyone has access, please let us know what the rest of the piece says. Or, in case anyone is better at accessing what's meant to be subscription-only content than I am, the link is here: https://www.thelawyer.com/the-hearing-the-end-is-in-sight-for-manchester-city-case/
 
Bez said:
Our form in our last 7 games is W1 D1 L5. 115. Spooky.
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Natalie Pike signing off last night....

giphy.gif
 
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ayrshire_blue said:


I haven't got a subscription, but just to add a tiny little bit to Petrusha's excellent post. The author of the article says the hearing is currently paused. So at least we have a status update.
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Interesting. So although paused, the hearing hasn't finished yet.

Is there a particular reason why it would be paused? Lawyers working on other cases perhaps?
 
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