PL charge City for alleged breaches of financial rules

[Ric]

Rik re your last paragraph ,I think the problem will be ,what players will want to sign for City with these charges hanging over them, I believe this is what the enemy are hoping for, we won't be able to sign players such as Bellingham etc therefore falling behind the likes of the dippers and rags who will have free reign.

I doubt it'd be a problem, with a judgement potentially 3-4 years away. We'll just have to insert a clause into any contracts saying that players will be allowed to leave if, and it's a big if, we are found guilty.

 

[Tom H Conwy exile]

 

[Metal Biker]

Rik re your last paragraph ,I think the problem will be ,what players will want to sign for City with these charges hanging over them, I believe this is what the enemy are hoping for, we won't be able to sign players such as Bellingham etc therefore falling behind the likes of the dippers and rags who will have free reign.

Those that want to be part of a continued, proven successful endeavour, playing the sort of stylish attractive football that has encaptured the hearts of football purists.

As a Manchester City fan you have to ask yourself "why would anyone now sign for City?" and not find your own answers to that question?

 

[Tarzan41]

It’s been three days since the PL charges and I’m already finding the whole thing pretty draining. Not spending the next three years (potentially) fretting until a judgement is actually made. Fuck that! It’s no good for my mental healthy for a start. Just want to get back to enjoying football, or at least trying to, again.

Still think that we’ll ultimately prevail again, as at CAS, and that talk of relegation, losing titles etc is fanciful. Fans of other clubs and certain journalists are getting giddy, and things seem grim at the moment, but the story will drift away in the minds of most over the coming weeks and months.

With no immediate threat to the club’s future, I hope we go absolutely balls out in the coming transfer windows and add more trophies to our cabinet. Demonstrate that we’re not going away anytime soon, despite what they wish.

I was waking up in the night thinking about it for the first two nights. Thought I might be finished with football. I’m still only reading about the whole thing on this thread but already starting to look forward to Sunday. A few beers pre match with my sons and mates and hopefully things seem normal again. Up the Blues

 

[Tricky_Trev]

Rik re your last paragraph ,I think the problem will be ,what players will want to sign for City with these charges hanging over them, I believe this is what the enemy are hoping for, we won't be able to sign players such as Bellingham etc therefore falling behind the likes of the dippers and rags who will have free reign.

Can’t we just give players clauses whereby IF we are relegated or whatever, they can leave for x amount. It’s pretty common to have relegation release clauses, or similar.

 

[gloryhuntersince85]

And before every Derby
Before Dippers
Before any big game

and always just before we play a team from Germany

 

[moh]

Given this was well received. Some more context on this to help anyone not aware.

An audit is effectively an opinion from a qualified and experienced auditor that the financial statements that a company prepares are materially true and fair, and are in line with accounting standards and uk law. Material being a key word and that is a £ value that differs from audit to audit.

In our case we arent a profitable business so that isnt the key metric but we are a trading business so I’d assume that the auditors materiality level is a revenue based metric and will likely be calculated as 1-2% of revenue.

Revenue in 09/10 was £125m
Revenue in 17/18 was £500m

Hence in english this means that in 09/10, the auditors have effectively signed off that every single number within those accounts and presented to PL is accurate and free from misstatement (by mistake or deliberately) to within max £2.5m. By 17/18 revenue has grown so the auditors will have signed off that every number is accurate to within max £10m.

To be able to do that on our revenue line (since that seems to be where attention is) they will have at the very least targeted any individual contract of that value or more because if they didn’t and it was wrong there could be a material misstatement. So that pretty much covers every single commercial contract (as well as broadcasting and prize money). And they will have at the very least sample tested everything else (because they are too small to individually result in a material misstatement but could aggregate).
When they tested they will have traced either to a signed contract and/or cash receipt. There are no other options.

Ie in english again. Almost every single £ of commercial revenue we reported will have been agreed to signed contracts and/or cash receipt and the auditors found no issues.

Hence for the charge to be true that our revenue does not present a true and fair view, the auditors will have had to either have not fulfilled their professional duties as auditors and/or our directors will have had to have committed financial fraud to deceive them or in collusion with them. Both are significant claims and should not be dealt with by a premier league internal investigation but are legal cases.

The more likely scenario in my mind is that the financial accounts submitted lawfully as a company are not in question but the PL is effectively taking a moral stance that whilst the accounting is correct, they just dont believe that the revenue has come from a willing third party. Ie yes you have a contract, yes you received the money but we think that money has ultimately come from your owner.

That was the claim made by UEFA and CAS said there was no evidence that had happened. In another process with the same evidence I see no reason why that conclusion would be different.

Fabulous post pal

 

[waspish]

And who feeds that narrative? Have you read the papers or seen the tv? Sky Sports' official summary, even yeaterday, was that City were found guilty, but CAS 'reduced' the punishment because evidence uefa had was time barred.

Which just isn't true. CAS overturned the entire decision, because it found city Not guilty. It removed the punishment altogether. It handed out a separate fine for not cooperating, which was a 3rd of the fine Uefa imposed, in recognition that the club didn't trust uefa with any further information following leaks to the media.

While it is easy to get annoyed at your pals who support other clubs, you'd have to expect them to first be able to, and then to choose to, see through how the mainstream media present it. For a club they don't support or spend much time looking at. High hopes mate.

Unfortunately, that is the reality that will follow the club for a long time, and will stick.

So why are city allowing these lies!?

 

[Centurions]

Well said Rick. You need your mental healthy in tact to police us lot

In tact indeed ;)

 

[Rory Bluelow]

Pretty sure that the panel don't have the power to relegate us. They can expel us - which some would argue amounts to the same thing - but they can't relegate us.

Expulsion is the nucleur option though and I could only see them getting away with that if it turns out they have us bang to rights on the most serious charges. I can't really see that being the case though as it would mean we, the fans, along with our manager have been lied to all along. Plus I very much doubt that the people we have running the club would be so stupid as to commit large-scale accountancy fraud just to help give little ol' City a leg up! Now if it was Peter Swales running the club ;)

Increasingly I’m thinking the major outcome will be the non-cooperation fine. Possibly augmented if some of the financial charges stick. No expulsion (relegation is impossible) and no points deduction. They will hit us with the biggest fine possible under whatever circumstances. What strikes me as sad about the whole business is that City under Sheikh Mansour’s ownership seems to have made so few Alliances or positive connections amongst their peers or indeed the Premier League, the FA and much of the media given we have been a big player for 12 years and the most successful club in England over the last decade. Our owners and top team are foreigners and outsiders so perhaps cannot penetrate the “networks”. Maybe with Garry Cook and Marwood were still around things might be different.
Considering that Liverpool somehow swerved scandals like allegations of players involved in match fixing, Heysel etc, Arsenal also with George Graham’s bag of cash etc I think many of us are being too pessimistic about the shit sticking to us for all time.
I feel much better than I did on Monday.