Just settling down for the evening, happened to glance at the MEN and saw this:
https://www.manchestereveningnews.c...all-news/gary-neville-makes-man-city-28466761
To spare you reading this pile of drivel, in stark contrast to Stefan, those three titans of football finance - Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Ian Wright - talk about our case on a podcast.
Neville opines that it's imperative for the PL to bring forward their case against us as soon as possible. I'll come back to him in a minute.
Wright (and I've got a lot of time for Wright when I forget that he was behind the furore that saw Garry Cook resign) also felt that the club owed it to the players and fans to clear their name. Carragher's comment was that we should be looking to fix this straight away and that our continued effort to drag it out made it worse.
Zero awareness about the seriousness of the charges, the need to get it right and no recognition that it's the PL who've spent 4 years, soon to be 5, dragging this investigation out. not us.
Back to Neville now. To his credit, he's against FFP and thinks wealthy owners should be able to spend money on their clubs, but if you were a cynic you could put that down to him having one eye on the millions in Salford City's bank account he can't spend due to the EFL's version of FFP.
He also understands it's a lot more complex, bless him, but is annoyed that Masters has said they've set a date but won't say when. He assumes that means it's a way off and that's not good (at least in his eyes). Again he clearly doesn't understand the PL rule about confidentiality.
Then he talks about our offences, offering his opinion that it's about when we moved some staff and functions out of City and into separate companies. There's never been any suggestion that's part of the charges, and he clearly doesn't understand that CFM and CFS (assuming those are the companies he's referring to) cross-charged their services to the CFG clubs. So we certainly reduced wages, but also increased operating expenses. In addition, UEFA changed FFP rule to bring any such companies within City's 'reporting perimeter' (which may not have been fair if they're providing services and being paid by clubs like NYCFC, who are outside UEFA's 'perimeter'.
He also talked about Mancini's contract, although he admitted that he wasn't sure about the details, believing he was being paid in the Middle East (not the Gulf, which would have been correct) for personal appearances
And people listen to this ill-informed, or just plain wrong, nonsense and treat it as gospel. It's like asking Lord Pannick, or one of his eminent colleagues, to coach Kevin de Bruyne, or getting an accountant to tell Lewis Hamilton where his driving was going wrong.
