@Prestwich_Blue
I wonder if you would be kind enough to give the forum a ‘nutshell’ version of exactly what is being investigated by each body please mate?
It feels like a lot of posters don’t
really know.
I'll try. To the best of my knowledge the accusations are as follows:
FIFA
This is to do with the signing of young players from overseas, the offence for which Chelsea received a two window transfer ban. It seems we are being investigated for 9 offences compared to 29 for Chelsea so, if guilty, hopefully will face a lesser punishment.
UEFA
This appears to be to do with various things, including the source of sponsorship revenue and the image rights payments.
Etihad - the allegation is that Etihad have only paid a small part of their contracted sums from their own pocket, with the rest coming from "other sources". This has no merit on a number of counts. First of all, even if Etihad is classed as a related party, the deal appears to have been accepted as meeting the 'fair value' requirement and therefore the source of the funds is completely irrelevant. UEFA's own website makes this clear therefore I can't see how there can possibly be any infringement of FFP rules here.
There are two other deals where the situation is less clear, those with Aabar & Etisalat. The accusation here appears to be that these have been paid in excess of the contracted amounts with the excess amounts possibly coming from ADUG. There are a number of elements to this. The first is, are these companies related parties? We don't think they are whereas UEFA (via their auditors) claimed they are. If they are, then UEFA can write-down the value of these but can't if not. Had this issue been the difference between being sanctioned and not being, back in 2014, then it might well have been decided in court. Our failure of FFP in 2014 due to our inability to claim mitigation because of the pre-June 2010 contract wages rendered that battle irrelevant to a great degree but it may well come up again. If they are held to be related parties and are written-down then UEFA will look again at our FFP calculations but I don't think it'll make any difference to our compliance.
If they're not deemed to be related parties then, as I see it, the assessment process is different. While UEFA can't write-down the value of the deals, it can claim that it's disguised owner investment, which is limited to covering losses of €30m over any three-year period. To do that though, it would have to show that ADUG were directly responsible for funding and I think it would be very difficult to do that. There's also the fact that these sponsorships were part of the 2014 settlement agreement with UEFA, in which we agreed not to increase them so the question is what did UEFA already know about these deals? But the key issue, as I said, is whether UEFA can show where the funds came from.
The image rights payments are another potential thing that could be investigated. As most know from the Der Spiegel leaks, we appear to have "sold" image rights to a third-party but where there was an arrangement to fund these from Abu Dhabi. Again, UEFA appear to have known of this agreement at the time of the FFP settlement although maybe not the full story. I can't see how this arrangement is necessary for where we are now. Potentially therefore we could be required ot bring all image rights payments back in-house but I can't see that there will be any significant impact on our overall FFP position if so.
The FA
They appear to be investigating payments made in respect of Jadon Sancho. Agents are not supposed to represent players under 16 or receive any payment in respect of their services but there was a £200k payment, allegedly to Sancho's father. I'd guess we weren't the only club who did something like this.
The PL
I have no idea what they might be looking at, apart from the fact that they are the licensing body for FFP. Their FFP rules are much looser than UEFA's and I can't see how we might have infringed these, apart from the fact that the image rights paid out of a third-party would normally count towards our wages. As wages are one of the things regulated under PL rules, this might potentially be an issue.
