UEFA FFP investigation - CAS decision to be announced Monday, 13th July 9.30am BST

[dario2739]

He can't believe the deal between OL and Emirates is at fair value. But it actually is since those parties aren't related. If he had to do an audit, he would prolly say that this deal is worth 10 M.

I don't understand this - or maybe I do and just see through it's unfairness!
Whether parties are "related" or not shouldn't come into fair value

 

[domalino]

Everybody needs to read this article to see what kind of person Yves Leterme, the guy who decided our guilt, is.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/sports/psg-uefa-ffp.html

 

[hello]

Glad you pulled him up on that piece of disinformation. I saw it but was busy at work and intended to come back later but it had slipped my mind.

Meanwhile, here's my lengthy opinion of David Conn and his work that appeared about 1200 pages back on this very thread in June 2019. I like to think that the events of this week are proving me right.

[Conn] turned up to interview Franny for a north west business publication and said that the experience left him knowing that he'd been "talking to a businessman", as if it was the most pejorative label that could possibly be attached to an interviewee. What disgraceful temerity from Franny. Someone arrives to interview you for a business magazine and you talk about business. Conn's description of the episode sounds laughably juvenile.

He's knowledgeable but not to the degree a lot of people think. He has nothing like the level of insight that someone such as Stefan from the 93:20 pod does, but then Stefan is CEO of a public company and also their senior in-house lawyer, with a track record of having advised the boards of top football clubs in his past. Conn qualified as a solicitor but left the profession immediately after doing so. As someone who's supervised newly qualified solicitors and has been one, I can tell you that their ability to navigate complex legal issues such as this is really not all that. He's probably the most knowledgeable current British journalist about business issues in sport, but very much in an 'in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is King' kind of way.

I gave my view of this latest piece by Conn in this thread last night, and at quite some length. It's possible he may be right, but if he is, it seems a senseless move from City's point of view. Yet if he's made any attempt to discern why City may be more confident of their case than he is, or what arguments we may put forward that distinguish the case from the precedent he refers to in his article, there's absolutely no sign of it. He may well have asked for a view from a sports law expert before writing, but the problem with that is that to get the right answers, you need to ask the right questions. I don't think I can be confident that he has.

More generally, Conn has shifted away from his usual subject matter when started out, which had a focus on exposing wrongdoing and sharp practices in the game. Then, he wrote for The Independent and produced two excellent books. In those days, I thought he was very good - and sometimes better than that. However, for reasons far beyond the tone, I loathe the specious, holier-than-thou role he's espoused over several years in The Guardian as a self-appointed conscience of modern football. Beyond some half-baked fan ownership nonsense, never does he put forward any constructive ideas for improvement amid his dreary whinges about the state of the modern game.

Moreover, there's no room for nuance. Almost every observation is refracted through the lens of Conn's own beliefs, often in a way that's simply sophomoric. Thus, we were treated to his eccentric observation in a Guardian column that, given the flaws in the PL's current model, "fan-owned Real Madrid" are an exemplar of moral rectitude in the modern game. We have his unabashed, uncritical adoration of a FC United, an outfit whose main asset - which translates into enormous media and political goodwill - is an identity they've leeched off one of the world's most famous clubs. And when he discusses why football was ethically superior in a bygone golden age (that never actually existed), he's egregious in the way he's blind (wilfully or otherwise) to the many drawbacks of the past and improvements in the modern age.

All these faults were fully evident in Richer Than God, which I'm glad I borrowed as opposed to shelling out my own cash on it. Like so many of his articles, the book merely served as an exercise in Conn trying to substantiate his simplistic philosophy by taking liberties with the facts and rational analysis. I find it all the more difficult to sympathise with that modus operandi given that I consider the philosophy in question to amount to little more than vapid, hand-wringing bullshit.

So sorry, those who profess admiration for him. You admire Conn if you want to. But put me down in the 'not a fan' camp.​

Much more elegant than my own Conn is an egotistical plagiarising twat summation! Well done.

 

[King KdB of Belgium]

How can UEFA decide what is and what is not fair value in any sponsorship deal. That is surely upto the company concerned as to how much they want to pay any sponsorship deal. If I run a company (which I don't) decide I want to pay MCFC £100 million year for the name of my company to be put on the shirts that is upto me and not some stuff up official in UEFA to tell me that that is not allowed, as that is not fair value for money.

 

[Len Rum]

My thoughts exactly Len.

You see what happens when we get off that Brexit thread mate.
It's bad for your health, it really is :)

 

[City Raider]

Well in 2012/13 we definitely cut some corners in order to try to ensure we got enough revenue to meet the provisions governing being able to mitigate sanctions based on the level of wages paid in 2011/12 under contracts signed prior to the 2010 summer window.

That doesn't necessarily mean we did anything desperately wrong or in contravention of FFP though.

I just knew Santa Cruz’s wages would come back to bite us

 

[Parisian]

I don't understand this - or maybe I do and just see through it's unfairness!
Whether parties are "related" or not shouldn't come into fair value

They only judge the fair value if the parties are related because a non related sponsor would seek the best for itself and wouldn't want to inflate the deal.

However, here, he thinks that this deal between non related party is not at its fair value and benefitting the club. This means that their assessment that some of the deals between, let's say, City and the UAE firms being dodgy and inflated can be wrong.

 

[badaz52]

Except that CAS never said that did they...

Not exactly no but it is implied especially because the investigation was re-opened following the leaks.

https://apnews.com/103732d2b1ea4f7faffe3c7d169f72a9

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

I just knew Santa Cruz’s wages would come back to bite us

Hughes' fault.

 

[paulchapo]

Ive been thinking about that today. Moving goalposts after telling us we were compliant, has happened more than once.

What I don't understand, if this is the case and we have proof of it, why we haven't got this out there publicly and/or used it to smash all these charges. It is blatant proof they have stitched us up twice, one to ensure we failed and two to besmirch our reputation.