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

What do you think will be the outcome of the CAS hearing?

  • Two-year ban upheld

    Votes: 197 13.1%
  • Ban reduced to one year

    Votes: 422 28.2%
  • Ban overturned and City exonerated

    Votes: 815 54.4%
  • Other

    Votes: 65 4.3%

  • Total voters
    1,499
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So would SilverLake have invested heavily in us if they knew we were going to get done over in court....

I'd love to believe that Silver Lake saw the evidence and invested because they saw that it was clear beyond the slightest doubt that City had complied absolutely with FFP, and it might be the case, but I doubt that it's particularly relevant to their decision. They are building an entertainment arena which will be the biggest in the UK and one of the biggest in the world holding events of world significance. The arena won't even be built in two years time and the investment decisions will be based on projections over a long term, so I think the on pitch success of the club and any problems with UEFA won't really be that significant. Much more important, I would think, are the site, communications and the other opportunities offered for similar developments on other sites within the CFG.
 
Even if we were economical with the truth, who gives a fuck? I know I certainly don't. In fact I embrace it.

We all know why FFP was created. We all know that goal posts were moved the first time, thus ensuring we 'failed' the audit.

Our owners should be able to invest as they see fit.

That is not to say there shouldn't be governance though, there has to be a set of rules that ensure we don't see clubs getting themselves in all sorts of shit ala Leeds, I am fully supportive of that type of process.

What I'm not supportive of is a set of rules created by a bunch of bent bastards with the sole purpose of protecting their elitism by stopping us being a prolonged and consistent threat to it.

The best possible outcome is that UEFA are instructed (and I don't believe this can happen through CAS, although I may be wrong) to revise their finicial policy so that it is actually 'fair'.

If they did this properly, then a large number of that G14 would have some serious problems.

UEFA are just a road block. There are a group of clubs who are itching to create their own super League and I suspect we want in, but those said clubs have gone to task with us now in a big way and I don't think that road can be repaired. In fact it's gone in completely the opposite direction.

This is a geopolitical power play. The very definition of football politics.

I am not entirely sure where we stand in the shit storm but it looks like we want some part of a breakaway.
UEFA embrace debt they even boast about it in their annual report as debt to equity ratio has progressively improve under FFP They obviously didn’t anticipate a pandemic
 
I've seen your history of posting on this matter, it's why I moved some goalposts a little. Certainly in terms of the wording 'agenda', truth be told I wanted to get an honest response from you which has happened.

I've had to read between the lines of your post but my conclusion is you don't believe UEFA are out to get us. That you don't believe there is anything organised in respect of how the media portray us and how that likely aids the message coming from quatar.

That's all fine btw, you are entitled to your point of view I just wanted to clarify what side of the fence you were on, because it was getting a little muddy.

Agree with your last sentence so will leave it here. Cheers.

I think for me an agenda would be the likes of organisations like the BBC, Sky, Daily Mail conspiring to put us down collectively, which I do not see. Individual companies like the BBC I could not see pushing a narrative to employees to alter their opinions to run us down, a Murdoch paper I would be less sure. Some might consider the likes of Delaney and Harris conspiring to write similar tweets as evidence of an agenda. It means many things to many people.

With regards UEFA, I think undoubtedly there is corruption within the organisation but I am unsure of the rest. Ceferins association with the likes of the Agnelli family and the influence of Qatar on UEFA does cause concern. Put it this way I would not trust them, however as the process has to go through CAS, and the comments from City, that gives me a great deal of confidence.

With regards to what side of the fence I sit, their has only ever been one side and its the badge, club I support that supersedes everything including any player, manager, owner.

Thank you for the courteous nature of your response. Cheers.
 
UEFA embrace debt they even boast about it in their annual report as debt to equity ratio has progressively improve under FFP They obviously didn’t anticipate a pandemic
They're masking the fact that gross indebtedness hasn't decreased though. It's probably increased in fact. So clubs may be better able to support their debt but that's because revenues, profitability and therefore equity has increased. FFP still doesn't outlaw or restrict leveraged buyouts.
 
I think for me an agenda would be the likes of organisations like the BBC, Sky, Daily Mail conspiring to put us down collectively, which I do not see. Individual companies like the BBC I could not see pushing a narrative to employees to alter their opinions to run us down, a Murdoch paper I would be less sure. Some might consider the likes of Delaney and Harris conspiring to write similar tweets as evidence of an agenda. It means many things to many people.
Would you accept an organised campaign by a number of rival clubs to use their influence with those outlets to put us down as an agenda though?
 
Sorry to pick up on your post particularly but there's a general point I wanted to make so be assured I'm not having a go at you here.

People are talking about us being "guilty". That's nonsense. We haven't killed or assaulted anyone, we haven't stolen anything. We haven't broken any laws at all in fact. CAS won't find us "guilty" or "innocent". What we've allegedly done is contravene some rules. I can't even find evidence of how these rules were accepted by the majority as all I can see is that a body appointed by UEFA, the Club Financial Control Panel, came up with the rules, which were endorsed by the Executive Committee. So anyone who also says "We signed up to them" is also wrong. They were imposed on UEFA associations whether they liked them or not as far as I can see.

The thing with rules and laws, particularly financial ones, is that they're always open to interpretation. That's why we have commercial courts, tax tribunals, employment tribunals etc. Because when sorting out tax, an acountant may take one view and HMRC an opposing one. It's about interpretation and that often involves deciding what the spirit of the rule was. It's also about what you think you can legally get away with.

The central question with our alleged breach is does it matter where Etihad and the other two Abu Dhabi-based sponsors got their money from? And the answer is, as I've shown, yes it could well matter, depending on the circumstances. But my interpretation of the FFP rules is that if Sheikh Mansour didn't pay that money, then we haven't broken any rules and, even if he did, we might not have.

I assume that UEFA's interpretation of the Der Spiegel stories will be one of our key lines of defence (although it might not be) with us arguing they were wrong and we can show that quite categorically. People are also talking about false accounting, which is ridiculous. If Etihad gave us £50m and we recorded that as £50m sponsorship then we've done things quite correctly. If, on the other hand, Etihad gave us £10m and Sheikh Mansour gave us the other £40m, which we recorded as being fom Etihad, then we could have been seen to have misreported the income. but I'm pretty confident we did things by the book.

So please can we not talk about us being "guilty" and this being some sort of court case that will establish our guilt or innocence. It will, I believe, establish if UEFA's interpretation and implementation of its own processes and procedures was correct and whether they had any genuine grounds for re-opening our case.

can you elaborate is this to do with related party and fair value and are there specific rules against hiding things even if you have not actually broken rules around fair value or related party ?
 
can you elaborate is this to do with related party and fair value and are there specific rules against hiding things even if you have not actually broken rules around fair value or related party ?
I'm getting confused as to what are 'rules' and what are laws. I'm not even sure UEFA have the right to access our accounts or to define/restrict how a company is financed within UK / EU law?
 
Would you accept an organised campaign by a number of rival clubs to use their influence with those outlets to put us down as an agenda though?

Good question. It is a bit of a grey area that one. Newspapers use sources all the time to gain stories so if it was accurate and was passed to a paper, and was printed possibly not. However, dependent upon the volume ,type of content it could easily be viewed differently and questions be raised where the line is drawn and where the paper starts acting as a mouthpiece for that club(s). So I would probably say there is not a black and white answer there.

If it was a club or clubs passing disinformation and the paper(s), knowing this, were happy to keep printing it, I would probably say that is an agenda.

That is my immediate reaction without probably giving it the thought it deserves.
 
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