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

[The Colonel]

The way things were leaked during the process would have resulted in a mistrial or acquittal in a legitimate court.

And I think that this will turn out to be a huge undoing of UEFA’s case. Those with links to the likes of Liverpool and rags couldn’t resist gleefully sending out bad news stories.

 

[paulchapo]

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.

Exactly! We aren't guilty of anything. How anyone, even a trained person can safely work their way through the complicated tangled mess of this ffp minefield of rules and regulations without some mistakes is beyond me. That is if we did make any.

Now the prejudiced media and fans of other clubs will of course take great delight in trying to shame us and sully our reputation if we lose the case, but they can get to fuck. We all know why these complicated rules were put in place and deep down so do they. I hope we win the case and then destroy as many of them as possible.

 

[The Colonel]

If they buy Newcastle they will be successful, it might take 5,6,7 years but they will get there. I welcome the challenge and it would be hypocritical of us as a City fan base not too. I see Saudi investment in Newcastle as fantastic regarding football politics concerning City, which is the point I'm making, we need allies against the g14 and the American PL clubs who play in red, and their pet poodle named spurs.

I agree but expect an American owned clubs’ campaign to squeeze the Premier League’s balls and put more obstacles in the way. The good thing is that we will not be lone voices from boards down to fans in pointing this unjust power base out.

 

[The Colonel]

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.

And now those revenues have been removed...tick tick...

 

[BamberBridgeBlue]

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.

I fear my response might only make things worse, but here goes. Since Sheikh Mansour took over, from the outset there was collective hand wringing in the press. With a couple of notable exceptions at the time, (Martin Samuel and Adrian Durham on Talkshite) it was pretty much universal open season on us. At that point, like you I thought “surely these guys aren’t all getting together in a room to set an agenda”. Of course, that doesn’t happen. At best, they have little regard for journalistic integrity and only print / broadcast what will sell a paper, get viewing figures or clicks. That in itself is pretty damning.

At worst, you then look at the press and media in a wider context. They ritually decide what to report to set the agenda of their owners. If you look at what do and don’t report, going back through Brexit as well, you see it isn’t left wing, right wing, green or anything else other than globalist. If you look very carefully, even though they push a woke inclusive agenda, you can spot their racism.

When your corporate owners keep pushing their own stories, asking you drop that piece of journalism you were working on, you soon get conditioned to what content your editor (mouthpiece) wants. If you don’t like it you could always go back to local independent media (if it exists). At that stage you don’t need everybody in a room to orchestrate what gets said, broadcast, printed.

In summary, if you look at the reporting and treatment of Manchester City as a singular case, you can only reach the conclusion you have reached. Just my view Frank. You think I’m a conspiracy theorist, I think you are naive. But we can agree that without mud slinging.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

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 covered the related party issue here. https://forums.bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk/...-8-9-10th-june.339272/page-2855#post-12668441

Owners can fund sponsorships via related parties as long as those are fair value. There are general rules in the Companies Acts, tax statutes and accounting standards against hiding transactions, overstating revenues or understating costs (included Related Party Transactions in IAS 24). A number of companies have been prosecuted for inflating profits by booking revenues they aren't entitled to.

Mike Lynch, the founder of Autonomy, which used to be a sponsor of Spurs sponsor, is fighting extradition to the US for something like that. Former directors of one of my old employers were jailed for fraud because they hid large insurance claims, which had the effect of inreasing profits. If you ran a cash business and were found not to be declaring large amounts of cash you'd earned, you'd be in trouble.

But if Etihad give us a cheque for £50m and we recorded it as such, then unless we were aware it was a knowingly deceptive act, we should be OK.

 

[KS55]

They have invested for the long term, would be well aware of this small problem and the possible outcome

Also they might well have taken an insurance policy against the known risks, similar to political risks insurance.

 

[franksinatra]

I fear my response might only make things worse, but here goes. Since Sheikh Mansour took over, from the outset there was collective hand wringing in the press. With a couple of notable exceptions at the time, (Martin Samuel and Adrian Durham on Talkshite) it was pretty much universal open season on us. At that point, like you I thought “surely these guys aren’t all getting together in a room to set an agenda”. Of course, that doesn’t happen. At best, they have little regard for journalistic integrity and only print / broadcast what will sell a paper, get viewing figures or clicks. That in itself is pretty damning.

At worst, you then look at the press and media in a wider context. They ritually decide what to report to set the agenda of their owners. If you look at what do and don’t report, going back through Brexit as well, you see it isn’t left wing, right wing, green or anything else other than globalist. If you look very carefully, even though they push a woke inclusive agenda, you can spot their racism.

When your corporate owners keep pushing their own stories, asking you drop that piece of journalism you were working on, you soon get conditioned to what content your editor (mouthpiece) wants. If you don’t like it you could always go back to local independent media (if it exists). At that stage you don’t need everybody in a room to orchestrate what gets said, broadcast, printed.

In summary, if you look at the reporting and treatment of Manchester City as a singular case, you can only reach the conclusion you have reached. Just my view Frank. You think I’m a conspiracy theorist, I think you are naive. But we can agree that without mud slinging.

Nothing wrong with what you wrote there and I would certainly not discount it or refute much of it.

I do not think of you as a conspiracy theorist in its most sinister of terms. Who questions everything and anything what happens or your opinion above is unreasonable at all.

Moving away from City, if we used Mourinho as an example, I think there was definitely a shift in how he was projected in the press. He went from the special one to the misery one, pretty quickly, and what you have written about the editor above, could easily been applied to him.

Similarly I have no doubt the potential Guardian writer, at interview, will know what type of work is expected and what type of work the editor and their readership consume.

There are probably a lot of more subtle examples, than those above, which could also be considered an agenda. Like has been said previously, it is probably too broad a word a use.

 

[Exeter Blue I am here]

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.

Of all the many things that get me reaching for the Zantac, PB, this is numero uno......the fear being that CAS will look at our case and, even though it ostensibly complies with the rules as lain out, decide that our having a 3rd party (Sheikh Mohamed), with whom we are actively engaging (vis the hacked email advising that “HH” will pay the rest), effectively fund our sponsors so they can then fund us in turn, will be viewed as against the spirit of the rules and meriting punishment of some description. The good thing is that presumably we would argue - with the open skies document in mind - that this information was already in the public domain and that it could not therefore be claimed that City were trying to keep it a secret?

 

[KS55]

Of all the many things that get me reaching for the Zantac, PB, this is numero uno......the fear being that CAS will look at our case and, even though it ostensibly complies with the rules as lain out, decide that our having a 3rd party (Sheikh Mohamed), with whom we are actively engaging (vis the hacked email advising that “HH” will pay the rest), effectively fund our sponsors so they can then fund us in turn, will be viewed as against the spirit of the rules and meriting punishment of some description. The good thing is that presumably we would argue - with the open skies document in mind - that this information was already in the public domain and that it could not therefore be claimed that City were trying to keep it a secret?

Such funding is common: Arse and Emirates: every Russian club sponsored by companies that are either in receipt of gov funds, are nationalized, or reassured that the gov will step in: PSG and Qatar 'world branding' etc etc.