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

[WRicko]

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.

I think the media do have an agenda but I would not give it a name globalist as you suggested or anything you ruled out A lot of people think the media was anti Brexit but some think it was pro Brexit if you look at what they did during that campaign the people in the media especially broadcast where probably pro remain but they did a crap job of holding the conservatives and Brexitiers to account ( many have similar backgrounds to conservatives and have links to Conservative minister on the and the bbc depend on the government ) People need to look at the rather sinister reasons people certain people supporter Brexit eg disaster capitalists, tax avoidance, workers rights or lack of them, animal rights, human rights, product standards, environment protections, and racism, a lot of dodgy stuff went on and several politicians benefit financially from the country suffering the papers owners are mostly right wing tax dodging Brexitier nut jobs workers are probably more moderate but don’t show it in order to keep their jobs ( the same maybe true of football journalists ) I would say that the prime reason and same applies to politics. Globalism could be described as global standards i.e pro EU or pro Brexit with disaster capitalism lots of imported cheap labour but from Bangladesh not Greece low standards look at how certain global companies in certain sectors back remain on mass e.g car companies whilst others on mass profited from Brexit e.g hedge funds

 

[TheThirdDeano]

I reckon we're innocent

 

[WRicko]

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.

let’s say for a arguments sake UEFA have more of a case than we think they have let’s say we received money from someone other than Etihad ( knowing it came from someone else)on behalf of Etihad to cover the money they owed us for sponsorship because they had the period of financial difficulties how much trouble would we be in given that Etihad is not a related party is it ? Who is ? What was the ruling on the companies in the first settlement ? Even if Etihad was related party it’s not inflated according the the original settlement is it ?

thanks in advance

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

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?

I don't know whether CAS even need to decide that. That sounds like a point of law to me, with CAS asked to decide exactly who a 'related party' was. They can decide on points of law I understand but only Swiss Law (as UEFA are Swiss-based) and I can't see how that relates to FFP or accounting standards.

It's possible our defence consists of evidence of the receipt from Etihad in 2013 and maybe a statement from Etihad that this money was all theirs and that no part of it came from ADUG or Sheikh Mansour or at his request.

 

[Exeter Blue I am here]

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.

Makes it even more staggering that we’re up before the beak then!

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

let’s say for a arguments sake UEFA have more of a case than we think they have let’s say we received money from someone other than Etihad ( knowing it came from someone else)on behalf of Etihad to cover the money they owed us for sponsorship because they had the period of financial difficulties how much trouble would we be in given that Etihad is not a related party is it ? Who is ? What was the ruling on the companies in the first settlement ? Even if Etihad was related party it’s not inflated according the the original settlement is it ?

thanks in advance

We'd have been very stupid if that was the case and I've said before, it'd serve us right if it could be clearly shown that we'd accepted money separately and lumped it in with Etihad's contribution. But the emails seemed to make it clear we didn't do that, and that we were asking that things be done by the book, so that all the money was seen to come from Etihad and them alone. I suspect we've got emails that Der Spiegel conveniently forgot to print which show that beyond reasonable doubt.

The issue of related parties wasn't actually dealt with properly in 2014. UEFA seemed to be claiming Etihad were a related party whereas we denied that. This was never settled. I've said on a number of occasions that, in my view, the smart move would have been to say to UEFA that for the purposes of FFP and FFP alone, we would accept them to be related. Then, if as is suggested, UEFA accepted that the Etihad sponsorship was broadly OK in terms of value, the problem would have been solved. And if we had to write down some of the others by a few million, it only meant we failed FFP by a few more million than we actually did.

 

[Aytoun]

I joined " The Athletic " paper on trial very early, but I cancelled quickly as it soon became clear it was little better than a raggy/dipper PR exercise & any articles about us were childish nonsense.

However they still kept my Email address & contact me, usually to offer another trial. This happened yesterday & again as usual they start an article & it then vanishes. This one was about FFP & what it means to MCFC after they spoke to leading experts.

Does anyone have details about what this said & what does it mean to us. I would be very interested to know if P_B has seen it.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

I joined " The Athletic " paper on trial very early, but I cancelled quickly as it soon became clear it was little better than a raggy/dipper PR exercise & any articles about us were childish nonsense.

However they still kept my Email address & contact me, usually to offer another trial. This happened yesterday & again as usual they start an article & it then vanishes. This one was about FFP & what it means to MCFC after they spoke to leading experts.

Does anyone have details about what this said & what does it mean to us. I would be very interested to know if P_B has seen it.

I had read the article and didn't think much of it to be honest. Neither of the experts they quoted really seemed to have a clear grasp of the particular issues around our case an one dodn't even seem to understand the PSG case properly. Speaking to Stefan Borson and myself would have been better as we both would have made more sense of the case.

 

[Academica]

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.

Well put Frank.

 

[Newman Noggs]

I had read the article and didn't think much of it to be honest. Neither of the experts they quoted really seemed to have a clear grasp of the particular issues around our case an one dodn't even seem to understand the PSG case properly. Speaking to Stefan Borson and myself would have been better as we both would have made more sense of the case.

But would you have said the things their readers want to read ?