Exactly. UEFA has created a set of measures based on legal provisions and accounting regulations common in the corporate world, yet bleat when clubs employ measures common in the corporate world to operate their business to its best effect in the context of the regulations. As a regulator, if UEFA didn't want that, they should accept that they didn't draft the FFP rules properly and, if necessary, amend them for the future.
@Pablo ZZZ Peroni helpfully points out one such amendment above.
Of course, the press coverage surrounding this issue has been pathetic, with no recognition of the fact that the leaked material could reveal wrongdoing on City's part but, equally, is entirely consistent with an interpretation that City were looking for lawful regulatory workarounds in a way that countless legitimate, reputable businesses do across the globe every single day. There also seems to be a simplistic belief in the press that, because a course of action was discussed in correspondence, it must inevitably have been carried through. That's not the case, I assure you.
As I recall, back in the initial assessment period, we were scrabbling around looking for any measures we could find to avoid punishment by meeting the strict financial target that would have allowed us to disregard expenses on player wages paid under contracts entered into before 2010. But that period is covered by the settlement agreement and the Der Spiegel revelations don't seem to contain any "revelations" that post-date the settlement.
Presumably, if there had been anything post-2014, we'd have been charged with that because it would be easier to make stick given the presence of the agreement covering the earlier period.
So instead, they've had to look for something of which they were unaware pre-2014 and which they therefore didn't take into account when concluding the settlement agreement. What they found is a suggestion that ADUG might have been paying the Etihad sponsorship, thus funnelling shareholder funding into the club and misrepresenting the source of the funds. But, as
@Kinkys Left Foot discussed yesterday in another thread, unless there's further evidence that's not in the public domain, the basis for imposing a ban on us that will cost us GBP 80 million (if it's one season) seems extraordinarily flimsy.
