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

[Hinchcliffe at the far post]

Nicked off a mate but soo so true


Quite a read, but so true

Once upon a time, there was a really prestigious football tournament called the European Cup, which was based on sporting excellence. It brought together outstanding teams from across the continent. To qualify teams first had to prove themselves by winning their own league, this truly was a competition for champions.

With the glory though also came the opportunity for great wealth & eventually the principal of sporting excellence was overtaken by greed. The self-appointed elite of the time "the European Royalty" decided they wanted a greater share of the spoils & they wanted it guaranteed regardless of their performance!

The grubby little cartel (later known as the G14) threatened to break away & form their own Super League, unless everyone else agreed to their demands! Feeling they had little choice, UEFA caved in & the"Champions" League was born.

At the heart of this self-serving little cartel were 3 English clubs (Man United, Liverpool & Arsenal) & coincidentally the format of the new competition granted 3 places to English teams. It also changed from a straight knockout format to an initial group stage. So now not only could they still qualify by only finishing 2nd or 3rd in the Premier League, they were also guaranteed at least 6 lucrative fixtures each season.

BOOM! The money started rolling in & the big 3 got fatter, as they disappeared over the horizon, leaving the rest of the league with little chance of ever challenging their increasing financial dominance!

Then out of the blue, a wealthy Russian Oligarch, Roman Abramovich, rolled into town to bankroll Chelsea & gatecrash the party! With the gravy train now under threat, the greedy little threesome convinced UEFA to increase the English allocation to 4 places! Phew disaster averted, onwards & upwards, no harm done...

That was until the "evil" Sheikh Mansour bought Manchester City with his unlimited "dirty oil money!"!

Now with UEFA unable or unwilling to accommodate this latest unwelcome guest at the top table, a new strategy was required to preserve the dominance of the established elite. Without further a do, the "Financial Fair Play" was conceived!

This had little to do with "fair play", turning a blind eye to debt ridden clubs & owners that systematically drained money out of the game! It was solely designed to stop wealthy owners investing in clubs & making them competitive; thus ensuring the lazy established elite remained unchallenged.

Undeterred by the bogus nature of these new constraints targeted at them & any future investors, Manchester City embarked on transforming the club, with initial investment to break the cartel & putting top quality people in place, off the field as well as on it.

In addition to breaking all records on the pitch, the club has now achieved commercial sustainability & delivered 4 years of profit. The club is now independently valued at over £2B (reportedly outstripping all the Premier League old-guard). This has shown a huge return on Sheikh Mansour's £1.2B investment & dispelling the lie of "financial doping".

So what do the owners of the established "European Royalty" do now? Up their game? Risk their own money to meet the challenge? No! They utilise their stooges in the media to try & discredit City's achievements & demand UEFA do "something" to derail Citys' progress!

Manchester City FC -
Centurions
Fourmidables
Champions of England (again)
FA Cup holders
League Cup holders
The best ran football club in the world!

Thank you Sheikh Mansour, thank you Kaldoon & Thank you Pep Guardiola

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Some random thoughts about this scenario:

1) UEFA seem to be basing their case on the Der Spiegal cache of emails. Have they seen these emails or are they solely going off the newspaper reports? What attempts have they made to be sure that there are no emails not known to them? We are told this is a huge data dump - what attempts have been made to ensure they have viewed every email with relevant detail? How have they done this analysis? IF they have used the actual data dump to gather evidence have city also been provided with the same data dump?

2) I've assumed they haven't actually had access to the data dump (although it would be fun if City did have the entire cache of football leaks emails) because Der Spiegal were excited yesterday that it was their research that got us to this point. What steps have UEFA made to verify the veracity and honesty of that research? What steps have they taken to ensure the snippets of emails presented in the paper are accurate particularly when placed back into the context from which they have been ripped? What alternative understandings of the presented fragments of text did they explore and what criteria did they use to dismiss those?

3) The CAS ruling on the Galatasary case commented that Galatasary leaned too heavily on newspaper reports in defence of their case. Are UEFA basing the entirety of their case on newspaper reports?

4) If I remember correctly when we failed FFP the next few years of our accounts were under extra scrutiny? (I may be mistaken about this). What did that scrutiny involve (if it happened) and who at UEFA signed off on them? Does this form part of the case that we misled UEFA?

5) Why did it take so long for the AC to inform City of their findings? How were we informed? Have we been given more detail about what we are being punished for than UEFA have released?

6) if my understanding is correct CAS can only judge based on policies and procedures and can offer no real comment on the evidence collected by UEFA except to say if it was collected effectively or not. Therefore CAS can only acquit us based on technicalities. Will this be enough for City or will they make further attempts to establish their innocence either by explaining more clearly the context of the emails we dispute and/or legal action.

Great post. and re point 6, I think it won't be enough for us now to get off on "technicalities" (although these are very relevant to the way UEFA conducted their case). I think we have to go for the throat now and land a knock-out blow on UEFA and their bent executive members like Gill.

 

[Marvin]

Image credit: Rebelscum.com

 

[Damanino]

Who hired this Rui Pinto hacker guy in the first place? Maybe he has some ties with top clubs in Europe...
Or was he just lying at home bored and thought he is gonna hack dozens of clubs, other organizations etc?

Really hope Mansour has sent cyber security experts t check any emails of top Uefa people and also Mike Riley. And I hope we found stuff worth to share soon. If not we are fucking naive.

 

[argyle]

I think she’s far more pro-active than many people give her credit for. The problem is we’re not holding that many cards. If you think we get a bad press now, it would be a million times worse if we started banning journalists.

Trump and Boris ban reporters and they've not done too badly out of it.

Utd and Newcastle have done so, again they haven't had any extra nonsense.

They write crap about us anyway. Ban them and hurt their livelihoods.

 

[The Preacher]

As for the media, their "hospitality" in future should be a corned beef butty, and tea made with crappiest teabags on the market.

You’re being too kind and generous to them.

 

[mrbelfry]

Bravo’s so good he’s in there twice

He's not the only one. I only regret Mangala has left. I was going to put Gundo in there as well but I don't want to undermine his confidence for when he gets the penalty in Madrid. If he misses that though I'll be advocating for him to receive a 2 years champions league ban

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

So, Colin, what is the legal process here? If CAS doesn't find in City's favour, what's next?

Then I guess we take it to the Swiss courts. I'm guessing Ceferin is hoping CAS do throw out their case but I'm not sure that's going to be enough to save him now.

 

[yerwot?]

Being the good guy, nailing the bad guy's lies time and again, proving they had broken the law numerous times , means fuck all in todays johnson/trump world where truth and justice is for wimps, snowflakes and lefties. The bigger the lie the better......

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

As for the media, their "hospitality" in future should be an excrement butty, and tea made with the discharge from an STI.

I think you've been too kind so fixed it for you.