If you that's the case why didnt the club take the lower punishment they were offered a couple of months ago?We all know what’s probably going to happen.
UEFA will get us at least a 1 year ban with some fine and they’ll see that as a triumph. This will then open the door for PL to try and punish us. Surely they have to do their OWN investigations ??????
A few of those defaming us today say UEFA has further damning evidence in their possession of our guilt, that we blatantly violated FFP,leaving financial footprints.
Like i said i had not heard this information before today.
Feels like UEFA are putting it out there now through their MSM sycophants .
They know what is hid in the dark ,will be seen in the light in the legal Courts.
Sorry i am not providing links to umpteen articles.
Based on your perception are you confident this ruling will be overturned?If you that's the case why didnt the club take the lower punishment they were offered a couple of months ago?
The club seem extremely confident they have enough evidence for this ruling to be overturned
The emails shouldn't be admissible evidence and I assume that will be part of City's case, which may be accepted by CAS or a court whereas UEFA have only one goal in mind and don't care how they achieve it.
Ultimately we may have to go to real courts and have the regulations we have been purported to have broken declared illegal due to the fact - and I believe it is fact - that they are anti-competitive and nothing more than veiled protectionism. Win that case btw and I suspect we could then sue UEFA an ruin the fuckers and if there is evidence that they conspired with other clubs, take those bastards to the cleaners too.
I wonder what Abu Dhabi's secret service or equivalent can hack?
There were reports that Alexsander Ceferin tried to get City to accept guilt in return for a weak sanction.
If this is true there are two consequences:
1) City are very confident of their position,
2) More imprortantly, where does that leave the UEFA Adjudicatory Chamber? It means the process is not evidence based, and the Chamber is not primary. That is surely an abuse of process and UEFA just make it up as they go along?
However after all that has gone in, how much do you trust the sporting authorities? This of course relies on the Ceferin reports being accurate. He may just have been taking in a game.
I didn't know city had 171 players on our books ))Couldn't agree more.
FT article from late 2018: https://www.ft.com/content/738537c8-d1f5-11e8-a9f2-7574db66bcd5
HIghlights:
HMRC yielded £332 million in extra tax since 2015 - by tackling non-compliance in football industry (so maybe c£600 million undeclared income)
Inquiries into 171 players still "open" as at October 2018.
This is the crux of it for me.
Did someone in the UAE (i.e., HH) top up the sponsorship funds? Maybe, maybe not. The emails seem to suggest they did.
But if that money was invested in each of the sponsors and then paid into City's accounts directly from Etihad, Etisalat, Aabar, etc. (as also suggested by the emails), I don't see how UEFA have much of a case.
It's not like they'll have any access to those companies' accounts/bank records as they have no jurisdiction over them. And in the very unlikely scenario they even asked to see them, they will have been told to fuck off.
So, all that matters is that if City stated X million as Aabar sponsorship revenue, then City's own bank records need to show that same X million arriving directly from Aabar. And the leaked emails suggest they were very careful about ensuring that happened.
Now obviously, if City's accounts show 25% of that X million came from Aabar and 75% came from elsewhere (i.e., ADUG, Sheikh Mansour), then we're bang to rights. But we surely wouldn't be appealing if it was that cut and dried.
So, my own hypothesis is that UEFA "know" we have circumvented FFP; the emails show it. But they have no other proof. And even if those emails were admissible, they could theoretically be explained away as meaning something else.
Rather than allowing us to get away with what they see as blatant "cheating", and knowing that the evidence they have won't stand up in CAS (or court), they have sought to inflict massive reputational damage in the hope that some of that damage will stick even when the punishment is overturned.
This ties in with the rumours that UEFA were desperate to agree a deal with City that saw us accept guilt with a token slap on the wrist. That suggests they weren't at all confident that their "evidence" would stand up to intense scrutiny.
When City told them they weren't interested, UEFA went for the only other option left to them — nuclear reputational damage. This explains why the punishment is so excessive; they know it won't be upheld, but they had to go in hard for the world to take notice and make at least some of the mud stick.
That's my theory anyway!
I'll admit I'm no expert in this matter however after reading lots of different articles and people's views(not just on here) it seems Uefa are basing this ban on hacked emails.Based on your perception are you confident this ruling will be overturned?
yep, that's the best part of that statement. They backed up few years ago when we've threaten to go too the real court. Looks like they have been pressured by cartel to take the risk, guess all that talk about super league was part f that pressure.
I don't think the conduit of how UAE state funds are used to transfer funds from the state airline is particularly important. It looks and sounds damning but this is what is meant by context. City and Etihad will have a contract specifying the terms of the Etihad deal. If it says £67.5m is due to Man City in respect of X then the financial obligations of a finacially compromised state airline are indeed going to be met by the UAE Executive government. That is not really controversial. Regarding the small UAE sponsors, I don;t think City have ever pretended that these companies were not owned by Sheikh mansour e.g. Aabar so within reason we can within the rules adjust what we sponsor ourselves. There are loads of examples of football clubs self-sponsoring e.g Leicester with King Power, Sports Direct etc.In this scenario you are describing money laundering. In essence we are using a bank transfer to a sponsor from us to falsely conceal the source of funds for a sponsorship deal. If that’s our defense we are truly buggered.
Nobody on here has a clue what our defense is. What is clear is that we are supremely confident of having this quashed. Our statement in response to the ban has basically accused UEFA of being totally corrupt. No legal team would dream of advising us putting this in writing unless they are 101% certain UEFA are wrong. An interesting time is ahead.
The Ceferin rumour is very interesting. If the club have any proof of that offer surely it would strengthen their case? UEFA offer a slap on the wrist to save face with the cartel and media but we refuse as we believe we are innocent. UEFA then throw their toys out of the pram and hit us with the ban and fine. So even if we go to CAS and fail, surely the original slap on the wrist should be the punishment as that is what was originally agreed was fair.
Ask Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or Edward Woodward, and they too will claim irrefutable proof of no wrong doing from their companies either. That’s where it sits for me.
That's was my earlier point CAS hasn't really overruled an FFP caseThey made that agreement because they would have failed been unable to adhere to FFP for years so they colluded together to let Milan off the hook for upcoming years while they don’t participate in Europe because of the ban. Shows the integrity of UEFA.
We would say that.The word 'impartial' also stands out to me.
why the fuck would you criticize owners of eventually (probably) cooking the books to beat bent rule? Not trying to beat them would be football equivalent of abiding by apartheid rules in South Africa. We wouldn't play in CL anyway if we respected the ****s of the rules, it was there to stop us in the beginning, you you would never see the success of last few years if we played fine.
Fuck the FFP rules and especially, fuck those that say it's cheating when you shit over bent rules. They can suck our trophies :)
I'm not suggesting that's what our defence will be. I'm suggesting that's what may have happened.In this scenario you are describing money laundering. In essence we are using a bank transfer to a sponsor from us to falsely conceal the source of funds for a sponsorship deal. If that’s our defense we are truly buggered.
UEFA seem to have done somersaults over the course of their AJ review which completely compromises their process. However that relies on the accuracy of news reports. Sam Lee's information was that both UEFA and City believed a ban was highly unlikely.