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

[SEAC1986]

...Hello darkness my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again....

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

Yep, she's actually Panick's senior at Blackstone Chambers.

In fact, she's one of only 2 Heads of Chambers and the most senior QC at the firm.

So she's the most senior lawyer at the most prestigious law firm in the country. :-)

https://www.blackstonechambers.com/barristers/

That could explain the reports Pannick hasn't taken it on?

Perhaps his boss pulled rank!!

I bet she charges more than £20k a day!

 

[Chappie]

Plenty of positivity at CFA today, certainly no inkling that we have had a bad couple of days.

Sounds like Monica is on it and not Pannick?

Kinnell she charges 18000 pounds a day and wants a season ticket if she wins the case
City have offered 15000 pounds a day and if she loses a season ticket at the swamp
Now that's pressure, come on Monica

 

[citytill1die84]

We're trying to negotiate on Kai Havertz.

Whether it's dependent on a successful outcome, I honestly couldn't say.

Holy fuck I hope so.

 

[petrusha]

Peter, we can’t be sure but I think this angle has only come about as a result of Conn’s article which states UEFA deemed Etihad to be a related party. Of course, the Conn article could be complete bollocks. If it’s true though then your point about UEFA perhaps not pushing it due to it being deemed more or less fair value could be spun the other way too. Maybe City agreed to disagree with UEFA on the related party issue but didn’t push it and allowed UEFA to class it as a related party deal because they’d signed it off as fair value anyway so it wasn’t worth really arguing over? I don’t think any of us know for sure though - the 2014 settlement agreement made reference to a couple of secondary sponsors and that we’d agreed to not raise the value of them (for a couple of seasons at least I think), but there was nothing about the Etihad deal.

I have less of a regard for the likely accuracy of a David Conn piece than others on here for reasons I've expounded on at length elsewhere, and think his assertion that UEFA has been deemed a related party might derive from an assumption on his part that this must be so given the PwC advice to such effect. IMO, other information in the public domain suggests his assumption could be misplaced.

I take the view that City's settlement agreement is very likely to have dealt with the issue of which parties are related an which aren't for the sake of certainty going forward, and have two points in that regard:

1) If Etisalat and Aarbar (and it's stretching the bounds of credulity to suggest that these aren't the two 'second-tier sponsorships referred to in the 2014 UEFA press release) were deemed related parties, why were they specifically dealt with in the settlement agreement? That makes no sense to me when UEFA could easily have adjusted the fair values of the sponsorships for FFP purposes.

2). I don't see it as credible, in the light of the leaked information as to why PwC were alleging related party relationships with the Abu Dhabi sponsors, that Etihad would have been deemed a related party if Etisalat and Aarbar weren't.

So I remain dubious regarding Conn's assertion. I suspect UEFA will be likely arguing that City have stated that Etihad is an unrelated party, yet it was receiving funds from City's owner to divert into the club under the guise of the sponsorship contract. I'm sceptical that the original UEFA stance on the relayed party point can really help us by being regarded as a material issue now.

As to the point that one can spin a lot of these arguments two ways - yes, of course. People are desperate for issues such as this to be black and white. In fact, in pretty well all disputes that are litigated there are arguments on both sides and the court or arbitral tribunal decides on balance whose arguments they find more persuasive.

Obviously, I hope in this case it's ours. But assessing the likelihood of the respective sides prevailing is basically just a huge guess at the moment because no one knows what evidence they're both putting forward.

 

[Mancborn]

Exactly my thoughts. It’s gradually got glummer and glummer all day to the point where it sounds like we’re fucked.

So what has actually come to light today?

 

[lasereyes]

All that has happened is that the wild optimism that we're definitely going to prevail and proceed to rip UEFA & all our enemies a new one has disappeared. Instead a more nuanced view has taken over whereby we could / should win but also we have to bear in mind that we might lose.

We are into the second half, United are ahead, and Cisse has equalized. It's going to get worse around the 3/4 mark (Mackey). I expect growing despair for most of tomorrow.

 

[Jacko1956]

City as a business would have settled if they didn't have a legal opinion suggesting they had a high chance of success.

I've been there before through my own work. Nothing like this of course, but you get a Counsel's opinion and they run through the options and generally will seek to avoid a case going to court unless they are going to win it. And they always tend to be cautious about your chances. It might involve a bluff by taking it to court. It might be that with the right judge you get a decision and when the wrong one is announced you call it quits and settle outside of the process.

City could have taken a year. Could have taken the fine. You don't fight it just because you got stung once before, not in business. There has to be a confidence it's nonsense to I'll share that view. The rising scepticism is purely because UEFA are involved and you can't help feel CAS will somehow be influenced. But that's not what CAS is about so I remain confident it will go away.

We're guilty either way of course. The papers will report that despite the breaches we haven't been punished again. And we'll have to ride that and move on.

The only thing that could impact the above is the current situation and the impact financially moving forwards. Perhaps City may have settled in usual circumstances, but instead have a more pressing need to fight this in the hope we don't get a ban and avoid further financial punishment in the current economic/sporting context due to Covid-19.

Be assured if there was even a hint of UEFA winning with CAS it would have leaked out to press, not a peep on any platform that I could find. The truth is we know nothing about how the case is panning out! Not likely that we know on what alleged evidence City are trying to proof their case on. What hasn't been mentioned is the alleged info City have obtained from several other teams accounts it could well be that City could proof cover ups that implicate corruption by UEFA on a large scale, who knows what's being laid on the table.

 

[cjn]

Seems like she's an expert in EU competition law..

https://www.blackstonechambers.com/barristers/monica-carss-frisk-qc/

A quote on her profile describes her as "devastatingly effective". Think we did alright with this one.

 

[blueyorkie]

Just got back onto this when I got home 30 minutes ago, does anyone actually know anything that has come out today or is it all speculation?