Man City charged for breaching Financial Rules: Page 4 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Man City charged for breaching Financial Rules

Claudius

But also… death to their genitals.
Pep can burn in hell. Only good that’s come from him is his daughter.

Daz

Claudius lucky for him that he managed to have her before you ordered the execution of his man parts then 😉

Clrnc

What a genius. He saw it coming

Burnwinter

Think this is one of the better breakdowns of the 105 charges:

Bit over half of the charges are to do with City making false declarations about their accounts, and in particular sponsorships.
A chunk are Mancini's massive Al Jazeera "consulting fees" as a fraudulent side contract.
A chunk are technical and to do with City perverting the UEFA licence requirements compliance process overseen by the PL.
Remainder are charges of non-cooperation with the PL throughout this process.

If they can prove the charges in category (1) that's surely when City are in deep shit. And given how wafer thin some of those "sponsors" are, and how much discretion the PL panel has, this is really all going to come down to the politics of the present for the PL, and what will benefit it the most under the threat of outside regulation: which I'd guess will be a severe, but somehow apportioned punishment.

Ironic that the league jumps into action on financial doping only when its money pump is in danger of being turned off from outside the bunker ... imagine if they'd gotten around to any of this during Wenger's "stadium years".

goon

Burnwinter Ironic that the league jumps into action on financial doping only when its money pump is in danger of being turned off from outside the bunker

I've also seen suggestions that they've done it to show they can regulate themselves, but to be fair they started the investigate after the Der Spiegel leaks/hack over 4 years ago and have just been very thorough about it all. Have had to navigate a bunch of City roadblocks too, hence the fourth point in your list.

What I don't really understand is why they'd have needed the leaks to act. Without being funny, we all knew they were doing it, and if journalists with a fraction of the resources can find anomalies then there's no reason why they couldn't either. It's not like they'd have not had the backing of pretty much every other club in the league.

Burnwinter

But yeah I think the PL is going to go for broke to prove the charges in category (1) and if they can, they're going to fuck City up good and proper.

JazzG

City will want to drag this case for years, the longer this goes on the weaker the PL's resolve will get. They've gone for City, they have to come out of this looking respectable now. Otherwise this will open the floodgates for all sorts of shenanigans.

Also UAE has close ties to the government, you can be sure they'll be calling in those favours they are possibly owed!

goon

JazzG City will want to drag this case for years

From what I've read after the initial verdict, they can appeal to another independent PL panel, and that's about it. With that in mind, why would it take years? I'd be surprised if that wasn't resolved by the end of next season.

James

goon There's 105 charges. Each one will be picked over and pulled apart if possible by City's team. Even if each charge took a week say, that's 2 years.

JazzG

goon Remember reading they can take it to the UK courts if needed, was on Twitter mind you so not sure how accurate that is,

Mirth

Even without further appeals it can still be pushed out to delay. It's a lot harder than proving something like match fixing.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/case-against-manchester-city-for-financial-breaches-could-take-four-years-tfpb7wnhf

Burnwinter

The longer they draw it out, the higher the stakes for City if they are to lose. The PL can apply pretty arbitrary penalties to them, and won't stint if it takes four years to obtain a verdict.

goon

Burnwinter thanks mate, saves me from having to call upon @Big Willie to get me in.

James will they have an indefinite amount of time to comb over and dispute the charges? Surely given that it's an internal process, they could just set time parameters? X months for discovery, X months for a hearings. X months for appeals. Done. Too simple? 😆

Burnwinter

Here's an de-paywalled archive link for the Times article for anyone who doesn't fancy Murdoch …

https://archive.md/o15kO

Not so sure to be honest. There's two expert comments there.

One is from a KC who represented Derby County on its own charges and lost. "Related experience", sure, but on a completely different scale, for completely different reasons, with completely different stakes and pressures, and without years and years of painstaking audit and evidence discovery in advance.

The other is from a guy who says City won't be able to appeal but he wouldn't be surprised if it all took over two years anyway. Big whoop.

It'll all be done behind closed doors, but the Premier League will presumably prefer to focus on either the most provable, or the most significant, or the most decisive charges first. This isn't a criminal court, there's no real precedent, no suggestion of any understood principle of what's a proportionate penalty for any charge proven, no clarity about what if any ordinary legal processes will apply, few prescribed limits in the rulebook about what the Premier League could do.

My prediction: once the Premier League has outlined its approach behind the scenes, including whatever cards they hold that have led them to declare these 105 charges at all, this will go quite swiftly. We'll know roughly the outcome this time next year, and if it's not finalised it'll be because they're waiting for the summer for some reason of fairness.

jones

There's no way anything substantial will come from this. Seen people daydream about City getting relegated etc, the same organisation that watches PL refs do their thing every weekend will now acknowledge City's foul play and punish them for it yeah right lol.

Burnwinter

jones There's no way anything substantial will come from this.

People always say this about FFP, too, but the linkage between revenue and spending, however loose, has been the only thing holding things together for years now.

Sometimes measures will be feeble, but leagues will always intervene if the cash cow is perceived to be under threat or the competitions themselves are fully devalued by corruption or sporting unfairness. See how quick those last ESL proposals were smashed to get the idea ...

Daz

Hey Jones, where you been mate? Good to see you back around

jones

Burnwinter I'm not sure how to measure "things being held together", I think Chelsea current antics, PSG's breaking of all sorts of records and City's continued dominance is a sign of a pretty broken system.

FFP was buried after they saw that clubs were working around it anyway. You can call UEFA corrupt and be 100% right about it but they're the only ones who actually stepped to City and the likes and even hit them with transfer bans and exclusions from Europe, it was CAS who lifted the sanctions on appeal.

The reason I'm sure nothing will come off of this is because it's the FA who are behind it and unlike the corrupt cunts at FIFA and UEFA these corrupt cunts have never done anything to any club in England no matter how egregious the offence. Could even go a bit more into cultural level, to me it feels like Spanish and Italian clubs are much more likely to do something in these cases as you see Juve relegated, docked points, Barcelona hit with all sorts of punishments. It's not an Anglosaxon thing though, German and English organisations keep stuff like that hush.

Also I'm sure the ESL bit was not on purpose but you've seen how there's been a third proposal despite the powerful interests smashing it the last couple times. Money always finds a way.

Asterix

https://theathletic.com/4163029/2023/02/09/manchester-city-draft-premier-league/

Fun little exercise here - the journo imagines what would happen if City were broken up and the remaining clubs get to pick from their players draft style, with Southampton going first and us last. If you don't have a subscription here is how he picked it:

Soton - Haaland
Bournemouth - de Bruyne
Everton - Foden
West Ham - Silva
Leeds - Pep (lol)
Wolves - Mahrez
Leicester - Ederson
Forest - Dias
Palace - Walker
Villa - Grealish (acknowledging he rigged this)
Liverpool - Gundogan
Chelsea - Cancelo
Fulham - Rodri
Brentford - Stones
Brighton - Rico Lewis
Spurs - Cole Palmer
Newcastle - Laporte
Man Utd - Alvarez
Arsenal - Phillips

goon

jones The reason I'm sure nothing will come off of this is because it's the FA who are behind it

FA actually have nothing to do with it, it's the Premier League. The Premier League essentially works for the clubs, the majority of whom are now run by Americans, who will probably be quite keen to cut the legs of any state sponsored clubs from distorting the money making model they want to bring over from the states.

I actually wouldn't be surprised to see far more regulation coming into the league for the same reason. It's no coincidence imo that the PL only recently tightened up their FFP to be a little more stringent.

Burnwinter

jones

Look mate, it's just a pragmatic view. We don't say speed limits don't work because many drivers routinely break them. They work. FFP is similar except even moreso, because at least a commuter car engine will top out at 150km/h.

Without FFP, there would be no spending restrictions at all on these rogue clubs, in leagues where the speculative resources from top to bottom vary by two orders of magnitude.

Obviously it's a shitty system but it has a big impact on clubs' behaviour, and expresses its expectations in terms every club understands. Even if said terms are relentlessly flouted through shady dealings, fake sponsors, and so on.

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