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Man City - the new bitters?


Naz17
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24 minutes ago, Leyton388 said:

I didn't know the ban effected Division 2 teams back then.

 

Did they deduct liverpool points or remove there previous trophies when they got us all banned for five years ?

This tool hasn't thought it through, has he?

 

Any talk of removing "there" previous Premier League trophies is based on the fact that City's cheating helped them to win those trophies.  The violence at Heysel didn't help us to win anything; quite the reverse.

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7 hours ago, an tha said:

I reckon the cheating bastards will get it overturned due to how the information was obtained.

Them not denying the emails/charges etc is a clever strategy. You start denying it, looks like you have something to hide - simply saying you’re not acknowledging stolen documents gives nothing away, and IMO they'll get it overturned on that point - how the info was obtained.

It's nothing  to do with the emails as far as I can tell - it's all based on information given to Uefa, like all clubs in Uefa competition have to supply. 

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The most straightforward article that I’ve read so far https://www.forbes.com/sites/bobbymcmahon/2020/02/16/uefa-ban-manchester-city-for-2-years-separating-the-facts-from-fiction/#4a185091204f

 

Quote

UEFA went atomic on Friday announcing that Manchester City has been banned from European competition for 2 years (2020/21 and 2021/22) and fined €30 million. It is the second time Manchester City has been punished by UEFA. In 2014, the team agreed to pay a conditional £49m fine as well as accepting restrictions on the size of its squad for European play and incoming transfers. 

The latest sanction was announced three months after Manchester City failed in a bid to have the UEFA investigation kiboshed. City took its case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) but the court found City’s appeal inadmissible. 

“An appeal against the decision of a federation, association or sports-related body may be filed with CAS (…) if the Appellant has exhausted the legal remedies available to it prior to the appeal, in accordance with the statutes or regulations of that body.” Article R47 of the CAS Rules 

Court of Arbitration for Sport Media Release November 15, 2019 

Social media chatter has made it difficult to separate the facts from the bull, so here are the facts with some editorial added for the purpose of clarity. 

The background 

Late in 2018, Spiegel International published a number articles alleging that Manchester City had been playing fast and loose when it came to Uefa Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations and other licensing requirements. 

The most damming allegation was that a holding company, Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al Nahyan, a billionaire brother of the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, funneled money to City sponsors based in Abu Dhabi who then rerouted the money to Manchester City as sponsorship. 

Sheikh Mansour is the owner of Manchester City, and as such, the scheme contravened FFP regulations. 

The allegations were part of a new series of “Football Leaks.” At the time, Manchester City refused to make comment on the accusations but later claimed that Spiegel’s articles were based on hacked and stolen documents that were then taken out of context. 

Uefa’s investigatory chamber started an investigation of Manchester City in the spring of 2019. 

The investigation will focus on several alleged violations of FFP that were recently made public in various media outlets. 

UEFA Investigatory Chamber, March 2019 

When City was officially charged in May of last year it claimed that the club had been subjected to a hostile process that the investigation had ignored a body of “irrefutable evidence.” 

The charge and process

The investigatory chamber found Manchester City guilty and the adjudicatory chamber imposed the punishment that was announced on Friday. (The two chambers are designed to act independently of each other and independently of Uefa.)

Manchester City was found guilty of two charges: 

  • of falsely inflating sponsorship revenues when making submissions as part of the Financial Fair Play (FFP) compliance process; 
  • of breaching regulations by failing to cooperate in the investigation of the case by the Club Financial Control Body (CFCB). 

Uefa acknowledged the decision but offered no further comment given that Manchester City has the right of appeal to the CAS. 

Financial hit

If Manchester City’s appeal fails and subsequent other action also fails, then the financial cost will far exceed the €30m fine. There will the cost of 2 years of UEFA Champions League prize money at an estimated €200m or more. 

This reduction in revenue could set off a downward spiral that may leave Manchester City unable to carry their current costly squad. 

Some have speculated that players could even try to have their contracts nullified based on the club’s gross misconduct. Two years of the no Champions League participation may also weigh heavy on coach Pep Guardiola’s decision about his future with the club. 

Roll all this together and you can see why Manchester City is going to fight this one to the death. 

Then there is another problem, the Premier League.......

The Premier League has a different form of FFP. However, the same sets of financial statements provided to Uefa would have been provided to the Football Association and the Premier League. 

The Premier League regulations have gone through a couple of iterations but a core component has been restricting wage increases. Some of the permitted increases have been tied to any increase in self-generated increases (that doesn’t include Premier League TV money.) 

If Manchester City has perpetrated an accounting fraud then they will also be in contravention of Premier League FFP regulations and subject to other league-specific sanctions. 

And if that’s not enough, let’s remember that the present Uefa punishment covers just 2012 to 2016. If City has cooked the books and misled the authorities then it would seem plausible that they have continued to do so after 2016. This could lead to further fines and bans. Should Manchester City win this season’s Champions League - they play Real Madrid in the round of 16 - the win could be nullified. 

Court of Arbitration for Sports 

There is a lot of social media noise surrounding the CAS and there is a lot folks guessing what the law is and what the process is. 

This is what the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) does. The CAS process is generally more transparent that the Uefa process but if you don’t want embarrassing information to come out then that’s not necessarily a good thing. 

Further, the CAS appeal is a fresh hearing of all evidence, essentially a new “trial”.

Manchester City’s emails were hacked so they can’t be used as evidence. Not so fast. 

Uefa used hacked material to find Manchester City guilty. We don’t know that and it is very doubtful that Uefa did. Certainly, materials that were made public through Football Leaks are almost certainly hacked. However, opening an investigation based on readily available public knowledge is very different than using hacked material to prove a case. 

Uefa investigators would have only needed to ask very straight forward questions and asked Manchester City to show the paper trail that supported their submitted financial statements. Based on the second charge, it can be presumed that Uefa believes that City failed to comply with the investigators requests. 

When you get down to it the two charges are very fact based and there seems to be very little room for nuance. 

A decision has to be reached before July 15 so England’s representation can be submitted for Europe’s two club competitions. The process could be expedited but if City lose they will almost certainly fight on by any means necessary. City’s punishment could be postponed pending a final outcome. 

FFP is a farce and Manchester City shouldn’t be punished for bucking the rules. Just as in life, you may not like the laws of the land, but as a citizen (no pun intended) you are obliged to follow the laws. 

Nobody forced Manchester City to play in the Champions League and nobody forced the team to cash the cheques from Uefa. Manchester City knew the rules and it worth remembering that the charge does not relate to failing to meet FFP requirements but rather the fraudulent submission of documents and failing to cooperate with the investigation. 

This is part of a Vendetta by big clubs who are using Uefa and FFP to “get” Manchester City. Again, City signed on as a free and willing participant in the Champions League. It’s a fact that the genesis of Financial Fair Play was long before Manchester City was a twinkle in Sheikh Mansour’s eye. 

Further, if the Premier League and the Football Association take action would that mean that all of English football has signed on to the Vendetta? 

Manchester City is the victim of an unjust system. The City comment below has quickly become standard fare and used to support the contention that City is the victim. 

Simply put, this is a case initiated by UEFA, prosecuted by UEFA and judged by UEFA. With this prejudicial process now over, the Club will pursue an impartial judgment ... 

Manchester City Official Statement February 14, 2020 

The fact is the system is used by every major sports organization in the world and is the reason why the CAS concept was conceived in the 80s. The same process is followed by sport organizations as a matter of course because otherwise the formal legal systems around the world would be clogged with sport issues, most of them petty. 

Sport is not above the law but it has been acknowledged many times by the formal legal system that it has a right to make its own rules and to follow its own disciplinary system. 

Is this really such a big deal? It actually is. The charge is essentially one of accounting fraud which is a form of theft. Beyond the sanctions applied to the club there are also potential ramifications for any Manchester City personnel such as lawyers and accountants who may have been part of the alleged fraud. That also goes for directors of the club. 


City’s whining that FFP isn’t fair doesn’t address the actual charges of falsifying accounts and failing to co-operate. Also interesting that

1) their directors could be banned from running the club if they are found guilty of fraudulent accounting 

2) no one has even started to look at what happened post-2016. Have Etihad suddenly started paying the full amount?

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8 hours ago, Anubis said:

 

 

It could be  - and of course this is all hypothetical - that he's getting paid to publish and say positive things pertaining to Abu Dhabi while concomitantly attacking Qatar where the opportunity arises. I've got a good mate who was offered the very same gig and turned it down.

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8 hours ago, johnsusername said:

It's nothing  to do with the emails as far as I can tell - it's all based on information given to Uefa, like all clubs in Uefa competition have to supply. 

Well if that is case it makes their refusal to co-operate really, really interesting....

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Guest Pistonbroke

If UEFA have evidence then City are screwed.

 

On a side note as I can't be arsed looking. These statements about Juventus and Bayern, are they from their deluded fans, Journalists or official City statements? 

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Well, I might as well tell you now. You lot may all be internationals and have won all the domestic honours there are to win under Guardiola. But as far as I'm concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you've never won any of them fairly. You've done it all by bloody cheating.

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4 minutes ago, Pistonbroke said:

If UEFA have evidence then City are screwed.

 

On a side note as I can't be arsed looking. These statements about Juventus and Bayern, are they from their deluded fans, Journalists or official City statements? 

You mean that they're sponsored by people with links to the club? We'll juventus is obviously the case. And as for the 8% Audi supposedly own, well according to the Bayern web site that's true too. But I don't understand the issue, their deals seem to be around market value to me. 

FC Bayern München eV

75 %

adidas AG

8.33 %

AUDI AG

8.33 %

Allianz SE

8.33 %

 

 

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Guest Pistonbroke
11 minutes ago, Barry Wom said:

You mean that they're sponsored by people with links to the club? We'll juventus is obviously the case. And as for the 8% Audi supposedly own, well according to the Bayern web site that's true too. But I don't understand the issue, their deals seem to be around market value to me. 

FC Bayern München eV

75 %

adidas AG

8.33 %

AUDI AG

8.33 %

Allianz SE

8.33 %

 

 

 

I was on about who has been bringing Bayern and Juventus into the chat, MCFC officialy or hacks/fans. 

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City and their defenders have watched way too much Law & Order. The idea that the murder weapon, despite being found in the bedroom of the accused with their fingerprints all over it, is inadmissable because the police didn't have a proper warrant might work in a courtroom, and even then the courts aren't as zealous as the need to fill 45 minutes of television might imply, but civil contracts don't work like that. Remember the Tevez/Mascherano debacle at West Ham, when they played despite being ineligible? A firm application of the rules would have seen points docked for all those games, but instead the authorities chickened out and hit them with a fine that was akin to allowing the criminal to pay their fine from the money they stole. The problem for Sheffield United, who went to every conceivable institution to get the decision overturned, is that there was no evidence the authorities didn't follow their own rules, and you can be sure that if Uefa had a rule saying that evidence that came to light because it was stolen is 'inadmissable' then the fancy lawyers that City's defenders are always on about would have found it by now. I think Cas will split the difference on the penalty for the sake of a quiet life, something Uefa will have considered when deciding on the penalty, but it seems unlikely to me they'll junk it entirely. Doing that would be Cas saying that you can get away with any rule breach if you just deny that you did it and smear anyone who says otherwise. 

 

Incidentally, I've long found it heartening that West Ham's duplicity was inadvertently revealed because of Liverpool. It's not that Liverpool ratted West Ham out, they just wanted to be correct about the nature of Mascherano's contract. Doing that highlighted that West Ham had been incorrect. Corporate culture does count on occasion.

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8 minutes ago, Pistonbroke said:

 

I was on about who has been bringing Bayern and Juventus into the chat, MCFC officialy or hacks/fans. 

The equivalent city hacks as we have around our club. So when we want anything in the public domain, we go to Joyce, Jones, ready etc - so it's just the club without it being the club. 

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Just now, Barry Wom said:

The equivalent city hacks as we have around our club. So when we want anything in the public domain, we go to Joyce, Jones, ready etc - so it's just the club without it being the club. 

 

Cheers mate. Desperate from City then, everyone including themselves know they are guilty so they are resorting to threatening stuff like this in the hope it all goes away. 

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Just now, Pistonbroke said:

 

Cheers mate. Desperate from City then, everyone including themselves know they are guilty so they are resorting to threatening stuff like this in the hope it all goes away. 

But also when you think about it, they're trying to convince everyone and anyone how they do things the right way at city. Their whole point of being there is to convince you Abu Dhabi is great and not the human rights abusing shithole that it is. Getting done like this does not help that image, so they almost have no choice but to call foul and sling as much mud as they can at others in the hope that if there's enough shit flying round it'll look like what they did was normal, they were just playing a loaded game. 

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33 minutes ago, The Guest said:

Well, I might as well tell you now. You lot may all be internationals and have won all the domestic honours there are to win under Guardiola. But as far as I'm concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you've never won any of them fairly. You've done it all by bloody cheating.

Clough but fair. 

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28 minutes ago, Bobby Hundreds said:

I love how the tainted title hash tag has boomeranged the fuck around... right to the face.

tenor.gif&f=1&nofb=1

 

IF they also lose the 2014 title then they will have really slipped up.

 

 

1: When clubs sign up to UEFA's rules, it is precisely that - a competition regulated by another body. When you play in one of their competitions, you agree to their rules which includes adherence to UEFA stipulations which includes FFP.



2: CAS only has to decide whether UEFA have implemented properly their own rules and whether they have been interpreted with due process. 

City fans seem to think that they can appeal against FFP as being an unfair system to CAS. This is inaccurate. Wrong court. Further other clubs would need to join suit against UEFA to abolish FFP and have UEFA start over. This would need to be done within UEFA first before going to court.

Where City might have some joy is over the penalty for failing FFP ( 2 year ban and fine). UEFA will need to show the reasoning for and how they determined the penalty.  As UEFA have fined City for breaching FFP and warned them about their contact previously UEFA may have a strong case to show their penalty was within their rights.

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Guest Pistonbroke
2 minutes ago, Barry Wom said:

But also when you think about it, they're trying to convince everyone and anyone how they do things the right way at city. Their whole point of being there is to convince you Abu Dhabi is great and not the human rights abusing shithole that it is. Getting done like this does not help that image, so they almost have no choice but to call foul and sling as much mud as they can at others in the hope that if there's enough shit flying round it'll look like what they did was normal, they were just playing a loaded game. 

 

Yeah, but a whole new stance from 'We haven't done anything wrong it's a witch hunt against our club' line. It would seem the severity of it all has finally kicked in and they are stamping their feet. 

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19 minutes ago, Pistonbroke said:

 

Yeah, but a whole new stance from 'We haven't done anything wrong it's a witch hunt against our club' line. It would seem the severity of it all has finally kicked in and they are stamping their feet. 

Yeah, but they claim they've been making a dossier since 2018. A dossier that claims juventus are owned by Agnelli family, Bayern are 8% owned by Audi and some transfers benefit both the selling club and the buying club. You can see the depths they have gone to and some real dark web shit was needed with some skilled hackers and accountants to discover such irregularities. 

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