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Naughty Emirates Marketing Project - Spot of Compo??

Gutter Boy said:
Saudi Sportswashing Machine, Forest, Villa, Chelsea and maybe others (those with similar owners) won't necessarily go against City. I'm not sure what the majority would need to be to carry a vote.
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As Saudi Sportswashing Machine, forest, villa and Chelsea basically want to ignore the rules and to hell with the consequences then yeah I can see them using this as an opportunity to set a precedent with slap on the wrist punishment.
That must not be allowed to happen.
The PL need to be very careful here, the roll call of club owners are beginning to look like a rogues gallery.
 
SissokoWasGood (BoL) said:
I think the issue with that is, it leaves City open an avenue of appeal on fairness / due process. Essentially if you kick them out of the league that way, they will claim bias and it opens up a route for them to argue about due process and competition which might actually be legally sound, annoyingly.

But, I think the PL have been very smart in how they’ve handled the case. They deliberately didn’t make a distinction on UAE Governance, who is really the owner etc, it was more about the fact that City didn’t comply, invented stories, had witnesses who lied, and invented a paper trail after the fact to try and make their story stack up. These are all things that are really clear and difficult to argue against. So Soriano can claim that the PL or the panel didn’t understand how money moves in the Gulf all he wants, it doesn’t matter. There’s enough that ties them up without that.

Also it seems like there has been an off ramp left to enable this to come to a conclusion, namely there is a redacted ‘senior decision maker’ who did not know that this was all going on. That senior decision maker can then ‘credibly’ be the barrier between Khaldoon, Mansoor, etc and the unfortunately people that actually are going to get thrown under the bus beneath him.

All in all, reading more into it I think it’s been a very well done case. City don’t actually have anywhere to realistically go, they are going to get punished. I think it’s going to be stripping and one relegation at the minimum, and fines and compensation will be paid to clubs that missed out. The only route available to them is to try and make sure the punishment isn’t as severe as it might otherwise have been. But the reason the other clubs should not expel City, and leave it as an option open to the sanctioning part of the process, is because that way it doesn’t give City anything to legally argue about.
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No, I wasn't saying that the other clubs should expel City. I said that the 19 clubs should decide what sanctions they feel are proportionate to the crime. I don't actually know what that would be but if I'm a long term PL participant like Spurs then I would want the trophies stripped and I would want at minimum a relegation with a huge fine that stays in the UK. I'm not sure I would want to stop them trading or be made to have new owners like some. Personally, I would also make them operate in an open book way for a couple of years where a PL steward is paid for by City and works permanently in their organisation with full access to all systems.

So when the PL comes along and just issues them a £100m fine then the 19 clubs have a standpoint. At that point, they would turn around to the PL and say that City aren't welcome at their ground and they won't be going to theirs.
 
Muttley said:
No, I wasn't saying that the other clubs should expel City. I said that the 19 clubs should decide what sanctions they feel are proportionate to the crime. I don't actually know what that would be but if I'm a long term PL participant like Spurs then I would want the trophies stripped and I would want at minimum a relegation with a huge fine that stays in the UK. I'm not sure I would want to stop them trading or be made to have new owners like some. Personally, I would also make them operate in an open book way for a couple of years where a PL steward is paid for by City and works permanently in their organisation with full access to all systems.

So when the PL comes along and just issues them a £100m fine then the 19 clubs have a standpoint. At that point, they would turn around to the PL and say that City aren't welcome at their ground and they won't be going to theirs.
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But some of those clubs are also owned by people who want to cheat and won’t want to set a precedent for the future.
 
Muttley said:
No, I wasn't saying that the other clubs should expel City. I said that the 19 clubs should decide what sanctions they feel are proportionate to the crime. I don't actually know what that would be but if I'm a long term PL participant like Spurs then I would want the trophies stripped and I would want at minimum a relegation with a huge fine that stays in the UK. I'm not sure I would want to stop them trading or be made to have new owners like some. Personally, I would also make them operate in an open book way for a couple of years where a PL steward is paid for by City and works permanently in their organisation with full access to all systems.

So when the PL comes along and just issues them a £100m fine then the 19 clubs have a standpoint. At that point, they would turn around to the PL and say that City aren't welcome at their ground and they won't be going to theirs.
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Fair enough. I certainly think City are screwed in any case way beyond a £100m fine. But I would absolutely support all the other clubs applying whatever pressure they can to get the sanctions as impactful as possible,

One other thing I have been thinking about while looking into this…if the owners wanted to make the case that this is genuinely government funding to help a national airline get more global exposure, why not just actually send the money to Etihad and let them send it on? Obviously part of it is that they never thought they would get caught, but I think another part of it is intra-portfolio conflict.

If there’s a world in which US airlines were pressuring the US government to shut down routes for gulf airlines, because of complaints about unfair competitive practices and that those airlines receive heavy government subsidies, it would require Etihad for example to need to be more transparent about their books, if the US government asked for that in return for not acquiescing to their own airlines. If Etihad had more audit scrutiny, they couldn’t be seen to have ridiculous and unrealistic sponsorship funding being pumped through them directly by the government.

I really think they are cooked.
 
Is it not possible that City have already presented their "irrefutable evidence" and the Independent Commission saw it as very refutable?

Makes no sense that you could easily disprove a case and instead go through years of delays and an appeals process.
 
DeanoAustin said:
Is it not possible that City have already presented their "irrefutable evidence" and the Independent Commission saw it as very refutable?

Makes no sense that you could easily disprove a case and instead go through years of delays and an appeals process.
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They are banking on the idea that the Independent Commission misunderstood how money moves in the Gulf. Put aside the ludicrous idea that the government and the owners of City are different entities, it is a line of argument that has been looked at and dismissed. They also falsified evidence, had witnesses that lied, and tried to stall the investigation at every turn.

Interesting that Bloomberg are reporting today that Khaldoon met Jonathan Reynolds, UK Government minister, days before the guilty verdict. Clearly they’re going to apply whatever pressure they can to soften the sanctions. If they succeed in any way, it will be a scandal bigger than the guilty verdicts and original acts themselves. This isn’t some shady defence contract that the public doesn’t pay much attention to, this is about the integrity of the national game. Will be incredible to see how it plays out.
 
apple.news

Revealed: Damning evidence that undermines Man City’s defence — The Telegraph

Document submitted by Etihad Airways in 2015 directly contradicts key argument in club’s appeal
apple.news apple.news

Not sure if folks can get Apple News but this is what I was driving at above. This story has just come out minutes ago in the Telegraph.

The idea that Etihad took government funding was denied in Etihad’s case to the US Gov years ago.

Quite how City think this will wash, or that people couldn’t also access this information, is beyond me!
 
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