Man City Stuff

The main focus of this blog for now is the utter rubbish that is UEFA FFP and the Premier League Profit and Sustainability rules.

Like most Manchester City fans I think, if the club has done something wrong by all means punish City, but this Machiavellian witch hunt pursued by the American owners of Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham is utterly ridiculous. The fact their brain dead supporters buy into it is even worse. Why are they doing it? For one simple reason, so they can break away from the constraints of the English football system and play matches in the USA to maximise profits.

The UEFA case against Manchester City was based on some articles published by Der Spiegel in Germany. There was no evidence to back up what the articles said were true. There were plenty of reasons to doubt the authenticity of them such as: the murky past of Rui Pinto (prosecuted for theft, bribery and extortion); the dodgy editors and journalists at Der Spiegel; and of course the fact the New York Times turned down the story because there was no provenance to back it up or proof that the information was genuine. The actual charges brought by Rick Parry, Yves Leterme et al, were purely malicious. The case should have been thrown out by UEFA’s Arbitration Committee rather than accepted as fact, and was finally quashed by CAS when a team of experiened lawyers assessed it.

The Five Alllegations (115/134 Charges)

The Premier League Profit and Sustainability case is based on pretty much the same information, plus another article in the discredited Der Spiegel from the same discredited source. There are two pairs of allegations against City which if proven suggest the club has done three other things wrong. That’s it, from this there are over 100 charges against the club. However, it is simply implausible that any of these allegations can be proven.

Some of the charges are just plain silly, City have been acused on 3 occasions of breaking rule E60 – a rule which allows for losses to be lower if you have played in the Championship in the preceeding 3 years? Why charge City with a rule that simply does not apply to them? Many other rules E52-E59 (19 in all, over 3 years) are things the Premier League must do, not City, so how could City break these rules? The charge sheet itself is utter nonsense, if you read it and cross reference the rules.

The Premier League have also altered the statement (https://www.premierleague.com/news/3045970) they made on 06/02/23 about 8 times. They have left it, so that it looks like the statement originally published, but it is not. You can check it on the Internet Archive (http://web.archive.org) and see how much the Premier League are trying to decieve the general public. If they are doing this, can you trust anything Richard Masters ever says?

There are 134 charges, often referred to as 115, however there are just five allegations of wrongdoing:

1. Sponsorship payments from Etisalat and Etihad made directly by S Mansour. The Etihad methd of payment has already been explained as a draw down system in front of US Senate Special Committee investigating them. All under oath and accepted in the USA.
2. Paying Toure and Mancini more than they were contracted to.
   • There is not anything illegal about doing this even if City did and it is not clear it is against the rules either.
   • The alleged extra Toure contract is highly debatable, and there is no evidence that he received the money paid to the third party mentioned. Even then it’s about £6m, hardly singificant.
   • Mancini (pre PSR), there is nothing in rules P7, P8, Q7 & Q8 during the relevant years to say City can’t pay him more. These rules just say a contract must be registered with the Premier League and that it must include clauses in an appendix. So if he received any extra money by any means it is irrelevant.
3. Breaching UEFA FFP. Only UEFA can assess and enforce their rules, which has already been done. The Premier League is a 3rd party and has no power to re-try City. Even if it did, UEFA’s rules stipulate who and how any breach will be assessed and punished. It certainly isn’t anything to do wth the Premier League.
4. Breaching PSR over 3 periods (where City won 1 league title). If you value the sponsorship deals in Allegations 1 at £0 and add the Toure payments from Allegation 2, City break PSR by £9m in 2014-2016 only. They don’t in any of the other years. City’s last deal with Thomas Cook was £2m a year and surely ten years later any sponsorship would be worth at least £9m, which renders this breach null and void.
5. Non Co-Operation – Let’s be brutally honest, you only levy this type of charge if your case is weak. Looking at the above the case is very weak. Have you ever heard of someone on a murder charge being charged with non-co-operation? Exactly.

It’s hard to see what City have done wrong or how they can be punished. Unlike the kangaroo court that was the UEFA Arbitration Panel, the legal professionals at the height of their careers are hearing the Premier League case. One would think it would be fair this time.

As they say there is no smoke without fire…..

So why are they doing it?

Simply put Liverpool and Manchester United cannot beat Manchester City on the pitch, and their American owners are using subversive tactics straight out of Tsun Tsu’s Art of War, which are common in the corporate world of the USA.

The whole purpose is to besmirch the name of Manchester City, drag it through the mud in the hope that damaging the reputation of the club will improve their ability to compete somehow. Fail, and they can then use this as justification to break away from the Premier League and play matches abroad.

The articles in this blog go through all the daft allegations made by media pundits and rival fans alike, such as Manchester City have no fans so how can they make so much money? These are based on little or no knowledge of facts which are freely available.