Hols

⚠️This is a VERY important distinction to be made: 🔺1. City is arguing that the sponsorship deals weren’t sham contracts. If they are successful — the Disciplinary Committee has made it very clear that they still will be found guilty of 114 breaches, see below. The Disciplinary Commission found that if it was wrong about the sham contracts, they were still related party transactions. As such they should have been recorded at Fair Market Value (FMV) — which according to the commission placed them “very substantially below” what was reported and led to breaching PSR and UEFA’s in all of the relevant seasons. 🔺2. Could City be successful? I predicted the outcome of this case very well several years ago. I can safely say that from the perspective of the independent Disciplinary Committee — it is an irrelevant technicality. The rule is that only real revenue can be treated as revenue. In this case it’s fake revenue regardless if it’s given directly by the owner or by someone under the control of the owner. The grounds City are arguing would perhaps reduce the ~£900m figure to ~£600m — but it’s of course indisputable that the £900m figure comes with an asterisk to start with. These AD sponsors de facto sponsored City, it’s not like City’s sponsors would have paid them zero pounds. What is relevant is the benefit gained by cheating — and it’s the same in both cases. The difference between FMV and what City received. 🔺3. What is City playing at? What has not been emphasized enough is how City’s absurd and blatant stalling tactics de facto have delayed the decision we received a few weeks ago with three years — three years! It should not have come in September 2026, it should have come in September 2023 (if City didn’t tie up the PL for 3 years in public courts claiming that the appointed arbitrators were not impartial, on absurd grounds). The tactic to drown the PL and the Committee with nonsense documents in a form that couldn’t be downloaded or copied provably delayed the case an additional year. So we should have had the decision in September 2022. This is down to three persons, Kahldon, Pearce and Soriano. They make the decisions, they are responsible for the cheating — and they will surely be banned from ever coming close to a football club again. 🔺4. So what will happen now? Look — legal proceedings have a weakness. They are not safe since they can be delayed. This is why any solicitor that purposefully delay a proceeding more or less would be guaranteed to be struck off the roll. But it doesn’t matter much — because it’s more or less impossible to prove bad faith. City can still find ways to delay this process every step of the way. For example — the Judicial Panel appoints the Appeal Board. City can object that each of the members on it are impartial on whatever far fetched grounds. The Chair of the Judicial Panel then decides if they have a valid claim. BUT — if City does not agree with the Chair’s decision, they can take it to the public courts. And you get another 1 year delay.