Liverpool FC Forum

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

Apparently the Telegraph are saying as they understand it Guardiola will consider his future in the summer if City cant get this ban overturned.
KDB is a Liverpool fan isn’t he? I know he’s 28 now but he’s still got 2 or 3 years of his best football left in him, how about a front 4 of Mane, Firmino, Salah and De Bruyne?

[kazza]

They will have the best lawyers money can buy! Money talks when getting football players but money really talks when getting lawyers.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

They will have the best lawyers money can buy! Money talks when getting football players but money really talks when getting lawyers.

Because the stakes are so high as well they will throw everything they’ve got at it, if they don’t get this decision overturned they will be fvcked for the next 4/5 years minimum. Guardiola will leave and a lot of their best players won’t be far behind him, Sterling is 25, Sane 24, are they going to hang around until they are 28 before they can compete in the CL again? De Bruyne is 28, given the ban doesn’t start until next season he’ll be 32 and on the slide next time he plays in football’s premier club competition.
Not only that then there’s the reputational damage, if this decision gets upheld any medals those players have won over the last few years (and win in the near future) will have a giant asterisk by them plus then there’s the sponsors, what sponsors are going to want their brand associated with proven cheats?
City will throw tens if not hundreds of millions at this to get it overturned.

[JC_81]

They will have the best lawyers money can buy! Money talks when getting football players but money really talks when getting lawyers.

Because the stakes are so high as well they will throw everything they’ve got at it, if they don’t get this decision overturned they will be fvcked for the next 4/5 years minimum. Guardiola will leave and a lot of their best players won’t be far behind him, Sterling is 25, Sane 24, are they going to hang around until they are 28 before they can compete in the CL again? De Bruyne is 28, given the ban doesn’t start until next season he’ll be 32 and on the slide next time he plays in football’s premier club competition.
Not only that then there’s the reputational damage, if this decision gets upheld any medals those players have won over the last few years (and win in the near future) will have a giant asterisk by them plus then there’s the sponsors, what sponsors are going to want their brand associated with proven cheats?
City will throw tens if not hundreds of millions at this to get it overturned.

Completely agree.

They’ll get it overturned because that’s the trend - PSG and Milan managed to.

But there’s still reputational damage regardless. Plus the spotlight is on them so their books need to be squeaky clean while at the same time trying to rebuild an ageing squad.

It damages them no matter what and causes unrest in the meantime as I can see the appeal dragging on months.

Great to see!

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

They will have the best lawyers money can buy! Money talks when getting football players but money really talks when getting lawyers.

Because the stakes are so high as well they will throw everything they’ve got at it, if they don’t get this decision overturned they will be fvcked for the next 4/5 years minimum. Guardiola will leave and a lot of their best players won’t be far behind him, Sterling is 25, Sane 24, are they going to hang around until they are 28 before they can compete in the CL again? De Bruyne is 28, given the ban doesn’t start until next season he’ll be 32 and on the slide next time he plays in football’s premier club competition.
Not only that then there’s the reputational damage, if this decision gets upheld any medals those players have won over the last few years (and win in the near future) will have a giant asterisk by them plus then there’s the sponsors, what sponsors are going to want their brand associated with proven cheats?
City will throw tens if not hundreds of millions at this to get it overturned.

Completely agree.

They’ll get it overturned because that’s the trend - PSG and Milan managed to.

But there’s still reputational damage regardless. Plus the spotlight is on them so their books need to be squeaky clean while at the same time trying to rebuild an ageing squad.

It damages them no matter what and causes unrest in the meantime as I can see the appeal dragging on months.

Great to see!

I was reading an interesting article before mate where it said City’s best option may be to challenge the legitimacy of FFP itself. Apparently UEFA consulted a highly respected 80 year old Portuguese judge who sat on the European Court of Justice for donkeys years and another highly accomplished ex lawyer and legal mind who also happens to be the ex prime minister of Belgium, this article was basically saying UEFA wouldn’t have dared take on an entity as rich and powerful as City unless they’d been assured by the best legal minds in Europe that their case was water tight.
Apparently City’s executives acknowledged they were up to no good in internal e-mails which were subsequently hacked, these hacked e-mails then found their way into the hands of the same journalists that broke the Panama papers story so City may have a tough time explaining their way out of it.
They may have case when it comes to questioning the legitimacy of FFP though, I know the game has moved on and it does need protecting from unscrupulous oligarchs who may send clubs to the wall etc (to be fair to City’s owners though although it looks like they have bent the rules here they are hardly fly by night’s, apart from the money they pumped into the team apparently they invested over a billion quid in doing up east Manchester) rich clubs in the past like Everton, United and indeed us ourselves didn’t have any restrictions when it came to spending.
Great to see you back btw.

[Reg]

Two points (out of 200 to be honest).

You can challenge the legitimacy of FFP however in law the 'intentions of the parties' is a key issue. So even if the minutae of the UEFA law is wrong, the intentions of the parties to regulate financial investment is loud and clear. UEFA and the clubs wanted to introduce and be regulated by a set of rules that stopped financial bias from powerful owners. That is what City have breached, the intentions of the parties.

Secondly City mightyppeal and if it's not settled by the start of next season then will participate in CL 20/21. The issue here is that Sheffield Utd, Wolves or Man Utd  might take that 5th place claiming the 4th  CL spot and sue UEFA for not throwing City out. Could end up being a real bugger's muddle.

UEFA need to act decisively and allow City to appeal but to ensure it's fast tracked through the process and finalised by a date that allows whoever should qualify to do so.

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

Two points (out of 200 to be honest).

You can challenge the legitimacy of FFP however in law the 'intentions of the parties' is a key issue. So even if the minutae of the UEFA law is wrong, the intentions of the parties to regulate financial investment is loud and clear. UEFA and the clubs wanted to introduce and be regulated by a set of rules that stopped financial bias from powerful owners. That is what City have breached, the intentions of the parties.

Secondly City mightyppeal and if it's not settled by the start of next season then will participate in CL 20/21. The issue here is that Sheffield Utd, Wolves or Man Utd  might take that 5th place claiming the 4th  CL spot and sue UEFA for not throwing City out. Could end up being a real bugger's muddle.

UEFA need to act decisively and allow City to appeal but to ensure it's fast tracked through the process and finalised by a date that allows whoever should qualify to do so.

I think the appeal is being heard in the court of sporting arbitration and as far as I’m aware the CAS has no connection to UEFA so the timeline may not be in UEFA’s hands. You make a good point though, if it drags on into next season it could get very messy.

[Reg]

They reckon CL is worth 100 million a year to City.    ManU etc.. will fight tooth and nail to save their own situation by knifing City........

CAS will take the intentions of the parties into consideration in the appeal but will also be sympathetic to the need to fast track the case for clear and obvious reasons. City will suffer further reputation damage from a clumsy appeal which will turn sponsors away from them. Long term damage limitation suggests it's better to take the hit now....

And don;t forget media pressure Yakka!!

Exclusive: Mauricio Pochettino and Brendan Rodgers in the running for Manchester City job if Pep Guardiola quits

[kazza]

Remember that the basis for all this are hacked emails so I’m not sure how that stands up in court and it looks like court is where this will end up. I am sure that will be City’s argument as apparently they have multiple emails of City admin communicating with each other on how to hide the money and not get caught, all hacked from their secure servers (an illegal act). I’m not sure of the law in Europe but can you use evidence in court that was gathered illegally?

[ycsatbjywtbiastkamb]

Remember that the basis for all this are hacked emails so I’m not sure how that stands up in court and it looks like court is where this will end up. I am sure that will be City’s argument as apparently they have multiple emails of City admin communicating with each other on how to hide the money and not get caught, all hacked from their secure servers (an illegal act). I’m not sure of the law in Europe but can you use evidence in court that was gathered illegally?

No idea tbh mate but you’d imagine UEFA wouldnt charge a club as powerful as City unless they thought they were on solid ground legally.
Re Reg mentioning Rodgers, it would be pretty ironic if he ends up City boss, apparently all this stuff with City only relates to the period between 2012 and 2016, apparently the premier league are looking at the 2013/14 season when we finished second to see if City had an unfair advantage over us. People forget how close we came that season, although the record books show we lost the league by 2 points in reality we lost it on goal difference, the reason we lost a 3 goal lead and dropped 2 points against Palace was that our players were in kamikaze mode trying to score 9, under normal circumstances no way would we have drawn that game.
Maybe Gerrard will get his premier league winners medal after all. You never know. He certainly deserves one given the career he had. Not the way you want to win it like but I’m sure he’d take it.

[Reg]

kazzza, couldn't UEFA or CAS get a court order for Etihad to open their accounts and show how much they transferred to City during the key period? Apparently City boasted they were getting 90 million quid a year whereas Etihad only tranferred 8-9 million and the sheikh paid the rest from his own company so that alone would be pretty damning.

[UvS xR4GEx]

We have all known for years that City have been doing dodgy things to get away with breaking the FFP. The Etihad sponsor (obviously the owners of City) using the sponsorship as a way to plow money after money into that club. They have used their name to sponsor the ground to invest money into the club, they have sponsored the shirt to get money into the club etc..


Like we have standard charted as our sponsor we have a agreement of say £45m a year contract. Etihad might go and sponsor their club £700m a year and give them endless amounts of money and still not break FFP rules which is ridiculous. The owners of the club should not be able to sponsor their own team.. Unless their is a limit/cap on it.

Then you had the whole Lampard going on loan to their other club in America once again City were finding ways to not break any rules on the sly.

Im glad that its coming crumbling down on them.. And if Stevie G manages to get a Premier league title from City getting stripped and then no longer be called Slippy G then this season will be the greatest season in this clubs history.

[kazza]

kazzza, couldn't UEFA or CAS get a court order for Etihad to open their accounts and show how much they transferred to City during the key period? Apparently City boasted they were getting 90 million quid a year whereas Etihad only tranferred 8-9 million and the sheikh paid the rest from his own company so that alone would be pretty damning.

I’m not sure of all the facts but if that is true about Etihad only transferring 8-9 million seems a stupid error that you would think they would not make. How easy would it have been for the sheikh to transfer the 90 million to Etihad that then transfers to City, the paper trail would have been much harder to follow. Obviously all the facts will come out and there is a lot of money at stake for them and other teams so it will blow up and probably get messy. A great bit of drama for us to enjoy since we are not in it.

I love it when cheats get caught!

[kazza]

Remember that the basis for all this are hacked emails so I’m not sure how that stands up in court and it looks like court is where this will end up. I am sure that will be City’s argument as apparently they have multiple emails of City admin communicating with each other on how to hide the money and not get caught, all hacked from their secure servers (an illegal act). I’m not sure of the law in Europe but can you use evidence in court that was gathered illegally?

No idea tbh mate but you’d imagine UEFA wouldnt charge a club as powerful as City unless they thought they were on solid ground legally.
Re Reg mentioning Rodgers, it would be pretty ironic if he ends up City boss, apparently all this stuff with City only relates to the period between 2012 and 2016, apparently the premier league are looking at the 2013/14 season when we finished second to see if City had an unfair advantage over us. People forget how close we came that season, although the record books show we lost the league by 2 points in reality we lost it on goal difference, the reason we lost a 3 goal lead and dropped 2 points against Palace was that our players were in kamikaze mode trying to score 9, under normal circumstances no way would we have drawn that game.
Maybe Gerrard will get his premier league winners medal after all. You never know. He certainly deserves one given the career he had. Not the way you want to win it like but I’m sure he’d take it.

I hope you are right but courts are full of parties and entities that thought the law was on their side only to find out it was not.

[7_Kewell]

More Timo Werner rumours. Apparently we are willing to meet his 48m buy out clause.