As the investigation into ManC finances evolves, what now?

By Tony Attwood

An independent commission has reported looked at Manc’s accounts, although we don’t know what was found.  And as I have stressed repeatedly, I have no evidence of wrongdoing beyond anything published in the national press..

And indeed, the English media more or less gave up on asking questions about the money that was available to ManC seemingly because if there was something amiss happening, someone else would have said something.   And no one did.   

Now that is not to imply ManC did anything wrong – one might be suspicious, but I certainly have no proof.   The fact that the PL itself allowed ManC to carry on regardless does require some answers, and maybe one day we’ll get some.  But for the moment, we reflect on the fact that Guardiola is leaving.  And because it is the sort of question I ask, I wonder why.

Obviously, there are multiple other questions, like whee did all the money come from and what made a few ManC executives think that maybe there was something fishy about the source of the money, and if there was, what convinced the directors and executives of the club that they would get away with spending that much on players for so long before the League and the media finally broke their code of silence and started asking about how the club had become so rich.    I mean, maybe everything was above board – I certainly can’t suggest otherwise.  But some difficult questions were raised but not always answered.

Thus, when the whole game started, someone might have said, “Let’s use the oil money to buy up the very best players and so win everything year after year,” and someone else might have said, “They’ll never let us get away with that,” to which the first man replied, “Just leave that one with me.”   And off it rolls.  Maybe, maybe not.

Or are we expected to believe that the whole of the FA, the Premier League, Uefa, Fifa, the TV stations, radio, newspapers and Private Eye, and everyone else, nodded and said, “Just make sure we are not implicated personally”?  Perhaps because the whole scheme was so audacious, and we’d never seen money spent like that before, no one could quite believe it.

After all, English football has never been like Spain with two clubs winning the league, or recently France with PSG, or Germany with Bayern Munich, or Scotland with Rangers and Celtic.   Even Liverpool never quite got to that level.   So what made the owners of ManC believe they really could win almost everything every year and get away with it, without anyone asking, “Where is all this money coming from?” and “Is getting this much money from donors, really within the rules?”

And besides, I actually do remember asking, as others did, how the 115 charges were just focused on alleged financial rule breaches.   Somehow, it seemed to me there must be more than that, but of course I had no evidence.

But then there is another point – just look at what Manc were charged with…   the failure to provide accurate data on payment.  OK I have never run an operation the sie of ManC but I was chairman of a plc for more yeas that I want to remember, and I don’t think there was a day, when the finance director and I didn’t know exactly what moneey and assets we had, what we owed, what we planned next month, what questions the bank was asking, what the Inland Reven ue were looking at.    

Now, as a company, we were as straight as a very straight thing with no bends yet   three times in 20 years, Revenue and Customs charged us with failing to collect VAT from customers.  Each time we denied it and provided evidence, and each time  Revenue and Customs conceded we were self-evidently right.    But with ManC there doesn’t even seem to have been a suggestion or enquiry, and they just carried on – until now some allegations have been made.  Obviously, I have no idea if they are justified, and as I have noted, Revenue and Customs do make errors, although in each case with us, they backed off within a week.

But with ManC the charge was, among other things, “failure to provide accurate financial information,” which is much worse than failure to charge VAT where you should have done.  

And so one day, they are charged with failure to cooperate with the Premier League’s investigation.   Well, if Manc had been breaking all the rules for a while, of course, they didn’t cooperate.   The club was unlikely to admit they had been underpaying tax for years and offer the Customs man a couple of season tickets on the cheap.  feelings eh?   Let me take you and your good lady out for a slap-up meal at the Dorechester, then we can call it quits.

We are told Guardiola knew nothing of all this defrauding of the state of millions of pounds of taxes because much of it happened before he arrived.   Well ok, maybe he took everything on trust and never had one of his henchmen look at the books; that could be the case, although Der Spiegel’s journalist found out.  Perhaps the manager didn’t even notice which airline they were flying on, and I guess he never asked to see the accounts.   Maybe that is how football clubs work.   I ran an advertising agency so I wouldn’t know, and we didn’t have sponsors, but I do wonder what the finance director of the empire was thinking about when he saw what was going on.   But again I stress, I have no inside information, and there have been investigations in which everyone thought everything was ok.

There has been talk of money moving around in the club that was never recorded in the accounts, and again, I find that odd – not that it happened, but that no one picked up on it, and employees getting more money than the accounts showed them as having.   Such things go on, even though illegal, although that doesn’t mean that a specific football club was engaged in this.

But what is interesting is that the Premier League didn’t seem to spot such goings on.  Whatever were they up to?   But maybe they were quite well hidden.