By Tony Attwood
- Arsene Wenger urged to stand against Gianni Infantino in FIFA elections
- How the League will now proceed to hear the ManC case
If you live outside the UK, or even if you live within the UK and don’t take an active interest in the way the news media in this country works, you might be surprised to know just how independent the BBC’s news services actually are. But for most UK citizens within the country, a BBC headline that reads “Man City guilty of ‘sham’ contracts and misleading accounts” is really something to take note of. For it is most certainly not the same as the Daily Mail or the Mirror raising such an issue.
Here’s the full headline: “Manchester City arranged “sham contracts” with a number of commercial partners as part of a scheme to disguise secret funding of more than £830m, the Premier League says.” And if the BBC writes that, that is not quite as strong as saying it in a court of law, but it’s on the way.
And it suggests very strongly that when we say ManC have been found guilty in a court of all the charges against them between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons, this is big time, and not something the club is going to wriggle out of with a payment of a few more hundred thousand pounds dropped into the right pocket (not that I am alleging that has happened in the past).
It suggests that the finding of the independent commission that sham contracts and arrangements were part of the ManC approach to football is an allegation that is being taken very seriously even if the club deny everything – and then some.
And this comes on top of the redacted report that said, charges “concerned well over 100 alleged individual breaches of Premier League rules across four broad charge categories”. And even more damaging, that some “important club witnesses gave false evidence in key respects and that some knowingly gave untrue and dishonest evidence”.
As the commission report says yet again, “The relevant sponsorship agreements were found to be shams, or at minimum did not reflect their economic substance.”
There is also commentary on “deliberate or reckless conduct intended to circumvent the Premier League rules” which, even by itself if nothing else were noted, is enough to have the club kicked out of the Premier League. But it was undertaken “to avoid recording what would otherwise have been the largest single-season loss in Premier League history in 2009-10”. Apparently the commission’s evidence runs to “many tens of thousands of pages”.
So as the Premier League now says, it has evidence of how ManC “systematically broke Premier League Rules for nearly a decade,” and this is why the League has pursued ManC so it can determine “that the facts be established independently,” to ensure “that the rules, approved by the clubs themselves, are upheld to protect the integrity of the competition. It is paramount that the League remains competitive and fair for all clubs and for the fans.”
Thus it is: the League has to take action to ensure the competition remains competitive. That is I think, the first time that has been said. They also noted that hearings are continuing with the independent commission.
It is now also openly being said that the sanctions cannot just be financial because the owners of the club have more money than the entire Football League. And I suspect some ManC supporters might be a trifle worried that the club is merely repeating old statements rather than providing proof. For example, it said,.
“ Manchester City FC will now pursue the appeal avenues open to it, on the basis that the opinion contains clear material errors of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe.” This is awaited with much interest., and the club’s subsequent statement that “The Club is obviously restricted in what it can say further until all future proceedings are complete” is disappointing, since normally defences are produced rapidly, rather than held back. The club’s CEO declined to explain what the extra evidence was and merely once more labelled the allegations as the “Premier League conspiracy theory.” They know they will have to produce the evidence sometime. So why not now?
