Now the Chief Sports Reporter of the Daily Mail, a Mr Mike Keegan, adds that Manchester City’s strategy at the appeal will try to claim that it took the panel too long to reach their verdict and so the original verdict should be set aside.
The argument he is planning is that such verdicts should be delivered within three months, but this looks like a bit of a wild attempt to deflect the court from the weakness of the club’s arguments, in that no time limit on such matters is laid down – at least as far as I can see, and he refrains from citing the act in which the time bar is set out..
Now this use of a time limitation is quite logical, because once a time limit is imposed both sides know how long they have got, and those with a very spurious case can throw all sorts of red herrings in the way of the other party, and thus take up their time until the allotted court time has run out. However time limitation in many justifications are set in a way that indicates that a case has to be started within a certain amount of time, in order to stop people returning to cases years later, without warning. They are for use in gathering evidence, not as a way of holding up justice or throwing out a case on the basis that other courts have taken their time to get themselves together. (Although I am going to add that I am certainly no expert on legal situations in other countries and for a definitive ruling on time limits one should always look at the legal statue that sets out the details).
Very curiously the City case argues that cases needed to be concluded quickly so that judges can properly remember evidence. Although it is true that a judgement that comes several years later might be deemed unsafe the amount of time that has passed it is not unusual and all parties have the chance to review all the evidence during the period of notice between the case being announced and it actually starting. Also trials normally end with a summary of key points by each side before judgement is made.
Equally odd is the claim that ManC provided 24 witnesses – all of whom were linked directly to ManC or the sponsors and thus involved in the case. The claim is then made that the League didn’t provide any witnesses to confirm the existence of the “alleged conspiracy”. All I can say here is, “is that really right?”
This really is curious since the essence of a conspiracy is that it is secret, and involves several people, and thus members of the opposition are hardly likely to be able to be present when the other party is discussing the case. Were they to be so, they would be accused of spying and using underhand tactics to gather information, and then most probably would lose the case.
It is perhaps also interesting that the Mail has appointed as its prime reporter in the case a Manchester City fan. And what makes this interesting is that the fan, given the job by the Mail, seems not to be aware of previous ManC cases which have some relevance here.
Now the fact is the “since 2018, Manchester City F.C. has been implicated in a major financial scandal, following the publication of leaked internal emails alleged to reveal that the club had committed systematic, deliberate violations of UEFA‘s Financial Fair Play (FFP) and the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability (PSR) rules.”
In other words these are “previous cases” – not cases that have just happened this season. That is what the whole argument is about: that this behaviour has become endemic within the club.
And since you might feel I am particularly biased in this case, or that the point above us just a trivial argument about words, the fact is the nearly eight years go the European Investigative Collaborations group revealed that that it was going to release various confidential documents related to “financial wrongdoing in football.”
Now that was a pretty big affair and it ran from 5 to 8 November in Der Spiegel, which, even if the investigator doesn’t know any other newspapers, he ought to know that one.
So through that time the paper published its investigation into the documents and emails. Its conclusion was that they showed “evidence of backdated contracts, illusory sponsoring payments and cavalier, ‘We can do what we want,’ business practices.”
Now I have no idea if the prosecution in the current case is making use of this part history or not – obviously I have nothing to do with the case, but the denial that this case even exists by a correspondent writing on this topic does suggest that even before the case has started we are starting to see some manipulation of reality.
Of course it is quite possible that the relevant correspondent didn’t know about this case, but then I did, and I’m certainly not an expert. And I should stress that last point. I am not a lawyer and not an expert on football law. I just read the papers from time to time. And make occasional notes.
