Seven days after leaking out, the Manchester City saga has become a flood. Peace in our time has disappeared into the distance as football jurisprudence’s longest-running case enters Defcon 1 lawfare. Football Daily is duty bound by its learned friends in the legal department who gamely pick through this cheery teatime email before it reaches you, to say that City continue to deny all charges [we don’t necessarily need this but we’re happy to remain the butt of the joke – Football Daily Lawyers].
Though that also serves as a statement of the bleeding obvious. Club operatives and associates have employed not so much a double but a nonuple-down. The expected appeal has now been lodged by City.
The statement was as you’d expect: “The club is innocent of the accusations made by the Premier League and a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence exists in support of all of its positions, relating to this case.” The challenge to the Premier League’s published, contested verdict has already reached the levels of bringing your dinner to the fight. City’s key sponsor, Etihad Airways, is getting involved, with reports suggesting it is appointing a law firm that received a “most feared” industry gong five years in a row to state its case. Even Pep Guardiola only managed four titles on the bounce.
These days Guardiola is global ambassador for the City Football Group. As such, he has already joined Liam Gallagher and Curly Watts actor Kevin Kennedy in fighting from the blue corner on social media disgraces boiling with militant fans arguing points of commercial law while decrying “the Red Cartel”. With each hour has come a plot twist in the fight against the verdict that unblinking club suit Ferran Soriano described via video link to staff as a mere “opinion”, which fed into a “Premier League conspiracy theory”.
Contrary to previous pushing back – since 2008 – against City being depicted as a state-owned entity on the grounds that Sheikh Mansour’s ownership was as a private individual, came the revelation the money inflating City’s sponsorship coffers came not via Mansour’s investment vehicle but the Abu Dhabi state government. This, say the legal experts – and social media disgrace sleuths – is likely to form “the comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” that City’s people argue is the winning hand. The original published verdict – if redacted, sans appendices – has already rejected that angle as “untrue”.
Further stirring of the hotpot: on Thursday, the UK government’s treasury committee asked tax authorities what action will be taken in response to the verdict’s findings. All rather complicated, to the lawyers the spoils. And from the soft power of owning a football club, the harsh realities of geopolitics have entered the chat.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
