Michael

There’s a feeling at the moment, overriding everything, that we have lost our game, and I don’t mean a match, I mean our whole sport.

I am not even deflated. There’s just a feeling that the whole season doesn’t matter until City are dealt with. It’s like a mock season where we all go through the motions and then we get real football back. That is predicated, of course, on a fair appeal with no political or financial outside considerations interfering with the verdict.

Kavanagh may have to send off a City player in added time so that it looks even.

Is he one of the refs who has been out to the Middle East at £20,000 a game to help them “grow”?

Utterly ridiculous card.

Great ball in by Wirtz

the site has gone sky blue!

They have their equivalent of stages of grief going from: “we’re absolutely innocent and it’s all jealousy coz we’re so great” to “even if we did it, it needed doing and everyone should congratulate us” to “we did it for Villa and Newcastle so they could spend as well against the red cartel” to “ the UAE government should threaten to withdraw all investment and it will be the PL’s fault if the UK economy collapses” to “the media and the red cartel and the American owners are all trying to destroy us” to “ if we can’t win let’s destroy football” all interspersed with occasional rapture as some wannabe lawyer finds a tiny/massive loophole/mistake that the panel made in their judgement or some intheknow taps his nose and says someone he can’t name who is a family member on the board tells him it will all be alright.

From Bluemoon: Apologies if already posted - got sent this by a mate. It’s from The Athletic and is a long read. I think it’s clear that some info from the case has been leaked to them. Being as honest as I can, I’d say there are some areas of concern for us but I still don’t see anything in the way of a smoking gun/concrete evidence against us. That could still be in the full report of course but if it is, it makes you wonder why it hasn’t been leaked to the likes of Ziegler yet: This is the story of how we got here: of how City’s commercial empire began to be scrutinised, the ferocious legal battle that ensued and how bitterly the club are fighting to save it. It was July 2020, and City were delighted. An appeal to CAS had seen their initial suspension from European football quashed, with a majority of UEFA’s evidence being thrown out on account of being “time barred”. Just under three years later, Pep Guardiola’s side won the Champions League, beating Inter 1-0 in the final in Istanbul to secure the treble. Yet ticking away in the background was the Premier League’s investigation. Not subject to the same time-bar issue as UEFA, given their different jurisdictions, the league also possessed the power to impel City to give up financial documents related to the case under a process known as “disclosure”. Numerous figures with knowledge of proceedings, who, like all those referenced in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to discuss matters publicly, have told The Athletic that this was a crucial yet fierce process, predominantly taking place in the first half of 2021. The Premier League appealed at several preliminary hearings for City to turn over a vast swathe of documents — the independent panel would later say this stretched to “millions of documents being searched” — while the club sought to keep the scope as narrow as possible, arguing some documents were either irrelevant or confidential. Initially, according to sources with knowledge of this process, City placed the disclosed documents on a server where the club could track which individuals accessed the information, and which did not allow text to be copied and pasted. This slowed down the Premier League’s investigation significantly. After further legal appeals from the Premier League, the club placed the evidence — which amounted to emails, financial spreadsheets, and other assorted documents — onto another more accessible platform. However, the disclosure process still contained surprises. German newspaper Der Spiegel had originally published Pinto’s leaks in 2018 and when they published another investigation in April 2022, revealing further allegations of financial wrongdoing based on emails hacked by Pinto, Premier League investigators noted they included documents which City had not disclosed. In its final award, released on Tuesday, the independent panel noted that City “made concerted efforts to stop and frustrate the Premier League investigation”, with the club found guilty of several charges of non-cooperation. City said in a statement on Tuesday they were “disappointed and surprised by the opinion of the Premier League commission”. Yet the disclosure process still proved fruitful. According to those with knowledge of the investigation, the Premier League gained significantly more evidence than that possessed by UEFA. For example, while UEFA’s investigation, based on Der Spiegel and Rui Pinto’s leaks, found evidence of around £300m of disguised funding, the Premier League’s total tally, as accepted by the independent panel, came to more than £830m. UEFA’s investigation also largely ended at the conclusion of the 2014-15 season, while the Premier League reviewed documentation until 2017-18. In its judgement, the panel acknowledged that the principal factual evidence it relied upon was “contemporaneous and near-contemporaneous documents” and “written and oral evidence from individual witnesses”. As it prepared the process of bringing formal charges against City, which duly arrived in February 2023, the Premier League also sought to interview key figures at the club, taking advantage of the requirement for employees to cooperate with the league’s investigation and also seeking to speak to those linked to City owners Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG). City vehemently deny being state-run or funded, insisting that ADUG operates independently of the country’s government. Those questioned included CEO Ferran Soriano, chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak and board member Simon Pearce, who serves as Al Mubarak’s special advisor at the Executive Affairs Authority (EAA). The club’s ultimate owner Sheikh Mansour, the current deputy prime minister of Abu Dhabi, and brother of the country’s ruler Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ), was not interviewed. Neither was Omar Berrada, Manchester United’s CEO, who worked in several different commercial roles at City during the relevant period, and was not considered to be a person of interest to the investigation. Pearce was asked why several emails, initially made public by Der Spiegel, showed the City board member using his governmental EAA email address while carrying out club business. The 55-year-old advisor to Khaldoon Al Mubarak was a key figure in proceedings given his role in the club’s commercial endeavours in the early days of the club’s Emirati ownership. On several occasions, according to those with knowledge of proceedings, while being interviewed or acting as a witness in the Premier League case, Pearce accounted for apparent inconsistencies in City’s position by citing commercial employees’ unfamiliarity with the inner workings of Abu Dhabi-based businesses and governments, thereby casting doubt on their testimony. For example, in the earlier UEFA hearings, he referred to “some confusion amongst members of the club” who had “provided a misunderstanding that ADUG was making funds available to Etihad in respect of the sponsorship fees”. Manchester City and the Premier League declined to comment on the specifics of this article owing to the confidentiality around the process. The Premier League and City’s pre-hearing skirmishes are said to have been “hardcore” and “aggressive”, according to sources with direct experience of the proceedings, and this did not stop when the main in-person hearing began in September 2024, running for a further three months. The three-person independent panel, whose identities have still not been publicly revealed, stated early in its final judgement: “The proceedings were at all times extremely hard fought on both sides. We in no way mean that as a criticism of either party; it is simply fact. No stone was left unturned. Both throughout the interlocutory stages and at the hearing, issues were fiercely contested between the parties.” The central issue in the Premier League’s case was the issue of disguised funding. Over nine years, City publicly declared that they had received £950m in commercial income but the Premier League argued that just £120m could be regarded as genuinely paid by the sponsors. Instead, the league claimed, the remaining £830m was artificially channelled into the club from its ownership, via sponsors, in order to give the illusion of valid commercial income. With clubs only allowed to lose a certain amount of money per season under profit and sustainability rules (PSR), the Premier League argued that City would have been found in breach had the true origin of the funding been accurately declared. In its judgement, the independent panel gave an example of the disguised funding scheme in action, which directly correlated with on-pitch results. The panel referred to City suddenly owing £20m at the end of the 2012-13 season, which corresponds, according to those familiar with the case, to a payout owed to then-manager Roberto Mancini and his staff, who had been sacked at the end of the season following the FA Cup final defeat by Wigan Athletic. Had the money been paid immediately, City would have been “£9.9m ‘short’ of complying with UEFA FFP for that season”, the panel said. The tribunal reported that “in a matter of days, a number of modified sponsor agreements were generated… to increase recorded fees, pay bonuses for events that had already taken place, and to pay for a U.S. tour”, thereby plugging the shortfall. City also asked sponsors to pay out bonuses for the FA Cup final as if they had won the match — rather than being defeated by the minnows thanks to Ben Watson’s injury-time header — according to people with knowledge of proceedings. The Premier League also raised the example of Sergio Aguero’s late, final-day winner against Queens Park Rangers in 2012, which secured City’s first Premier League title. That goal unlocked a number of bonuses within the squad which, if it had not been for the club’s operation of their disguised funding scheme, would have seen City exceed PSR for that season. Over the years of investigation and disclosure, the Premier League believed it identified part of the mechanism behind the alleged disguised funding payments. On several occasions, the independent panel’s judgement refers to a body named the CPC but its function is not explained in the redacted version. In March 2025, The Athletic revealed that a mysterious figure named “Person X” by UEFA’s earlier investigation, said to facilitate sponsorship payments to Manchester City, had been identified as a man named Jaber Mohamed by City’s lawyers. Mohamed, at the time, served as the General Director of the CPC — the Crown Prince’s Court, an Abu Dhabi government body that runs the public affairs of the Crown Prince, and the country’s present ruler, MBZ. The revelations raised uncomfortable questions not just about the apparent links to City’s ownership, but also about the extent to which payments were known about within the highest seats of power within the UAE. These geopolitical implications also explain the ongoing sensitivity and ferocity of legal proceedings, as well as the potential criminal repercussions of City’s alleged misreporting of financial information. City have fought hard on the topic of the CPC throughout the UEFA and Premier League investigations. Mohamed’s name was redacted from the UEFA and CAS decisions, being blacked out or referred to as ‘Person X’, and references to the CPC are largely redacted within the Premier League panel’s decision. Though one crucial paragraph is redacted, the Premier League judgement states that City’s primary defence against the allegation of disguised funding is the “CPC Explanation”. According to those familiar with the club’s line of argument, City claimed the CPC, as well as operating MBZ’s public affairs, also acted as a provider of what they claimed was legitimate financial assistance to state-linked entities such as City sponsors Etihad and Etisalat. Effectively, City’s stance was that the money did not come directly from sponsors but was sourced by the state (via the CPC) rather than ADUG. The independent panel ultimately rejected this argument — which was not made in front of UEFA’s adjudicatory board or CAS — after concluding “it was an ‘explanation’ that the Club had concocted well after the event in an attempt to obscure and conceal the realities of the disguised funding scheme.” The independent panel does not name any individuals in the Premier League case but states that some evidence given on City’s behalf was “false in a number of key respects”, and that “evidence (was given) that they knew to be untrue and so had been dishonest”. Several legal experts spoken to by The Athletic noted surprise at the strength of the independent panel’s statement, noting the high legal bar to allege that witnesses had given false information. It was factors like these that caused the Premier League, according to people with knowledge of the process, to claim that City’s case contains several aggravating factors, including the scale and duration of the disguised funding, as well as non-compliance with the investigation. For example, within the alleged £830m of disguised funding over nine years, Premier League investigators argued that City breached PSR limits by almost £100m in the 2017-18 season — the year of Guardiola’s first league title at the club — according to those familiar with the proceedings. When Everton were judged to have breached PSR by £19.5m in the 2021-22 season, they were initially deducted 10 points, later reduced to six points on appeal. Everton have since been ordered to pay Burnley, relegated that season, more than £35m in compensation, a decision the Merseyside club are appealing. The scale of City’s alleged breaches demonstrate the potential severity of the punishment faced by the club. A sanctioning hearing, according to the Premier League, will take place “as soon as possible”. In a statement on Friday, City announced they had lodged an appeal against the verdict, adding: “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. We will continue to respect due process and are necessarily restricted in what we can say further until all proceedings are complete.” They continue to fight and, as evidence continues to emerge, they increasingly resemble the once king, shouting down the tide.

Apparently they have been so shafted by the PL they are going to rename themselves Bonnie Bluemoon.

The ultimate aim is not to appeal, it’s to blackmail.

Yep, according to the percussion section of the deaf man’s Beatles, Jesus’s last words on the cross were “Forgive them Father, they know not where our funding came from”

Latest from Bluemoon: They are Jesus dying on the cross …… …….and the Birmingham 6.

Posted on Bluemoon (from X) You have to feel for Etihad Airways, owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund chaired by Sheikh Mansour’s brother, getting caught up in all this. Thoughts also go out to Man City’s other sponsors: First Abu Dhabi Bank, Experience Abu Dhabi, Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, Aldar Properties of Abu Dhabi, Masdar Energy of Abu Dhabi, and e& telecoms of Abu Dhabi.

Tomorrow