Aren’t a lot of them about fake revenues and paying staff off the books? im not sure using a defence of, yes we paid them via 3rd party companies (and avoided paying tax) but we only did it cos you didn’t let us sponsor ourselves for 500m is going to work on those ones?
The defence would simply be that they've been unlawfully restricted from increasing revenues in the first place. I would imagine the significance of APT2 will be quite big with at least some if not all the charges over the time period they were in place.
City signed up the those rules at the time. They then broke the rules. If I pay someone to take a driving test for me because they unlawfully said I couldn’t take it myself, doesn’t mean what I did wasn’t wrong and shouldn’t be punished.
I don't agree with the rules they broke; but that's irrelevant, as the rules were the rules and they've done some shady stuff to get around them. On APT, that was all such utter and complete bollocks designed to protect the "big 6" and stifle growth from underneath; only when it started to impact City did they make their moves. Then they tried to bring in a tweaked rule that once again protected teams like Spurs and Arsenal. My main issue is with Chelsea. UEFA have already said they aren't compliant (they refuse to acknowledge the sale of the women's team) but rather than have some backbone and ban them from Europe, which is supposed to be the punishment, they are negotiating a repayment structure of the fine!! The PL have stayed completely silent, purely because their punishment will have to be points. I just find the whole thing so abhorrent and insular. One rule for, say, Everton, another for Chelsea.
This. Chelsea should get a serious points deduction, get banned from European competition and have a transfer embargo. But they won't.
Not sure of the breakdown of charges but figure the defence would be we aren’t guilty of breaking rules that weren’t legal in the first place and, therefore, can’t be broken as they are null and void ab initio.
APT linked to PST. APT relates to value of spinsor deals. Man City accussed of inflatung them and creative accounting.