“100% Correctly!” – Sports Lawyer On ‘Hard-Hitting’ Man City V Premier League & Liverpool Claims | OneFootball

By Josh Smith

Premier League rivals Manchester City have been found guilty of 114 of the 115 charges of breaching financial regulations between the years 2009 and 2018, in what has been described as a “hard-hitting” independent review by expert commercial lawyer Richard Kramer in an interview with us.

The club have appealed all the charges and are pleading its innocence, with the multi-billion-pound institute in severe danger of collapsing. In the latest episode of Expert Insight, we spoke to the highly experienced Kramer, who laid down what the most likely outcomes are based on the decision and how it was made.

Kramer spoke on how the independent panel is made up and gave his view on how certain he is the charges will not be overturned…

“The Premier League usually has about 40 or 50 professionals on the panel. And there’s a whole range of different people, but the qualifications need to be very high. And you’ve got a lot of experienced lawyers. I think on this occasion, what we’ve probably got are ex-Court of Appeal and High Court judges that have retired.

“Anybody who’s going to get that gig on the panel really must have the time and dedication to sit there for 12 weeks. So, I would imagine, it’s only speculation that the panel was made up of some real eminent lawyers; probably most of them or of the three, I would imagine at least two. were ex-judges. We may have had an accountant. Sometimes they go for somebody with some forensic accounting knowledge as well to sit on these panels. I can tell you 100% categorical assurance that those individuals who would have sat on the panel would constitute the top legal or accountancy brains in the country. I’m confident that the Premier League, through its panel, would have done the job absolutely 100% correctly.”

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The tribunal was “scathing” in Kramer’s words of the Manchester City witnesses, something that we have not seen from the Premier League before.

The words “sham” and “dishonest” were used by the Premier League, Independent Panel and tribunal to reveal the severity of the crimes committed.

Unprecedented measures taken have shocked the football world, with the last high-profile case at the very top being Juventus’ relegation in 2006 due to match-fixing.

“Saying a witness is dishonest is very extreme because effectively they’re saying they just lied to the tribunal. That kind of stuff will come back to haunt City when it comes to the sanctions. I think that decision did shock a lot of football people.”

It has now given other Premier League clubs, including Liverpool, an opportunity to prepare compensation lawsuits due to the loss of earnings because of said cheating, which links back to the previous payment Everton had to make to Burnley due to loss of earnings.

“If there was a season when City finished first and Liverpool second, then you could quite easily create a very strong argument to say, Well, there’s no way that Manchester City would have won the league by not complying with PSR, financial fair play, or the regulatory framework.

“And then it’s quite easy then to sort of say, Well, hold on a minute. If you finish top of the pile, these are all the financial benefits you get, ranging from maybe preferential places in the Champions League to increased prize money to increased sponsorship money from your kit suppliers and from your other sponsors, because all those sponsorship agreements will have some kind of performance-related pay in it.

“It’s not too difficult to see why Liverpool may well be sharpening the pencils at the moment and saying, Hold on a minute; over a 10-year period when this happens, we think we can quite easily put forward a significant claim for compensation.”

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Kramer has also found it confusing how non-compliant City have been, based on the fact that Chelsea and other clubs have had lighter punishments when complying.

“They have got hundreds of staff. So the fact that they came out and sort of gave the impression that it’s not all over yet and there’s a lot more evidence to be produced, I do find that a little bit strange.

“All of the evidence will have been presented at the tribunal. They would have had years to prepare for it. They’ve had the best legal brains in the country. They had Clifford Chance, which is one of the leading firms in the world. They had David Pannick and some other QCs.”

It leads to the commercial lawyer also believing that it is going to be difficult for City to succeed with the appeal, which he explained by going through how the second tribunal will work.

“Well, the good news for the fans is we don’t have to go through years and years of this again. It’s not what’s known as a de novo hearing, where you start the whole process. The grounds of appeal are very limited, and it’s usually a decision which is unreasonable and capricious. Wholly out of proportion, biased, all those sorts of things where you’d have to really go in deep to demonstrate that the tribunal got it completely wrong.

“The appeals tribunal will now be assembled very quickly from that panel of very experienced lawyers, judges, and accountants dealing with the appeal. They come at it with a fresh pair of eyes, so it’s not like they’re biased towards anybody. They’ll read the full judgment. They’ll obviously consider some of the evidence. And then obviously there’s a hearing when Manchester City will argue very strongly that the panel got it wrong, the decision was capricious, no reasonable person would have expected to reach that decision, etc.”

With this expert insight, it now begs the question: how certain is Richard Kramer that the appeal will not succeed?

“It’s interesting that the tribunal were very scathing of some of the Manchester City witnesses. I think the word dishonest was used. So all in all, I think it looks like a very safe conviction.”

With the recent appeal from Manchester City, there is no absolute as to whether they are still guilty, nor is there a guarantee of a punishment until the second tribunal has ended, meaning we will have to wait until the end of the second hearing to find out whether punishments will ensue.