The chairman of Manchester City, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, breaks in a smile during his last chat at the end of the season with the internal media of the club, when the subject of a long -awaited statement about 115 accusations of financial inappropriation gains.
“It will come, and we will talk about it, I promise you as soon as we have the statement,” he says in his impeccable American English, less like a man who is afraid of his club's reputation is about to be thrown away than someone waiting for his time to have the Premier League, both barrels.
On Wednesday it will take 180 days since the Independent Commission that heard the charges against the city started considering their judgment. UEFA, on the other hand, only took two days to find the city guilty of financial manipulation on the basis of similar evidence, in January 2020 – an opinion that was later annulled on appeal.
The vastness of the time leads me that City is going to win it. No points deduction. No relegation.
At least, the hiatus points to uncertainty about the evidence that was brought to the committee, which was 12 weeks between September and December.
In what feels like a professional life ago, I treated the complex, complex test of GP Harold Shipman, on 15 charges of murder. It took a lay jury in Preston 118 days to hear and decide that evidence – 60 days fewer than three highly specialized experts have taken to assess the city.
View the city shop through the prism of the hacked e -mails of club managers, published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, which form the core, and you would say that there is a very strong case against them.
Cozy promises of £ 12 million extra, from 'alternative sources offered by its highness'. Guarantees to Prime Sponsor Etihad Airlines that 'U £ 8 million' of a sponsor obligation of £ 99 million will provide.
But City, who denies misconduct, has always found an element of denial about this evidence. The 'alternative sources' were made 'subsidies' available by the Tourist Authority of Abu Dhabi. Surprised Junior Staf simply did not understand the mechanics of the sponsorship system when sending apparently burdensome e -mails.
No Abu Dhabi director has been found who unconsciously hints that he was much more on the hook than the published sponsormom.
The closest to a smoking gun was the own recognition of the city, in a UEFA hearing, that Jaber Mohamed – a senior assistant from Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince – the club £ 30 million paid on behalf of the most important sponsor Etisalat, a state company in 2012 and 2013. This sponsor did not seem to pay money for three years.
But to condemn City, the committee will have to conclude both the club and the managers at the top of the State Companies of Abu Dhabi, such as Etisalat and Etihad Airlines, participating in the conspiracy, says football finance expert Kieran Maguire. “That's a high evidence threshold,” he tells me. “There should be coordinated lying.”
Maguire points out that it will have been the professional duty of the external accountants of the city to investigate the books of the club forensically. Although fraud is notorious to detect, BDO should be linked by Abu Dhabi, or parties with something unwanted. That is unlikely.
Accusations that the salaries of former manager Roberto Mancini and midfielder Yaya Toure were greatly blown up by off-the-books Abu DHABI payments and other part of the Premier League League Leaving magazine-Zouden are best tested by those people who seem to testify. Neither Mancini could be summoned by a committee like this.
The Premier League is right to accept this case. Those leaked e-mails painted a deeply suspicious photo of the city's interactions with opaque state companies Abu Dhabu entities that we know very little, since the Gulf State has no equivalent of our own company home.
A brilliant book about this case and much more, the award -winning States of Miguel Delaney, reveals the mistakes in UEFA's investigation. The Premier League will certainly have improved their work.
All in all, it feels like a case with moral and intellectual validity, although such merits never offer guarantees of conviction in the balance.
Al Mubarak seems to be more interested in the upcoming club World Cup campaign of the city in the US. “We are holders,” he recalls City TV, who wears the broad grin of a man without care in the world.
Brumm at the top for EFL value
I just experienced little better atmosphere in the football season than the thunderous environment of St. Andrew's, where I saw Birmingham City coming from behind to Trexham and Newcastle United Close in the FA Cup. Wow!
The stadium was the best place to view the EFL, based on my separate calculation – distributing the costs of the cheapest season ticket of each club on the number of points that each side has set at home.
It is £ 5.16 per home point for blues fans, followed in decreasing order by Fleetwood (£ 5.70), Charlton (£ 6.07) and Doncaster (£ 6.30). Worst artists of Bottom Up: Shrewsbury Town, Cambridge United, Carlisle United and Barnsley.
There is such an enormous value in watching EFL football and considerably more chance of something joyful at the end of everything than the tooth-and-Nail exist that contains life in the Premier League for most.
A solution for French open gender row
The eternal complaint about the French Open women's tournament that has granted none of the prime-time evening TV slots presents an obvious solution.
Expand competitions in the last phases of the ladies' tournament to five sets. More exposure. More of those titanic comebacks that we associate with the men's game.
Billie Jean King represents the first week and the best-of-five for the second.
When Bjorn Borg won at Roland Garros in 1974 and 1975, the men played the best-of-three for the first two rounds and the best-of-five for the rest. It didn't hurt him.
The horror that Liverpool -Parade revealed attack
It moved the solidarity and the feeling of community in Liverpool, the morning after the volatile horror of the trophy parade, to be seen last week.
But so much of that episode and its aftermath is disturbing.
A motorist drives in the wrong direction in a crowd, to see that his car windows are being taken, the vehicle is rocking.
The police are forced to provide quick information about the suspect – sued since then – to prevent racing riots from following. It is a non -repellent furious world that is there.