This is indeed really sad. And it's not as if UK-EU relations are no longer an issue. @ukandeu.bsky.social will be needed so much
Peter Ungphakorn
@coppetainpu.bsky.social
4.8K followers 816 following 2.4K posts
In 🇨🇭, from all over. Mainly trade. Journalist. WTO Secretariat 1996-2015. Usual disclaimers. Member: fmg-geneva.org. Web: tradebetablog.wordpress.com (follow for alerts)
![Photo of Billy Conolly playing the guitar live, with D.I.V.O.R.C.E written underneath. Added text says "So you want to remarry?" and "How long before another [divorce]"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5xtc4zpinxoaz26crj2rsijo/bafkreigipox5sc2l7izlgj7hj76dij2n3lwo56pr2q3opkjiglkukuk2ye)
![There will be a further hearing on sanctions. Given the gravity of the commission’s findings, one can expect the sanctions to be onerous. If so, the considerable legal trouble of the club will mean serious practical consequences. If the breaches are not minor, then presumably the punishments cannot thereby be slight. It may thereby be sensible for Manchester City to concentrate more on the sanctions hearing, than on any perhaps remote chance of a successful appeal.
But there is little sign that Manchester City will adopt a sensible approach to further proceedings, as it has not adopted a sensible approach to contesting this matter to date. Indeed, the club has exacerbated its predicament by its strident conduct of its defence to these charges. This would not be the fault of the lawyers: it can be assumed that the club’s lawyers will have set out the risks of being aggressive. The club would have had this advice, and it would seem that it still decided to be aggressive.
The decision of the disciplinary commission not only sets out the deliberate financial irregularities of the club, but also that it made “concerted efforts to stop and frustrate” the league’s investigation. Note here the word “concerted”—these efforts were systemic and deliberate. Such an approach accords with published documents about how the club approaches litigation elsewhere. The club chairman is reported to have had the view that the club would “rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue [Uefa] for the next 10 years” than accept a fine.
Paying “30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world”, or even hiring a man with seven wives each with seven sacks of seven cats, is of no avail if the facts and the law are against you. Law is not magic, and lawyers are not magicians. Decisions tend to follow the evidence, and the documentary evidence available to the club would have pointed to the determination it in time received. Nothing in the findings this week will have been a …](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nx2kxyxako6sobj4g4pdkl6s/bafkreih7fqubn444ys35bmyedxpytmmalyasu54f4jrdhpuyjhtdpojm3m)
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Asked whether he wanted the UK to rejoin the EU, he replied that he wanted to "look at the options".
He added he had previously advocated such a move within his lifetime, whilst acknowledging it was "not necessarily the case that that is now".
"We could stay as we are. That's definitely an option, if people think this is the right place to stay," he told the programme.
"We could look at what [former Chancellor] George Osborne has said about a customs union, we could look at what the Liberal Democrats said at their conference about the single market, or we could go all the way."
"So there are clearly options that need to be considered, and we have to look at what is doable and what would be the pros and cons of each," he added.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:5xtc4zpinxoaz26crj2rsijo/bafkreialab4bixekx2lmnntfgcimvtgx4rospv4lhqtt777z7gaicoio3i)
