Trigs - quite possibly in the AFCW era, but WFC academy products have scored in that era.

We go there with a far better squad and manager than we had last time.

Apparently we have sold 1,100 tickets for Sheffield Wednesday already

Congrats to Rudi on his first Premier League goal.

* and before somebody jumps on my maths given it is 19 years from 2007 until 2026, I was referring to 18 years worth of accounts which run to June 2025!

RK - sorry for the delayed response as I have been offline for a few hours. You make a good point about the auditors. I understand Man City are a private company and report under FRS102. There is very specific disclosure requirements about related party transactions in FRS102, which have clearly not been followed. No doubt BDO will have come up with a way to convince themselves that this is acceptable and I'm sure the large fee they get from Man City will have played no part in their thinking. It's odd that they have been auditors since 2007. That's 18 years. I'm sure the audit partner has changed in that time but it is unusual for the audit not to have gone out to tender and a new firms appointed.

Swiggy - it's good to be able to answer a question on UC!

The first question Mr P's pub quiz team here got after he joined it was 'Who took the penalty that Dave Beasant saved in the 1988 Cup Final'. Honest!

We were an answer on University Challenge a moment ago

I thought the legal/ accounty stuff was interesting 😔.

Yayy a Rudi pen!

Has anyone ever thought that as soon as you mention auditors and accountants the guestbook goes dead?

Has anyone ever thought that you are talking cross purposes with someone ;-]

Like ours!

Keefy, a different issue somewhat. FYI the last audited accounts for MCFC were year ending 30/6/2025, so they're bang on time ...

RK The EU has not had it's accounts signed off for some 13 yrs. You cannot expect little old Man Shitty to comply either.

OI, that was my original but ignored point from earlier today! Althpugh, i suspect they have responsibity to verify that commercial income is correct but i don't know whether they are supposed to check against football rules

I bow to the accountants but is it possible to have arrangements that are legally OK and follow accounting standards but break specific fooball related rules? If so would it be a duty of auditors to point that out?

I think their auditors are/were Deloitte and they've just been done for worse than lying to help out City.

$6m, but my point is that this has been going on for yonks (8 years? ...), so why wasn't this flagged by their auditors?

Filing deliberately misleading or untrue statutory accounts is a criminal offence that could result in a custodial sentence for the directors if found guilty. Of course it won't because of who Man City are but this isn't some minor misdemeanour related purely to football but the SFO and HMRC should be paying close attention for whether they need to get involved. HMRC are not normally shy going after football clubs if they sniff blood.

Rangers were arguably the biggest club in Scotland in 2012. Went into administration, were dropped into D4. It only took them a few years to bounce back. If that was the decision for being broke, what will the authorities do to an outfit at the other end of the scale, who blatantly ignored the rules/laws of the game because they have enough money to buy anything they want? The big question is, will these same money bods stick around while the club tries to claw its way back up from wherever they get demoted to? Think of the inflated wages at low level that will happen if these 'bods' do stick around, plus what it will do to clubs around them trying to stay competitive.

DO, have you applied to be a local magistrate ;-)

I think it will slowly dawn upon people that if you break a specific rule, on multiple occasions, seeking to gain an advantage, you will be heavily punished. Southampton spy-gate springs to mind. Once Premier League have finished with Man City, it will be the FA's turn, then the SFO.

Good thread on what's been going on,[Link]