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City may go for broke

Manchester City could go for broke and challenge the whole legal basis of financial fair play in an equivalent of the Bosman judgment. It has always been my personal view that FFP is incompatible with both EU and domestic competition law and many lawyers also share that view. QPR used that argument to substantially scale down the penalties applied to them.

City have been consulting lawyers from three different firms. A person close to the club's leadership told the Financial Times, 'This is not about getting a smaller punishment. This is about the substance of the case, which will finally be heard freshly by an independent group where we believe we will prevail.' There had been speculation that the Court for Arbitration of Sport might reduce the Champions League ban to one year.

City are considering a strategy in which it will argue that not only did it not breach the regulations but that these rules should not exist at all.

Top sports lawyer Daniel Geey told the Pink 'Un: 'If Man City put forward an argument that FFP is anti-competitive, and CAS agree with that, Uefa has bigger structural business.'

For their part Uefa investigators hired outside lawyers for the first time to avoid the fate of past FFT inquiries against Paris Saint-Germain, AC Milan and Galatasary where sanctions were overturned for technical legal reasons.

Shirt sponsors Puma said: 'We fully trust the management of Manchester City and are confident that these accusations will be cleared.'

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