Is the Premier League about to split in two?

 

• • Does form tell us anything? Yes but probably not what you thought…

 

By Tony Attwood

It has long been a point of view expressed on Untold that the argument between Manchester City and other clubs in the League over finances could well lead to the league fracturing, with the majority of clubs walking away and forming a new league of their own with ManC or their new ally Aston Villa.

As Yahoo tells us, the split between the clubs is obviously primarily over the issue of ManC’s income – an income that allows it to buy whomever it wants in a way that no other club can match.   The aim of most of the rest of the league is that in general terms the money spent should be the money earned by the club, rather than money handed over by a country that happens to own the club.

The fracturing of relations that we have predicted now seems to be incorporating an argument about gathering football data and what percentage of that income the PL should take.

This comes on top of a long-running argument about what powers the government’s new Football Regular should have.

We have already found that the Regulator is indicating that it doesn’t want to deal with matters relating to individuals – such as the issue of the abuse of young players that we have so often highlighted.   This occurs when youngsters are played in games even when they are injured, in order to make up the numbers.

Our investigation into such matters has revealed at least one case where the essential medical records showing a youngster was injured and yet played, have subsequently gone missing.  The simple notion of insisting that all medical records are copied digitally and provided to the Regulator for safekeeping and to the player or the player’s parents is not being incorporated into the Regulator’s remit – a victory for clubs with dubious practices.

In general, the PL want as few powers as possible given to the Regulator, whereas the EFL wants other issues (particularly the issue of parachute payments) to be included.  But the majority of the Premier League clubs argue that they need to keep hold of their money for the ongoing fight between the majority and the new pairing of ManC and Aston V; a dispute which is consuming huge sums in legal fees.

The latest battle is over Associated Party Transaction regulations.  These rules control the money that can be given to a club by another organisation associated with the owners of the club – a process through which ManC gets most of its money.

In order to stop the changes going through ManC and Aston V have demanded the vote should be stopped.  The majority wants the vote to happen this Friday.

However the League only need a two-thirds majority to pass a regulation – although clubs could scupper the new proposals without actually openly siding with ManC by abstaining in the vote, and it is being argued that Newcastle U, Nottingham F and Everton, each of whom could benefit by the new rules not being agreed, will now side with ManC.   There has also been talk of  Wolverhampton also joining this minority, although I find it hard to see what benefit they would get from this, unless they have something up their sleeve, such as a secret bail-out pending.

Thus this battle between ManC and the League, which we have been noting off and on for a couple of years, is now picking up momentum as a result of the growing interest, overseas business operators, and indeed countries, see football clubs as a way of both making money and (much more worrying since it represents a threat to our democracy) extending their influence within the UK.

It would appear that ManC now see Aston Villa as being secured as an ally, with the others mentioned above likely to fall in behind.   This still leaves the clubs opposed to the ManC model of football domination in the majority, but with the financial promises that could be made to any club that allies with them, they may well now pick off a few more.

However leaving aside Newcastle United it is unlikely these will include any clubs with serious aspirations of getting permanently into the top six, although clubs like Nottingham Forest will disagree with that view.

The possibility of the majority of clubs simply walking away from the ManC group and forming their own league seems to be drawing closer, leaving ManC and its new-found friends allying themselves with Fifa and Uefa in some new sort of SuperLeague under Uefa’s umbrella.

We are indeed heading toward SuperLeague by “other means”.