These all come from one newspaper – other papers go even further. But what no one is asking at the moment is what on earth is going on? By which I mean to say, we have had scandals and arguments around before, but never this many at this sort of level.
So is it a case that there has suddenly been an upturn in cheating, or is that suddenly the media has realised that its own self-imposed ban on writing about the things that are going wrong in football has now been universally abandoned and everyone is having a bash?
What makes the situation so confusing at the moment is that while you can read headlines and indeed whole articles about (for example) Real Madrid being “billions of dollars in debt”, you can also find other articles that say this is not true at all and that the club has been very clever with its rebuilding and refinancing programme and in fact, is rolling in money.
Indeed, for every story there is a contrary story on the same topic. And the fact is that the only thing on which everyone seems to agree is that Southampton’s promotion match needs to be investigated, which would be a first in itself.
So, where is all this going to end? Actually, I don’t think anyone has any idea, because much of the time there seems to be no agreement that there is any case to argue about – although by and large this notion breaks down with Southampton, where most correspondents seem to agree there is something fishy.
What we can be rather pleased about, however, is the fact that no one is suggesting (at least not today) that Arsenal has done anything amiss. Which makes a change.
But why are we getting all these corruption stories at once? One answer seems to be that this is a smoke screen to cover for the fact that there is still no outcome to the Manchester City cases of over 100 breaches of the rules. The argument here is that if the media can be persuaded to rant about a number of other issues all at once, then the ManC case can be quietly forgotten, and they can go into the next season with no points penalty.
Of course, if that happens, we will be here shouting about it, but we are just one blog and therefore easy to ignore. But it does raise the case, why are the media in general so willing to run ceaseless headlines about Southampton’s alleged cheating while utterly ignoring the fact that Manchester City hase still not been punished for all the crimes of which they were found guilty?
Of course, one reason takes us back to the threat Manchester City made against the rest of the Premier League to the effect that if they were ever punished, the club would launch a set of legal actions against the League, which would be devastating in its impact, leaving the League bankrupt as it tried to defend itself.
That threat is still present, which is quite probably while the league are still afraid to make any comment.
But it does raise the point that this is now one League for the Mega Rich such as ManC, and a different league for the smaller clubs which might try on a bit of hokey-pokey once in a while.
Now if indeed action is taken against any of the smaller clubs, such as Southampton, while allowing Manchester City to carry on their merry way, that really would be the final nail in the coffin of the Premier League. One rule for those who can afford to sue, and one for those who can’t.
We are in fact, approaching crunch time. And it does make it worth asking, why is all this publicity being given to Southampton, whose alleged crime is about one per cent of the crimes alleged against Manchester City?
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