Are we fast approaching the end of the Premier League as we know it?

 

 

By Tony Attwood

• I see the WC is about to start. I must say, it doesn’t really appeal….
• Were Arsenal favoured by officials, of is it just the usual anti-Arsenal agenda we’ve become used to?

There is a fair amount of debate going on in terms of the compensation one club can seek from another, if it is found that a league club has gained a higher position in the league than it might otherwise have achieved through, for example, playing a player they are not entitled to play.   

This notion seems to have been accepted in recent arguments that clubs have to be seen as 100% responsible for their actions, and there are no excuses.  Such a viewpoint raises the possibility of one club making a claim againsts another in certain circumstances along the lines that Club A won a game using a player who was not properly registered.  The three points gained in such a victory were illegally gained and should be deducted.

This is of course, relevant to the current dispute concerning Manchester City because it is argued that ManC gained a higher league position than it would have done via its financial cheating, and thus, this lowered the position of other non-cheating clubs.

In some cases, this could lead to a club saying that they were relegated to the Championship because of Manchester City’s cheating, and thus lost the money they would otherwise have gained from being in the Premier League.

But the argument can very quickly become difficult for anyone to resolve, if the offending club was, as seems to be the case with ManC, cheating its way through the whole season by spending money that was then not recorded as legitimately available as transfer expenditure.

As a result of such arguments, it could be argued that in 2022/23 Arsenal would have ended up as champions if Manchester City had not gained extra points as a result of its financial arrangements that enabled it to buy and/or pay the salaries of certain players.   The same could be argued by 2023/24, where once again ManC came first and Arsenal second.

Now Arsenal could claim the titles for those two years, obviously, but could also claim some extra prize money.   But Arsenal’s position in the Champions League would have been the same – the club qualified because it finished in the top part of the Premier League.  So there is no claim there.

Except that it could be argued that had Arsenal won the league in those two seasons, as it would have done without ManCs financial doping, then Arsenal would have found it easier to buy certain other players, which in turn could have helped them to victories in Europe.

This of course, becomes very complicated and complex because as soon as one club claims this so do others.  Clubs that came fifth in the league could have come fourth without ManC cheating, and similar changes could be argued for the FA Cup.

Now, in order to put down Arsenal, there have been arguments made to say that this would not help Arsenal financially, and that may or may not be the case.  But the cheating of ManC must have affected virtually every other club that ManC played in its cheating years.  The ramifications are enormous.

For example, if ManC beat a team in, say, the fifth round of the FA Cup, who is to say how much further the beaten team would have got if ManC had not been cheating?

The Lawyer magazine for example, has noted that, “The Premier League’s rules allow for clubs to seek compensation from other clubs for rule breaches that cause them loss.”

The problem here is that once the League’s own case against ManC is done and dusted, there  is nothing to stop individual league clubs launching claims against ManC for each season in which it is shown that ManC has broken PL financial rules.

This would not mean that a club that was relegated could claim it was not relegated, but rather that the relegated club could claim compensation for a season in the Championship.   So in fact we have clubs at the top of the league suing because they came 5^th instead of 4^th, and clubs lower down the league suing because their two defeats to ManC during the season, which MIGHT not have happened without the financial doping, had them relegated, or at least getting less prize money.

Now it is also true that the charges against the Mancs mostly relate to a specific nine year run, and so the question of which club was where and why in each season arises.   The League might argue that it is too complex to work out exactly where each club might have been season by season, but the clubs’ argument back to the league is certain to be that this is not the clubs’ fault, but the league management committee’s fault for not bringing ManC to book sooner.

This could then turn into an argument about how well or poorly the management committee has run the league, and if that argument is raised legally, we could be about to see the collapse of the league itself.   And it is interesting that just at this moment we are seeing certain discussions taking place about the formation of a new league – one without Manchester City within it, as the final punishment for all the Manc has done.