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By Tony Attwood
There did for a moment seem a real chance of the freedom of clubs to react in their own way to the activities of Manchester City was real. But then up stepped Andy Burnham, making the case for ManC and the chance seemed to flutter away. Instead we got talk of worries about political interference – when the political interference was coming from him!
Talk about marking your own homework!. Here we had the the Prime Minister talking on the BBC saying that he would be “really concerned” if Manchester City’s overseas owners pulled out of English football, when in fact it could well be argued that this is exactly what is needed. They are the ones manipulating systems that seem to have worked quite well until they came along.
There clearly seems to be some sort of connection between Burnham and the Abu Dhabi owners of Manc which arose when Burnham was the mayor of Manchester . A demand has been made to release details of meetings between politicians and the club, but I think we’ll be lucky to get them.
The PM said, “I said that last week and I will repeat it again. I think it’s incumbent on everybody now to let the process run its course.” But the fact is that there is no set process because football in England has no set way of dealing with foreign club owners. Large chunks of English football are owned outside England (including of course Arsenal, so it is not necessarily a bad thing). But that is the simple fact of where we are today. Sometimes it seems to work, other times clearly not, as with ManC – and it is in those cases that we don’t seem to have any way to deal with the station.
Fortunately the club hasn’t fallen for the PM’s attempt to ingratiate himself with football, as ManC execs spoke of his recent comments being “absolutely bizarre” according to to the BBC. Another called it “clumsy”. For me the bizarre situation arises with a Middle Eastern oil giant funding a club to levels never previously seen, and the club getting away with it for year after year.
A different source said the government was being “clumsy”, while another said they were surprised that the prime minister had “misspoken”. The simple fact is that ManC have got themselves in a terrible financial mess through over dependency on one foreign source of investment which has been deliberately breaking the rules, is their fault, and it needs to be punished to bring them back into line.
Burnham, has championed middle east investment into Manchester for years, and now we see the results – loads of money and endless rule breaking. But perhaps worse, he he seems completely unaware of the sensitivities that ariss in this case, and the blunders he has made in the past by encouraging this investment.
The club has “systematically broken Premier League rules for nearly a decade” according to the league, yet the PM wants to swat that aside and have a sort of “Jim will fix it” attitude.
Everton had 10 points removed for crimes far smaller than those involving Mancs and now ManC seems to be excused on the basis that, “They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester and obviously the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.
“I do actually thank the City Football Group and the wider ownership for the money that they didn’t just put into the Etihad and the campus around it but also into the city,”
The following day, a spokesperson for the PM tried to backtrack, saying: “As the prime minister made clear, the initial judgement is serious and there can’t be any suggestion that anyone is above the rules….If wrongdoing is established, those responsible should face the appropriate consequences.”
However, this statement was amended following further criticism over the use of the words “if wrongdoing” – which were changed to “wherever wrongdoing”….
When pushed on the issue the government tend to say that the Premier League is one of our “major cultural exports”, so ministers do tend to tread carefully around it. Additionally, being a football fan is a core part of Burnham’s political persona. He is an Everton supporter. But I really think he ought to understand that the overwhelming majority of fans think ManC has cheated horrifically over multiple years and for that they need a major punishment. Otherwise the PL loses all credibility.
