- “Arsenal dont look like champions” as we reveal the line up tonight. Maybe.
- Regulator has power to force ManC owners to sell up if they lose appeal
By Tony Attwood
We tend to consider the print and broadcast media in the UK as independent – and even if they are not totally independent, then at least they are not quite as lopsided as the media that may be witnessed within certain other countries.
And yet occasionally, when questions are raised about certain attitudes within some groups of people, it is quickly revealed that the independence and balance within our media in the UK is not there at all.
This, of course, is primarily noticed within areas of politics, where the bulk of the newspapers retain a similar social and political position on most issues of the day. But when it comes to something as non-political as football generally, it can be seen that the media like to portray the concept of reporting the truth as being their fundamental aim.
But what then of football? At the moment, the Premier League is facing its biggest ever crisis – the revelation of the wholesale corruption of the League’s rules and regulations by one club – a corruption so vast that the previously unthinkable notion of relegating the club to a lower league due to offences against football rules in now on the table.
And yet, although this response to years upon years of cheating by the club is said to be unprecedented, the fact is that despite the punishment considered, within another year it is more than likely that the club will be back in the Premier League, able to commit the same crimes all over again. For the proposed points deduction for ManC that is currently being discussed in the media for next season will certainly not be enough to stop ManC getting promotion back to the top league within 12 months. Thereafter, it seems likely, therefore, that it will be able to continue with the practices that got it into the footballing dock in the first case. (Or if not the same activities, then at least an equally effective set of alternatives).
Those clubs – which is to say the other 19 within the Premier League- will be back where they started; complaining but able to do nothing more as Manchester City will readily win the Championship next year and then, their finances unharmed, will propel themseles to the top of the Premier League, just as before. They will in short have suffered nothing more than the inconvenience of one campaign in the second tier, something that has happened to every club currently in the Premier League except Arsenal, since the First World War.
So what will have been the benefit of this all? Whoever wins the league in the forthcoming season of ManC in the Championship will have won simply because “City were not there”. Thereafter, Manc will be back at the top table, as the Premier League becomes just like the German, Scottish and French leagues, except we will have the same winners every season, as opposed to almost every season.
And what can the non-cheating clubs do? By the time the Mancs are back, nothing at all, as crowd figures will drop by something like two-thirds as everyone admits that we all know who is going to win the league from the 3pm kick off of the very first match. PSG in France, Bayern in Germany, ManC in England, Celtic in Scotland.
It could, of course, be stopped by the Premier League taking firm action against Man City, such as banning them from the Premier League for ten years or so and only then inviting each of the lower leagues the club plays in, to investigate the City practices each season, and if finding anything amiss, adding their league to the leagues from which City are banned.
But I don’t think most football administrators have the necessary determination and imagination to see that through. They think in terms of a one-off event like giving a naughty child a serious talking-to with warnings about what will happen if the child ever does this (whatever this was) again. And then the parent says, “We’ll say no more about this now”, and all is forgotten, as the child learns one lesson – next time don’t get caught.
Thus, the freshness of the Premier League has been destroyed for eternity by the arrival of Manchester City. The league that could see eight separate winners in ten consecutive seasons in the 1960s now has seen just four in the last ten years, with six of those seasons having the league won by the same club.
And maybe that is what people want. After all, it seems to be what people like in Germany and France, not to mention Scotland, where the same club has won the league for nine of the last ten seasons.
Of course I might have miscounted one of these seasons – but if so, only by a club or two. We are here, and I suspect, we are stuck.
