What’s wrong with football, and what solutions could resolve the issues?

 

 

• There are some days out with Arsenal that stay in the memory, and that was one

By Tony Attwood

It is a fundamental view of this site (as you might have realised if you are a regular reader) that there is something seriously wrong with football in England, and that the wrongness that we perceive is exacerbated by the abject refusal of the media at large even to engage in a discussion as to whether any such problems exist or not.

One key problem that we have investigated for years, as you will know if you do pop over to this site from time to time, relates to refereeing.  Not primarily because we perceive injustices done to Arsenal because of the incompetence and the resultant injustices done to many clubs.

I would particularly point to 160 games analysed – in which three researchers analysed the first 160 games of one PL season from the point of view of referee errors, and presented the evidence in videos.  It is a project that has, as far as we know, never been attempted or replicated anywhere else.  However, it was picked up by the BBC and their report is included in this page on Corruption.

Subsequently, we saw the sudden change in the pattern of results which arose when matches were played without crowds in the stadium.   If there were no referee bias because of the effect of the crowd, there should have been no change during this period.  In fact what we saw was a massive rise in the number of away wins, showing just how much referees were affected by the crowds.  You don’t have to take our word for it – there is an excellent review of this from an independent source here.

There have been so many series on such matters on Untold, that one can’t really make a complete index but at the foot of this piece I’ll put links to one series that we created, “What the media won’t tell you about football”.  There is a link to the series at the end of this piece.

But these days things are different, because five years ago Der Spiegel published allegations to the effect that Manchester City were breaking a lot of financial rules.

The case of Manchester City rumbles on of course, although it now coexists with the League suggesting that Everton get a 12-point deduction for breaching profit and sustainability rules.

That leaves 18 clubs including Arsenal, not being charged, and those clubs are, it seems, as much in the dark as to what is going on as the likes of you and I.   As we some Manchester City fans suggest that this is all a conspiracy against their club (we know that because their fans occasionally write to us, but rarely present much evidence to back up their claims, aside from suggestion our source is not valid.

But what happens if either Everton or Manchester City or both are found guilty?  That would mean that in the past a lot of other clubs have suffered, either by being relegated in a season when Everton cheated, or by not getting into the Champions League (and hence getting quite a bit of extra money) in a season when Manchester City has cheated.

The League’s commission have enormous powers to impose sanctions, and indeed there has been much talk already to the effect that if the sanctions are, in the case of any club that has enormous wealth from its owners, not ones that materially punish the club, then what’s the point?

I mean, a wealthy person might not worry too much about getting a £100 fine for doing 40 miles an hour in a 30 mph limited zone, but might well be more worried about losing his/her licence if caught doing it several times in a 3 year period, and thus losing one’s licence to drive.   Although even then he/she can buy a chauffeur.  In short a punishment to the owners of Manchester City would be pointless if other members of the ruling elite of their country could just step in and do it all again.