- How to predict the end of the season after just six games
- Why it could be best for Arsenal not to spend a fortune on transfers this summer
- The proof: spending money on transfers takes a club DOWN the league
by Tony Attwood
I am beginning to think that I have got football all wrong. I mean we know that transfer rumours are tripe – since 97% of them never turn into actual transfers. Yet that is what the media is full of. Transfers that never come to pass.
And we know that that buying players into a club is generally more likely to be followed by a club going down the league table, rather than up. Likewise, bringing in a new manager is more likely to take a club down, rather than up. Yet we are constantly told who Arsenal should buy, and why Arteta is no good.
I’ve also put forward the notion (with some evidence I should add) that you can tell how the league table is going to look at the end of the season by looking at it after six matches. And how you can predict which clubs are going up and down between the top two leagues, before the season starts.
Now each of these points challenges the very essence of football, and implies that much of the time we are being lied to. Lied to, for example, in terms of which players a club is going to sign, and again lied to by the implication that buying these players will improve the club, and not buying them shows a weakness within the club.
But there is more to it than that – a lot more. And this next bit is not something I have just dreamed up, but it is a story that was published over three years ago, but utterly ignored by the UK media, for the simple reason that it doesn’t fit with their overview of football.
And that strikes me as a key point. Football journalism in England is not based on reality and importance, but on finding stories that fit the media’s pre-conceived notions. To find what lies beneath, as the saying goes, one needs to look beyond the mainstream media. In this case what follows was reported in the New Law Journal.
They have reported that in the past footballers never thought of seeking damages for an injury sustained in a game. Then Gordon Watson sued Huddersfield Town and Kevin Gray for negligence after a tackle which led to in a double fracture of his leg during a match in February 1997. The court found Gray liable and awarded Watson damages for loss of earnings and future earnings, totalling almost £1 million.
There have been multiple other cases particularly where one player has thrown a punch at another and seriously injured the player hit. There are also been claims against players for induction ritual activity. There is also suggestion that what in the past has been called “banter” can be deemed unlawful, if the result is that it damages a player’s confidence so much that he cannot long play.
Indeed, some former Chelsea players sued the club for racial abuse (which the coach who spoke the words really did describe the matter as “banter”.)
Meanwhile as we have been regularly reporting (but which has not appeared in any of the mainstream media at all), there is a growing exchange of information between parents of young players who have suffered injury and not received proper medical treatment. The clubs at the moment are not reacting.
Now I can’t report allegations that have not come to court, but I can say that when I first started looking at these reports four or five years ago there was hardly any information available. Now there is a vast array of data.
Yet still none of it being reported in the mainstream media – even though there having been huge cases in British football of club-wide abuse of youngsters by the club’s staff. So why is that?
That question is an interesting one in the light of the vast amount of talk on line between parents of then-young players about abuse. And reading that I can see why neither the FA and the League want to launch any sort of serious investigation either into what happened to the young players or into what happened to the evidence. Indeed, if you start looking at these affairs you might be amazed at how often the “missing evidence” excuse has come up. Amazed because the missing evidence in question is often a young player’s medical records.
So I am now starting to wonder something else. There is, circulating within football, as I have said, a large array of allegations about the abuse of young players. There have also been court cases where players have been charged serious injury caused by their actions on the pitch. And we know that the level of child abuse in football is horrifying, but is generally not reported.
We also know that last month the Culture, Media and Sport committee endorsed David Kogan OBE appointment as Chair of the government appointed Independent Football Regulator. Mr Kogan however is not totally independent of football as he was the Premier League’s chief media rights adviser from 1998 to 2015 and is described by Wiki as “a key architect of its global financial success”. (I of course make no allegation against Mr Kogan; I just thought it might be a good idea to bring in someone with no past history in the game).
For despite making noises about reforming football, it seems the government has no interest in enquiring into the way the FA, Uefa, and the Leagues run things and indeed whether they are fit for purpose. Corruption allegations against Uefa are starting to mount, but still all the clubs kowtow to Uefa’s whims.
But we know there are strange things going on, apart from the way children in football clubs are sometimes treated, which we have reported on often before. We know for example, that rather curiously, much of the money spent by clubs is spent on player transfers, rather than on looking after youngsters or improving conditions for supporters. And then having spent a fortune on players it appears the most likely result is that the clubs in question go down the league table rather than up. Yet no one asks why. Meanwhile we know that it is possible to predict the outcome of the league after just six games such is the imbalance of the competition.
In fact, to summarise this, everything appears to be a bit weird and could do with a bit of investigation. Yet the media ceaselessly focus on transfers that don’t happen. And I find that a bit odd really.
Now one possible reason might be that the media themselves are encouraged to look the other way if they spot something odd happening (although of course I have no evidence of this). But if that is not the case, why are the media not looking into the big issues instead of transfers, 97% of which don’t happen?
I am, to say the least, a bit confused.
