- Why are the league and PGMO not taking the basic steps to stop match fixing?
- Football now has a gigantic problem: why can ManC hve their case heard in secret?
By Tony Attwood
Among the many discussions my pals and I have had about ManC since the Premier League finally decided to act, one that we didn’t have was a chat about what happens if the ManC owners do nothing, not particularly as a ploy but because they have no idea what to do.
For in a country where no one could possibly suggest that the leadership has ever done anything wrong, it is actually an interesting point. A bit like how one might approach a conversation with King Charles about how the monarchy is horribly out of date, not to mention bloody expensive, and how are we going to wind it up step by step in the coming months. It’s not the issue of how one does the winding up, but how one starts the conversation after one has said, “You majesty… I have an idea….”.
For the point is that ManC have never been told that they have got it all wrong and can’t go on. They can’t imagine this sort of situation.
As others have started to point out, at the basis of the Premier League is that notion of a set of rules which everyone agrees to, and where any are broken there are also a bunch of punishments. But when we get to this level of rule breaking, none of that seems relevant any more. Everything is now on too big a scale; we don’t have ways of dealing with this sort of thing.
I mean, I can imagine that through every ManC game from now on all the opposition supporters are simply going to chant “Cheat cheat cheat” whenever the ManC players have the ball, but what else can we do?
For the fact is that whatever rules are brought into the Premier League with the idea of not only applying retribution to the Mancs but also ensuring no other club ever tries this one again, they are probably going to fail for the simple reason that from the moment they are published the Mancs will have teams of people working on overcoming them. However we do know that multiple new rules are already being discussed such as .
- A maximum expenditure on salaries and transfers for all PL clubs each season
- Clubs must not play in any unauthorized competitions which will include competitions with prizes above a certain level
- New rules on foreign ownership, which reduce the option year by year (and will cause Arsenal some difficulties
- A maximum expenditure on players’ salaries each season, which is the same for all clubs irrespective of income
- A maximum expenditure on everything else without reference to income
- The removal of trophies and titles won in season where a club has broken the rules
- All contracts issued by the clubs to be handed to the League and the League rule on their legality. Any found illegal are instantly null and voice, and any expenditure made under such contracts to be a major breach of League rules and subject to points deductions.
That set of regulations would at least start to get ManC seeing what has happened in the way that many other people in football see it: they have come up with a propaganda project that has spectacularly crashed.
So far the Mancs have said just one thing: that there are tons of things they would love to say, and because I know them, I am very confident of winning. To which we are asking, how have they been allowed to get away with this for so long?
Of course this is all going to court. Clubs that were relegated want to come back up. Clubs that didn’t win the league but would have done but for ManC want a title. The lawyers are rubbing their hands.
As the Guardian suggests, the biggest worry is that the Mancs just pay up and then carry on as before. And why not? They’ve got the money. As for the removal of past titles,, so what, when they have enough money to buy everyone and win the league over and over again?
The only thing that could work would be to stop them having any sponsorship in future. But then how on earth could that be monitored.? Who has access to the financial records of a country?
But then if there no standard punishment that really works and stops this sort of thing in the future, the only way forward is to have another league competition without the ManCs in it. ManC could play PSG, Bayern, Real Mad and Barcelona and another other “win every match” club, and the rest of us can get on with football as it was meant to be.
Although I suspect several of those five clubs wouldn’t like that league, because they couldn’t all win every week. But that would be their problem..
