- How does the Premier League get out of the ManC situation?
- UAE could hit the Premier League with a boycott… or might just let things roll on… And on…
by Tony Attwood
Sadly I don’t have the phone numbers of football club chairmen and mangers, but I am able to talk to a few chaps in clubs a bit further down the chain and one theme has turned up over and over again. Not a proven point, but an opinion, which goes…
ManC were just so full of themselves, as the case meandered on it was
unbelievable. The feeling was that the club didn't give a toss for the rest of
the league but was arguing for itself. The survival of ManC was of much
greater importance that the survival of the Premier League.
And there is a problem in that because when one believes one is totally right, discussion stops. All you then hear is your own case and if anyone argues to the contrary the reply is simply, “you just don’t get it do you?”
You see, the problem is that the solicitors and barristers take your point of view; but these guys get the full picture – not a rendition which begins with a certainty that one is right and everything else flows from there.
And yet, I was told, the Mancs were dealing with their legal reps as if those established men didn’t know what running a club is really like. I was told ManC came across as so utterly cock-sure that no one could touch them, and once again if anyone thought they could, they were dismissed. They “didn’t understand.”
The notion of “Sham Sponsorship” was nonsense. “Now of course in football, you have to remember that…” And as we all know, the job of the solicitor and barrister is to believe what his client tells him….
Now as I have said many times before I am not a lawyer in any shape or form, and maybe the reports I got were incomplete But I think there was a real fear that the next thing on the agenda was something rather nasty happening to the Premier League, as all the respect it had built up in the rest of the world has just been tied up and dropped overboard. And none of that was helped by the ceaseless use of the phrase “best in the world” from club directors answered by “self-styled best league in the world” from the legal teams.
But now there is something quite different. A new look at the Super League, with no ManC in it, and their relegation down at the very least two divisions, if not more. A four year expulsion from the Football League. A shuffling set of behind hands discussion asking “how the f*** do we get out of this one?”
Then we have legal action and legal costs which was in fact the first warning that the club issued to the rest of the league, and indeed the media. That was answered by a warning that ManC were closed to being kicked out of the league. Plus a willingness to change the structure of the league so it reflects absolutely the requirements of English law.
In effect the club is just talking lawyer speak – and that from lawyers who have never been to a match in their life. And that doesn’t mean those lawyers can’t understand football, rather it means ManC can’t even conceive of the notion that they might be guilty.
I was told that the rest of the league felt ManC would now cave in. But in fact not a bit. They are fighting and the damage to the whole of football could be huge, and the willingness to admit anything had been done wrong, was below zero. In short: “it was ManC what done it.”
And here;s a thought. Sitting in the wings is Arsène Wenger who created the phrase “financial doping” to describe Roman Abramovich and Chelsea. They laughed at Wenger then…. typical Frenchman not understanding football. Now Mr Wenger speaks as a man who might take over the high chair at Fifa and they are not laughing any more as demands are heard for bans on everyone ever involved in ManC and the Etihad, and for the club be sold..
The Premier League rules set out that any appeal hearing must take place within 12 weeks of case being finished, with a decision due no later than 30 days after the hearing is concluded. Not everyone is smiling.
Certainly if ManC won a legal case the value of the PL £1 football shares would sink to about 5p given that Nottingham Forest and Everton were done for the same charges, just on a smaller scale. If the league won then the punishment is about 200 points deduction, presumably spread over several seasons. Plus payment to clubs who were relegated instead of ManC (as Everton had to pay Burnley). Clubs at the top are preparing a class action against ManC on the grounds they lost their place in the Champions League.
Plus managers lost their jobs too because they didn’t deliver the promised improvement, due to City. They are getting cases together. And maybe there could be action against some players too. And then what happens if ManC can’t pay their debts? That is grounds for being kicked out of the league. And then ManC could be sued by players who were persuaded to sign for the club on the basis that this club would never go down.
Trouble is you just can’t trust these football club directors. It’s a funny old game.
In all honesty, Premier League needs resetting. An example needs to be made to make sure this kind of fraud does not happen again. So the expulsion of these charlatans is what’s needed, and don’t feel too sorry for the supporters, I haven’t heard any kind of remorse or accountability from the club or supporters.
You state that, “the job of the solicitor and barrister is to believe what his client tells him”. Having been married to a lawyer for may years and had some professional experience of the courts, I can assure you that is not quite true.
The job of a lawyer is primarily to make money for their practice. If the client is willing to pay to defend a case the lawyer believes they have little chance of winning, they don’t have to believe their client at all. They merely have to argue the best they can as though they believe their client to be correct.
In a professional capacity I have also appeared in court as the main witness in defence of my company against a much, much bigger company who appeared with a group of lawyers which must have cost ten times what we were paying (or could have afforded). Our defence was as solid as a rock and we won. The opposition appealed and we won that too.
But I do remember my lawyer saying to me, “It doesn’t matter how good your case is, there is always a chance the other side might win.” Given the limitless resources at ManC’s disposal, this has to be their only hope and, as I say, as long as the lawyers atre getting paid, they are the only winners whether they believe their client or not!
I have just listened to a Lawyer on the Football terrace and he said much the same.
Fundamentally it’s about doing what their client wants them to do. And what they want them to do can be limited by what they can afford, but as we know in Mancs case that is irrelivent.
He was asked, given the minimal, almost zero chance of overturning the verdict would you (the lawyer) suggest it would be easier/sensible to just take your medicine. he thought about it and said no, he would do what he was asked. In other words take the money.
His opinion was that there are just two ‘outs’ for Manc.
The first is that the panal where effectively fraudulent. In other words they have lied, manufactured evidence, things along those lines. Highly unlikely.
The second, and really only plausable route is for their Lawyers to find a technical/adminastrative/legal error by the commision, or in this case, indipendent panel.
They will be pouring over every full stop and comma. Every word, every phrase and every paragraph.
The problem not only Manc have, we all have with this, is that a tachnicality doesn’t exonerate Manc. They, though not in law, but most certainly by the court of public opinion, are still guilty as charged.
How on earth can the premier League continue knowing one of it’s members have bee found quilty of cheating, even if that verdict is overturned on a ‘technicality’?
My instinct is that it couldn’t, but having said that the the UEFA case only clapsed on a technicality, specifically it ran out of time, and they carried on after that. Not only that, they claimed they were found innocent, or at least any Manc fan you spoke to claimed that.
And we didn’t hear a squeek from the media.
I hate to say it, but personally I think they will find that ‘technicality’. They just have so much money to throw at this they will find something. And the thing is, this is unprecidented. Nothing of this scale or complexity has ever happened in English sport, if the World.
That to me means this commision was breaking all kinds of new ground. There will of been a lot of ‘firsts’, and there in lines a legal minefield.
Hope I’m wrong.