By Tony Attwood
So here we are, second and can’t be overtaken at the moment, although Manchester C can go further ahead with their game in hand. And indeed I presume their match fixing is still going on, so they are more than likely to win every game. Indeed, we don’t quite know how the events of recent times will affect the Mancs: they could feel knocked back, or they could go out to prove the rest of the world wrong…
It is also impossible to know the impact that the supporters who are celebrating the fact that the Mancs have cheated the rest of football will have on the club and the team. Will the club feel ashamed, or vindicated? Will it have an impact? Are any other clubs involved, perhaps being nurtured as “nursery clubs” where ManC-sponsored players can be nurtured? We really don’t have any background information to help us know.
So we carry on and wait, but we are not letting the topic go. Here is a table… after the Arsenal match it reads….
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1 Manchester City
|
5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 13 | 5 | 8 | 15 |
|
2 Arsenal
|
6 | 5 | 0 | 1 | 10 | 5 | 5 | 15 |
|
3 Brighton & Hove A
|
5 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 16 | 5 | 11 | 10 |
|
4 Brentford
|
5 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 10 | 4 | 6 | 9 |
|
5 Leeds United
|
6 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 3 | 9 |
And it is surely not impossible that Man City will have points deducted – lots and lots of points in fact deducted from their tally this season, and hopefully next season, and the season after and… At least the League can be in no doubt at all that if they fail to deliver some fairly robust and long-term punishments, then a substantial number of existing PL clubs will pull out and start another league – just as they did when leaving the old Football League Division 1.
So we can wait and see with a bit of relaxation in the knowledge that Arsenal won today. We’re not on our very best form, but even so we are winning the majority of games, and Arteta has proven himself to be a manager of quality.
We also don’t know how Liverpool and their supporters will react againsts in the next game againsts ManC, but it is possible that it could be with some vigour. And there is another point: it is quite possible that results of ManC matches might themselves count for nothing as matters are resolved in terms of finding out how to treat ManC and their years upon years of cheating.
Clubs have so far been very restrained in their demands, but it may not continue that way. If the League, as a body, refuses to punish the Mancs as others wish, will some other clubs simply leave the league? It is possible. Likewise, if the appeals and extra hearings go on for months or even years, will all the clubs put up with that?
As I write this, we haven’t seen or heard the full reaction of supporters of other clubs to ManC, nor do we know how the reaction of those ManC supporters who are revelling in their club’s notoriety will be treated by fans of other league clubs. Refusing to allow ManC supporters into games might help but also might cause more trouble. In short, I think that events have only justs begun.
So a multiplicity of unknowns confronts us, and meanwhile all Arsenal can do is go on and win matches. Today wasn’t great, but we are not going to get great football in every game, especially in such a time of unknowns. I mean, it is after all possible that ManC will continue to try and fix not just their matches, but also cause problems for their rivals at the top of the league. They may also have been doing that in the past, so why not now?
We have been asking for years if all the referees currently working in PGMO are fit for purpose and why the number of referees is kept so small. Are ManC involved in that too? We have regularly pointed out that they have tendencies – some regularly oversee home wins, some see lots of away wins and so on, and the clubs are clearly fully aware of that. But is that incompetence or the allowance of cheating? We don’t know, of course, and for years we have satisfied ourselves with just reporting the oddity of the results.
But supposing we now looked at this differently – from the point of view of whether ManC got at the ref they want or not. That could raise all sorts of questions, and so it is vital that the Premier League sorts out the ManCs and uses the opportunity to sort out its referees as well.
Certainly, the media is treating the PL as a league that has one issue: the long-term fiddling of data so that ManC could buy as many players as they liked through pretending they were getting massive incomes in terms of sponsorship – which they were not.
Does the League say now, “that is resolved”, or do they take the opportunity to go on and look at what else ManC have got up to? And will their sponsoring country be willing to be jeered and booed at every opportunity for years to come? I suspect not, since they seem very thin-skinned, but we shall see.
