By Tony Attwood
There is an article in the Daily Express which says that, according to the Financial Times, those in the know (whom the Express calls “City chiefs”) are aware that the appearls hearing over the club’s finances “will take place at some point in December. It’s expected it will run for a number of days, with a judgement not expected until 2027.”
There is no explanation as to why this is all taking so long, especially since the normal rule of appeals is that they cannot introduce new evidence that hasn’t been introduced before, but need to focus on the interpretation of evidence already presented.
If this is right, then that would seem to mean that the final decision of the League over the penalties that the Mancs will get, assuming that they are still found guilty as charged, won’t be revealed until next spring. That means that the ManC club will have the whole of the winter transfer window to do any deals they want, without any restrictions from the League on how much they spend.
The paper also says, “One of the punishments touted, given the severity of the case against the Blues, is relegation to the Championship.” My own view, and one that I have heard a number of other people agree with, is that a relegation down just one league is far, far too lenient given the vast number of breaches that have been noted.
For if all City get is just relegation down to the Championship for 114 infringements of the law, what would a club get if it broke the rules ten times? Presumably they would have just two or three points removed.
Now that is a very serious point because if clubs learn that breaking the financial rules a few times means losing just a handful of points, that makes breaking the rules seem like a worthwhile gamble. Breaking the financial rules could mean bringing in a player who could turn half a dozen draws into wins, generating a dozen or so points. So that could mean 12 extra points from victories and maybe three points deducted for a rule breakage. That certainly makes breaking the rules s look worthwhile.
So although the article in the press suggests that the League might give ManC “such a hefty points deduction it would be impossible for City to accumulate enough points to avoid the drop,” a drop down a single division would be counterproductive, since the fans would pour in next season to watch the club sail through the Championship and win by something like 20 clear points. ManC would lose no money at all, and after one season would be flying high again in the Premier League with all the players they have brought in through their illegal use of funds.
The newspaper suggests that it “would represent a doomsday scenario for City”, which is utter nonsense. But perhaps even more worrying the newspaper also runs the line that “football finance expert Stefan Borson told talkSPORT this week: “There’s a lot of confusion as to the exact stage that we’re at. I’ve heard lots of different things, so I don’t know whether they’ve had the sanction hearing or not had it. I was told by somebody who should know that there had been no sanction hearing as of last week. There’s then the question of whether the sanction hearing is published or not.
In short, the case has gone nowhere at all, and we haven’t even got to the stage in which the club has put forward its case, which will probably be that it shouldn’t be punished at all since the rules are not written clearly enough for it to know that what it did was going to be ruled illegal.
And there is also the thought that some of the media are now trying to distract from what could be a very weak outcome for the ManC case by running utterly different stories. There is, for example, an article on the Daily Mail website today which has the headline “Inside football’s Christian revolution: The Premier League stars who say God has saved them from their darkest moments, stopped them diving to win penalties – and why some still face mockery and abuse for their faith.”
The story is behind a paywall, but like most paywall articles, it is published freely elsewhere, as indeed most hidden articles now are. And so back to this article. The article states that “For months, Daily Mail Sport has been speaking with Christian players, chaplains, and academics. We have found that some footballers are still mocked in dressing rooms for their beliefs. And I would agree that is quite wrong, and should be dealt with in a changing room as much as teachers deal with it in a classroom. But what the article fails to mention is that atheists can likewise be mocked, and they rarely have anyone available to help them.
In effect, players in England can believe in anything they like, and will have their religious beliefs protected. But generally there is no one available to help atheists.
Indeed, supporting a football club is for many a form of belief – in that case a belief that their club is better than other clubs. Indeed, if only it had the right players or the right manager, it would be flying away at the top of the league year after year.
But we don’t count such views as beliefs to be protected: such a view is treated as trivia. That is fine, as long as all views are accommodated openly, and no one (atheist, agnostic, Jew, Christian, etc.) is ever discriminated against or laughed at. And I am not at all convinced we are at that point yet.
