It will be rather surprising if the Premier League suddenly takes an interest in gentlemen’s agreements like the one that kept Robert Snodgrass out of West Brom’s game at West Ham. Not that they shouldn’t — but they certainly didn’t before.
In 2007, against the backdrop of the investigation into third party interference in Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano’s contracts with West Ham, an equally significant scandal was unfolding.
On April 28 that year, Everton played and lost at home to Manchester United. Everton went 2-0 ahead, but in the 61st minute their goalkeeper, Iain Turner —bought from Stirling Albion, but previously loaned to Chester, Doncaster, Wycombe and Crystal Palace — dropped the ball at the feet of John O’Shea, who scored.
Sensing opportunity, Sir Alex Ferguson sent on Cristiano Ronaldo. Seven minutes later, Turner was soft again as Phil Neville scored an own goal.
United went on to win 4-2. Had they lost that day, they would have been tied at the top on 79 points with Chelsea and only three games remaining. Instead they went three points clear and finally won the league by six.
Yet Tim Howard, not Turner, should have been in goal for Everton. He had been enjoying an excellent season on loan from Manchester United and Everton had paid £3million to make the deal permanent on February 24, ensuring no rival club could compete come the summer.
Yet United did not want to sell mid-season because Howard could then play against them. So the clubs entered into an unwritten agreement. If the title race was still live, Howard would sit out the United fixture — played 63 days after his transfer.
David Moyes, then Everton’s manager, admitted this. A club spokesman confirmed it. Manchester United even claimed the arrangement came with the full knowledge of the Premier League chairman at the time, Sir Dave Richards.
That same day, April 28, Watford lost 1-0 to Sheffield United. Missing from their team was Steve Kabba, who had played 14 out of 15 matches following a £500,000 transfer from Sheffield United in January.
Explained Sheffield United’s club website: ‘Striker Steve Kabba is ineligible to play in this weekend’s fixture, due to a clause in his £500,000 move from Bramall Lane.’
Watford’s official site was also adamant. ‘Ex-Sheffield United striker Steve Kabba is ruled out of the game — it was a feature in his contract when he signed in the January transfer window.’
And Sheffield United manager Neil Warnock told reporters: ‘Steven can’t play. I checked yesterday to make sure — you can’t afford to take any chances.’ Except there was no clause in the contract. Just an outside agreement that Kabba would not feature. It was one of only two games that Sheffield United won after February 10 that season.
So what happened next? Nothing. A Premier League investigation into the Howard transfer was announced AM on May 6 and closed having found no case to answer PM the same day. Within hours, Ferguson was celebrating United’s latest title victory.
By contrast, the thorough investigation into the Tevez-Mascherano deals lasted 94 days. As for Kabba, with nothing written down, the investigation went nowhere. By then, the football world was too fixated on Sheffield United’s campaign for fairness over Tevez to wonder how their manager, their official website and Watford’s official website came to create the same rule-breaking narrative around Kabba.
Move along, nothing to see.
So here we are. Gentlemen’s agreements would still appear to be going strong with no one greatly interested until Big Sam opened his big mouth and made the Premier League look foolish.
Even now, it does not seem as if club owners are concerned.
A meeting of Premier League shareholders took place the day after Allardyce’s clumsy admission and the matter was not even raised, implying no great desire for the loophole to be policed more vigorously.
Equally, the Premier League have let it be known that a fine or written warning is the likelier punishment, rather than the severity of a points deduction. The Football Association are also said to be taking an interest but take salt with that statement, too.
In 2009, a player called Matthew Spring was kept out of an FA Cup tie between Charlton and Sheffield United by gentlemen’s agreement, despite being registered with Luton.
He was on loan from Luton at Sheffield United but it wasn’t working out and his parent club wanted him sold to Charlton. Sheffield United made it a condition of his release that he couldn’t face them in their FA Cup match.
Phil Parkinson, Charlton’s manager confirmed this publicly. And the FA? Some two months later, having written to the three parties, they announced no action would be taken but couldn’t explain why. That’s what you call governance, volume 146.
Returning to the present day, if Allardyce was looking to make trouble for his former employers at West Ham, his ploy has surely backfired. The onus is as much, if not more, on West Brom to simply resist outside interference as on West Ham not to make suggestions.
If West Brom complied, it was because they wanted Snodgrass to play against Wolves, which he did for 90 minutes in the only victory of Allardyce’s current tenure.
West Ham will no doubt argue that without the agreement they would simply have delayed Snodgrass’s transfer until January 20, to prevent potential embarrassment, so the player would not have faced them anyway.
The pressure, they could claim, came from West Brom to do the deal quickly with the offer of a side arrangement. Which makes Allardyce’s careless words all the more mystifying.
This was Manchester United’s defence in 2007. That they could have left Howard on loan until after April 28, guaranteeing he could not face them. They made a permanent deal only at Everton’s request, but with an agreement to protect their interests. And while’s that’s true, it still stinks.
Gentlemen’s agreements are the murky extension of the loan system — selling an asset, yet somehow keeping it.
While the Premier League now has rule 17 governing such arrangements, the fact two clubs entered into one and talked about it — Albion’s Twitter feed echoed Allardyce’s team news concerning Snodgrass — suggests the market is not policed with great diligence.
Now there is an investigation. Yet Allardyce’s words were as good as any confession — the same as in 2007 and 2009. It didn’t matter then, why should it matter now?
Salary cap will kill the Championship's last lifeline - ambition
Not a minute too soon, it seems the Championship clubs have come to their senses. There is unlikely to be a cap on ambition in the second tier, following the intervention of Brentford, Norwich and Bournemouth.
Those three clubs, all chasing promotion, took apart the proposals to enforce punishing salary limitations on the competition, in a way that would leave its members helpless if promoted to the Premier League.
What is astonishing is that the flaws even needed highlighting. Little here was revelatory. Not every club in the Championship is Wycombe Wanderers. Some have wealthy owners who wish to invest; others enjoy healthy crowds and commercial potential.
Why should they be limited to an £18million cap just because some of their rivals do not wish to spend, or are happy to tread water? And why would a new owner buy into the league, if progress is thwarted by red tape?
As one executive at a Premier League club calculated, an £18m cap would equate to salaries of £12,000 a week. Players who can be recruited for that cost are unlikely to be of elite standard. Promoted teams would need to spend greatly to survive, or simply yo-yo between the leagues.
If the same three went up, went down, went up, went down, the Championship as a vibrant competition would be dead. The reason it remains among the most popular leagues in Europe is its uncertainty.
Ambitious owners getting it right, getting it wrong, complete surprise packages like Sheffield United or, previously, Blackpool. ‘Impotent,’ was how the salary cap’s opponents described their future status.
It is too late for the leagues below but no different there. John Coleman, manager of Accrington Stanley, spoke in favour of the current salary cap regulations — already implemented — but his club are among the beneficiaries.
‘If people policed themselves, were more prudent and respected the football club, the sport could use this as a chance to reset,’ he said. ‘Look at clubs like Notts County who were spending ridiculous amounts of money in League Two. The absence of a regulator probably led to the need for a salary cap.’
Yet at the time football shut down during the 2019-20 season, Accrington were averaging crowds of 2,862 in the same division where Sunderland were drawing 30,118, Ipswich 19,549 and Portsmouth 17,804.
Sunderland’s gates were bigger than any club outside the Premier League. How can they be tied to the same budget as Accrington Stanley? And why is the duty to be prudent, rather than to invest to get a club of that size out of tier three?
Football is more than accountancy with groin strains. The Championship is a compelling league because clubs have the ambition to leave it behind. Strangle that and it’s just inferior football, played by inferior players in an inferior competition, all appeal and relevance gone.
Sheik the magic money tree
There is surely no surprise that Sheik Khaled bin Zayed Al Nehayan’s takeover of Derby appears to be in jeopardy.
Sheik Mansour’s Manchester City deal is the yardstick. If your suitor is from the Middle East and change doesn’t happen with a click of the fingers, he probably doesn’t have the substantial resources advertised.
In the case of this particular consortium the warning signs were obvious. If their wealth was as easily accessible as suggested they would have owned Newcastle since 2019.
Loophole leaves door open for an ambush
Peter Walton is employed by BT Sport for expertise in one area: the rules.
So when he is initially as confused as the rest of us by the simple matter of offside in Manchester City’s game with Aston Villa, that is a massive failing on the part of the rulemakers.
As it is when Dean Smith, a professional in the football industry since 1989, is equally perplexed. It does not matter that what Rodri did when tackling Tyrone Mings, having come from an offside position, is legal. It should not be.
And would not be if those making the regulations had any feel for the spirit of the game. Of course, now the rule is known, expect it to be mercilessly exploited.
A player with pace — Jamie Vardy, for instance — could lurk offside and then when the ball is played up, bam — hit the defender blindside the moment he takes a touch to control.
Lay that ball back to the advancing forward midfielders, turn and go.
This isn’t how football is meant to be played, when giving the ball away and ambushing the last man has the same possibilities as an accurate forward pass.
Despite vaccines, cancelling Tokyo is the only choice
Inside the main communal room in the athletes’ village at the Sydney Olympic Games was a huge map on the wall. ‘Stick a pin in where you’re from’ was the instruction, and there was barely an inch of space left around the globe.
The Olympics isn’t like football’s World Cup with limited entry. Everyone comes, everyone plays. And that is why Tokyo 2021 is such a precarious enterprise now.
Plainly, nations are at different stages of their vaccination programmes, plainly coronavirus is still spreading unchecked across continents.
It is impossible, therefore, to vaccinate everybody required to make a successful Games. Not just athletes but coaches, support staff, officials, media, sponsors, ticket-holders.
Why would Japan open itself to this level of jeopardy having been relatively successful in containment to here? Sir Keith Mills, chief executive of London 2012, is right. The plan should be for cancellation in the best diplomatic circumstances, not a cavalier tilt at the nigh impossible.
Sorry Celtic, this one just won't fly
What has never been adequately explained about Celtic’s trip to Dubai is what on earth the club thought there was to be gained.
Neil Lennon is not the first coach to be convinced of the benefits of a little sun on the back mid-season, but surely that had to be measured against the negative reaction of a society in lockdown, and the risks of international travel.
Equally, Celtic’s insistence on moving the game with Hibernian to accommodate the trip — despite eight separate requests being rejected — smacks of entitlement.
Whatever justifications, mitigations or arguments Lennon advanced during his incendiary public appearance this week were always going to be undermined by the fact of the trip itself. It was a bad concept, misguided from the start.
Source: m.allfootballapp.com