The Right Honorable The Lord Griffiths, a man who collects lucrative legal
commissions as enthusiastically as he does definite articles, is available
as a mediator and arbitrator in the specialist areas of international and
domestic commercial disputes, according to his CV. Pools forecasts are not
mentioned, but even so, he could be worth a ring.
Griffiths can predict football matches, you see - right down to knowing how
many points a team will get through a season, or in a sequence of matches.
And using these special powers, he can factor in results from around England
to give a precise monetary value on the worth of those wins. Griffiths is
very talented. I bet he nails those ten home-wins coupons every week.
Yesterday, a tribunal led by Griffiths found that one player - Carlos Tévez -
had decided the Premier League relegation issue in 2006-07, as fact. Not as
opinion. Not with any vague doubt that the hundreds of other footballers,
managers and coaches who were involved might have had some impact, too. Not
with any pretence to evaluate their presence.
Griffiths said that Sheffield United went down because of Tévez. He, and two
friends, then replayed the season in their mighty minds and, despite all of
this action taking place in a hypothetical dimension, prepared to hand down
a finite punishment, payable in hard cash. Be warned, this is what happens
when you invite lawyers to the party.
It does not matter whether one has any sympathy for West Ham United. Senior
club officials, including Scott Duxbury, who was inexplicably retained and
promoted to chief executive, misled the Premier League over the signings of
Tévez and Javier Mascherano, a scandal that could have resulted in the club
being relegated. West Ham were fortunate that the league table was taken
into account by the original independent commission, sitting on behalf of
the Premier League, which decided to impose a financial penalty rather than
a points deduction, for fear of deciding the relegation issue in a legal
chamber, rather than on a football pitch.
Yet this ruling is as bad, if not worse, because it takes relegation issues
away from the football pitch and back to the legal chamber. It sets a
precedent that any relegated team with a grievance that can be put down
cunningly to one incident, or one player, have a claim. The same applies to
a team denied a prize, or perhaps a Champions League place. It moves English
football nearer to the game in Italy or Brazil, where important issues are
often not resolved until late in the close season and fixture lists are
printed pending courtroom appeal.
Think of what happened between Watford and Reading on Saturday: the goal that
never was. The Football League has announced that the match will not be
replayed, despite a noble offer from Steve Coppell, the Reading manager. Yet
what if Watford are two points short of promotion come the end of the
season? What if Reading keep another team out of the Premier League by one
point? Considering the Griffiths ruling, these clubs have a case against the
Football League, or perhaps against Stuart Attwell, the referee.
It may not end there. Hull City looked to have started the season very well,
then Danny Guthrie, of Newcastle United, broke Craig Fagan's right leg with
a foul tackle. If the fortunes of the club take a downturn with the loss of
an important player, to what extent is Guthrie, or his club, responsible?
And what might that be worth? Now that Griffiths has determined that a
season can be played out accurately in a man's head, where does this end?
Perhaps the one saving grace of the ruling in favour of Sheffield United is
that the claim was for compensation, not reinstatement, although Kevin
McCabe, the club's plc chairman, may feel empowered to push for the big one
now. Welcome to a world of 21-team leagues, of relegationlawyers4U.com.
Welcome to a world in which the most important player at your club is no
longer the striker, but the QC engaged by the owner.
Can one man keep a team up or relegate another? We all say these things, but
they are unproven opinions, not hard facts. I think that Tévez may have been
the difference for West Ham that season, just as Chris Waddle was for
Tottenham Hotspur one year and Matthew Le Tissier was for just about his
entire career at Southampton. But do I know this? No. A million intangible
factors contribute to events in each season and every one is unquantifiable
in finite terms. Yet the FA's independent tribunal took into account as one
of Sheffield United's witnesses the testimony of the chief football writer
of The Daily Telegraph, who said that Tévez kept West Ham up.
Now, I have a great deal of time for the chief football writer of The Daily
Telegraph. He is a friend and a professional whom I respect enormously.
Yet he is no more an expert in this matter than any devotee of football.
Neither am I. If writers could predict the outcome of matches so precisely
that we could say for certain, not just as an opinion, what specific factors
have won and lost games, or how a match would have panned out had a single
participant been removed, we would not need to work. No journalist would
present his views as anything more than informed estimation. It is a punt,
really. All of it. A good one, we hope, and we like to think entertaining,
but a punt nonetheless.
So why was the man from the Telegraph even called? Why does an
independent tribunal with the power to pass a ruling that will change
football in England irrevocably rely in part on speculation and guesswork?
It beggars belief. From this day, every football administrator in every
league in the land will open his postbag in the month after the season has
ended wincing, for ever in fear of the writ that will take him to court on
nothing more than prophecy.
Sheffield United have been hawking this case from commission to courtroom to
tribunal until they have found men misguided enough to believe that they can
imagine the league programme and legislate on these visions. So what,
exactly, are supporters buying tickets for now, if what they see may be
rendered meaningless by the interpretation of a committee at a later date?
Had West Ham been deducted three points at the time of the first commission
for lying to the Premier League, few would have complained. Once the
decision to fine was made, however, any further punishment would have to be
issued retrospectively, with the season over.
Sheffield United know precisely what adjustment needs to be made to achieve
the desired outcome, which is why Tévez's worth to West Ham is always
calculated at three points. It is the number required to keep Sheffield
United up on goal difference, astutely overriding their failings, as if
these, too, could be put down to a player in a different match, representing
a different team.
Sheffield United lost more away matches than any other club that season and
scored fewer goals away from home. That is not the work of Tévez. Neil
Warnock, the manager at the time, fielded a weakened side against Manchester
United and lost and his team won only a single match in the last five,
against Watford, when Steve Kabba, a former player, mysteriously did not
play for their opponents. That was not down to Tévez, either.
Kabba is the sort of figure who could become hugely significant now that
matches can be played in the minds of lawyers. He is on loan to Blackpool,
was formerly a Sheffield United forward who had been loaned to Watford, with
the deal then made permanent. Before Sheffield United and Watford met on
April 28, 2007, Warnock, and match preview articles published on both
official club websites, stated that Kabba could not feature because of an
agreement as part of his transfer.
Kabba had played in 14 of the previous 15 matches for Watford and all of the
previous eight. Any arrangement regarding his deselection would be illegal
and a case of third-party interference. When the statements about Kabba were
brought to the attention of the Premier League, it launched an investigation
and Watford provided contract details showing that no pact had been put in
writing. “There may be gentlemen's agreements between managers that, in
fairness, clubs know nothing about,” McCabe said.
Yet Warnock was quoted in a local newspaper confirming that he had checked the
issue and had been told that Kabba could not play, so it was not the
manager's work. The most plausible explanation, therefore, is that a private
deal was struck between clubs. To believe otherwise is to accept that an
official information outlet of Sheffield United would carry false
information uncorrected for several months, coincidentally replicated at
Watford. Kabba-less, Watford lost 1-0.
And here is the rub. Who is to say that those three points for Sheffield
United were any more, or less, significant than any match won by West Ham,
with or without Tévez? And if West Ham could countersue, hire private
investigators and subpoena everyone involved in the Kabba transfer to get to
the bottom of it, would football have to peer deep into the brilliant mind
of Griffiths and friends so that they could replay that match, too?
We all think that Tévez was a huge player for West Ham that season, but we
cannot know for sure. We cannot faithfully evaluate his goals against the
saves of Robert Green or the performances of Matthew Upson in central
defence. Certainly, he cannot be held responsible for Sheffield United
losing at home to Wigan Athletic on the final day of the season or Warnock's
understrength team against Manchester United.
Yet we can begin to estimate the cost to football of Griffiths's foolish
precedent. Right now, this is a row about money between two groups of very
rich men, vainly dressed up as a fight between right and wrong. But where it
goes from here cuts to the heart of Saturday afternoons, a time of the week
that will increasingly cease to be of significance to football supporters -
for, as we know, lawyers do not work on Saturdays.
